Re: Marking case with articles

>Date:         Sun, 21 Mar 1999 20:12:00 -0800
>From:" Gary Shannon <reboot@...>"
>Subject:      Marking case with articles
>
>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."
This system seems to be working well in Nilenga NGL with the difference
that it is pronouns that are so used, not nouns. Further, the
"articles" are joined with the pronouns, but could as well stand alone.
Example:

ha=nominative singular pronoun, "he"
igol= accusative singular pronoun, "it". <gol> means "it" <i-gol> means
<accusative-it>.
uza= dative singular pronoun, "her". <za> means "her" <u-za> means
<dative-her>.

"Ha gave igol uza"
He gave it to her.

The i- and the u- prefixes correspond to the article but they are
fused.  Here the case-tagged pronouns are in natural position for
English and NGL and hence redundant but they are tagged so they are
mobile as you say.  There is a way to mark the nominative pronoun as
an agent and hence nominative by saying "Ha sieh gave igol uza".
Otherwise <ha> is nominative by default due to its position, or being
the only unmarked case.`

So in short your system ought to work as well, and I at least think
case-articles are a good idea. It would allow the trend to isolating
grammar to take one more step, providing an option to distribute the
information carried in inflections. My hope for NGl is that it will
allow extremes of agglutination and isolation with the user making the
choices.

All the Best for your lang,
Jerry

>
>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?
>
>Can you think of any pitfalls waiting for me in this approach?
>
>Thanks, --Gary
>