Re: Marking case with articles

On Sun, 21 Mar 1999, Gary Shannon 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.
>
> Has anyone seen or used this approach before in any conlang or natlang?

Natlangs:  The Philippine languages (e.g. Tagalog) work quite a bit
like this.  Perhaps Kristian Jensen can give some examples...

Conlangs:  My conlang Tokana works similarly.  Person, number, animacy,
and case are all marked on the determiner.  The only major difference
from your proposed system is that certain cases are also marked by
suffixes on the noun.  A sample paradigm (for "ne ikei" = "the dog")
is given below:

Singular
        Absolutive      ne ikei
        Ergative        na ikei
        Dative          inai ikeie
        Instrumental    inan ikeine
        Ablative        inaul ikeiu

Plural
        Absolutive      se ikei
        Ergative        sa ikei
        Dative          isai ikeie
        Instrumental    isan ikeine
        Ablative        isaul ikeiu

Note that the determiners may also be used as pronouns.  Thus
"ne", when not accompanied by a noun, means "he/she".

Potential pitfalls:  This kind of system will only work well
if *all* classes of noun phrases in the language require a
determiner.  In Tokana, for example, proper names and 'strong'
quantifier phrases take determiners, in addition to common noun
phrases:

        ne ikei                 "the dog"
        ne Sakial               "Sakial" (lit. "the Sakial")
        ne kekua saul ikeiu     "each dog"
                                  (lit. "the each of-the(Pl) dog")

Matt.