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Re: Marking case with articles

From:JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON <mpearson@...>
Date:Monday, March 22, 1999, 20:09
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.