Re: some of... vs. some... et al.

From:    "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...>
> In our field
> methods class, we're studying an African language, Moro,
> about which nothing has been written (and boy do I have
> stories!  The language makes no case distinction between
> nominative and accusative, but does have *two* inessives,
> a supressive, a locative, a genitive and an instrumental/
> commitative.  *However*, it does have an accusative case
> for proper names!)
Actually, quite a few head-marking languages do precisely
this.  Since core arguments are cross-referenced on the
verb, you don't need to mark them on the dependent nouns.
Thus, in Meskwaki and Nahuatl, locatives and vocatives
have case suffixes for NPs, but otherwise NPs are entirely
devoid of case-marking.  So, the next question would be:
is Moro a head-marking language?

(Interestingly, the Meskwaki vocative singular case suffix
is exactly that of Latin: -e. [Plural is -etike, though.]
This is in part coincidence, and in part functional:
vocatives tend to be reductions of particles equivalent
to "oh" and "hey" in English.)

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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