Re: Cases and adpositions

Matthew Kehrt sikyal:

> Hey, all.
> My lang, Evíendadhail currently has a huge number of cases, something
> like 20-30.  It also has no adpositions.  The way the language currently
> works, all things that would be adpositions in English or French (my L1
> and L2) are simply cases.  To put it another way, the language makes no
> distinction between the two.  The way one would say 'object A is on
> object B' is not qualitatively different from the way one would mark the
> subject of a sentence.
>
> How unnatural is this?
Not at all.

>  Are there any natlangs that do not make this
> distinction?
Yes, although I can't name any for certain.  Hungarian comes mighty close
and I believe has no prepositions. Finnish doesn't properly have
prepositions, either, but only some helping adverbs that are
preposition-like in purpose, but not in function.

>  I am considering dropping most of the cases and replacing
> them with prepositions.  Is this more 'natural'?  Comments would be
> appreciated. ;-)
Please, please, please don't do that! Keep all of your cases, and screw
the prepositions. Don't let anyone ever tell you that it's unnatural,
either.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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