Re: cases (nom/acc vs sub/obj)

Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Adrian Morgan wrote:
>
> > I'd appreciate more info on this: What principles govern whether a
> > conlang's system is best described as nominative/accusative or as
> > subjective/objective?
OK, your answer seems to be that the word 'accusative' implies that it
needs to be distinguished from a seperate 'dative', whereas 'objective'
does not. As such, your answer concerns the difference between
'accusative' and 'objective' rather than between 'nominative' and
'subjective'. You don't mention any distinctions between the former two,
so I'm left with my original impression that 'the nominative noun' is
synonymous with 'the subject'.

The reason behind my question was that my documentation /does/ use 'the
nominative noun' to mean simply 'the subject', and I wondered if this was
misleading. It seems not.

> > My documentation chooses "nominative" simply because I figure this is
> > less confusing for a general audience. "Nominative" and "subjective"
> > mean roughly the same thing anyway, the former is more widely taught
> > to nonlinguists so there's a jargon factor,
>
> I see nothing wrong with this, as long as you specify what thematic
> roles each of your cases carries.  My question was directed solely at
> the bifurcated case name, which was, I thought, misleading.
'Case' in Gz. is carried not by the noun itself but by the article that
precedes it, noting that articles can be used as pronouns.

Specifically, the article of the noun phrase that is the subject (I
say 'the article of the nominative noun' in my doc) has a suffix which
specifies the tense and mood of the clause. This is called the 'long
article'. I state that the primary function of the long article is to
mark the nominative noun, by which I mean that it marks the subject.

Beyond that ... the long article _isn't_ used in titles (e.g. the title
of my documentation, "The Gzarondan Language), but it _is_ used in
vocative exclamations such as "Hey you!" (Ay Tonokk : the long article
suffix -okk indicates a present tense vocative : it's reasonable to say
that Gz. considers a vocative exclamation to be a mood).

The long article is also used in a quite seperate role called the
'retropossessive', which I won't describe here.

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