Re: Conlang Development With Multple Noun Cases

On Fri, 25 Dec 1998 22:56:19 -0800, Arek Bellagio <zadar@...> wrote:

>Which leads me to my next question: those of you who have developed =
conlangs
>with multiple cases, how do you further development of your language? =
How do
>you create adjectives? Usually, nouns with cases do not require a =
specific
>word order, right? (In my belief they wouldn't, since the case ending =
would
>determine what role it plays in the sentence; otherwise it would just be
>superfluous) Well, do you also decline adjectives? For example, I was
>thinking of having adjectives end in on, an, en, and in. So far, I'm =
stuck
>on whether or not I should decline adjectives to number as well as case.=
 How
>have you others done this in the past? I'm eager to see how you've =
tackled this.

Jarrda has seven cases of nouns, but no real adjectives. Nouns in the
genitive case or verbs are used instead of adjectives. However, numerical
classifiers do agree in case with nouns. Word order is flexible, but =
there
is a "typical" word order for the five cases that can be arguments of
verbs: ergative, absolutive, ablative, dative, instrumental.