Re: Marking case with articles

At 20:12 21/03/99 -0800, you wrote:
>I'm still playing with the grammar one of my older conlangs called Tazhi,
>and I was toying with the idea of dropping case endings in favor of marking
>case and number with the article.  Here's the idea:
>
>Every noun in the sentence would be preceeded by a definite or indefinite
>article.
>The noun would remain invariant, and the case and number of the noun would
>be indicated by the form of the article.
>
>Suppose that the definite article had the forms:
>
>"da" = nominative singular
>"dar" = accusative singular
>"des" = dative singular
>
>Then "John gave the book to Mary" would become
>
>"Da John gave dar book des Mary."
>
>And since the case is marked by the article, the word order is irrelevant,
>except to emphasize one part of the sentence over another as in "Dar book da
>John des Mary gave." = "It was the book that John gave to Mary." (The only
>word order requirement is that each article immediately preceed it's
>associated noun.)
>
>The form of the article would indicate a plural as well so that if "daren" =
>accusitive plural then
>
>"Des Mary da John daren book gave." would be "It was to Mary that John gave
>the books."
>
>I might include the option of dropping the article from a singular
>nominative and assuming that any noun without an article is the (singular)
>subject.
>
>Has anyone seen or used this approach before in any conlang or natlang?
>
        As Tom Wier already said, it's exactly the Modern German system, with a
few exceptions. In German, there's even an indefinite article (that exists
only in singular) where cases are marked. For instance:

Nom.    ein Hund        a dog
Acc.    einen Hund      a dog (object)
Dat.    einem Hund      to a dog
Gen.    eines Hundes    of a dog

As you can see, it takes the same endings as the definite article.

        In my conlang Astou, there is no indefinite article, but a definite
article (put after the noun) that, when it is used, causes the noun not to
be marked on case (except for the instrumental). As the article is
invariable in gender and number, those are still marked on the noun. For
instance (I do it from memory, and am currently drastically changing the
Roman translitteration of Astou, which is normally written in a
Greek-derived alphabet, so there may be some errors), for the word Dh'aos
(Nom.), Dh'astei (Instr.) (one must always give those two cases, as the
root used for other cases than singular nominative is the intrumental
without the instrumental ending - here -ei -), which is the noun used by
the speakers of Astou to refer to themselves (neuter gender - which is also
neutral -):

Indefinite declination:
        Singular        Plural

Nom.    Dh'aos          Dh'astem
Acc.    Dh'astun        Dh'asteme
Dat.    Dh'astrka       Dh'astemka
Instr.  Dh'astei        Dh'astmei

Definite declination:
        Singular        Plural
Nom.    Dh'aos bi       Dh'astem bi
Acc.    Dh'aos be       Dh'astem be
Dat.    Dh'aos 'ebi     Dh'astem 'ebi
Instr.  Dh'astei 'abi   Dh'astmei 'abi

>Can you think of any pitfalls waiting for me in this approach?
>
        None. :)

>Thanks, --Gary
>
>
                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html