conlangs with LOTS of cases

Me govanen!

"H. S. Teoh" tetent:
>
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 12:08:47AM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> [snip]
> > ObConlang:
> >
> > What is the largest number of cases you ever built into one of your
> > languages?
> > Or the largest number of cases you ever heard of being used in any
> > language, natural or constructed?
> [snip]
>
> I just had a (wild?) idea... some of this is inspired by the conlang
> Odonien, which uses postpositions as *optional* case markings. Now, since
> the case marking is almost like a separate word, I can imagine how you can
> derive arbitrarily complex case endings by compounding existing ones, or
> modifying existing ones. (In fact, Odonien sometimes merges the case
> particle with an adverb.) Using this method, you can construct as many
> cases as you can imagine...
>
> E.g., say the locative case particle is "-ze" (blatant ripoff from Odonien
> :-), and "zeng" = adverb, "in front of"; then "-zezeng" = locative case
> denoting a place in front of something. Now you just need some syntactic
> rules on how to form these compound case particles, and bingo! you have an
> unlimited number of case endings! :-)
Nice!  Reminds me at what I am planning to do in Proto-Quendian.
Proto-Quendian (the protolanguage of an all but extinct hypothetical
language family associated with the Bell Beaker civilization, of which
Nur-ellen is one of the last surviving members, and on fragments of
which Tolkien based his famous conlangs such as Sindarin and Quenya)
will have a class of small words which I call "postpositional nouns",
which function pretty much like postpositions, but are gramatically
nouns.  For example, "on the house" could be expressed as
_mba:ro-dolessa_, lit. "at the top of the house"
(_mba:ro_ partitive genitive of _mba:r_ "house", _dolessa_ locative of
_dol_ "top".  "Onto the house" would be _mba:ro-dolenna_ (_dolenna_
adlative of _dol_).  One could also say "on the left side of the top of
the house" by forming _mba:ro-dolo-haressa_ by adding _haressa_
(locative of _har_ "left side") to the partitive genitive of _dol_.

Syld,
Jörg.