Re: Marking case with articles

Gary Shannon wrote:

> 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?
Do you mean the general idea of marking case with articles, or specifically
of dropping the the article with singular nominatives?

For the former, certainly.  Modern German is basically just such a system,
in that, almost without exception, case is indicated by the article alone, with
no change on the noun itself (there are a few examples of what are called
"weak nouns" that add an extra -n in nonnominative cases, but these are rare
and are all basically social terms that would normally retain archaic features).

For example, <Hund>, "dog, hound"

            Sing                Pl
Nom    der Hund         die Hunde
Acc     den Hund         die Hunde
Dat      dem Hund(e)* den Hunden^
Gen     des Hundes^    der Hunde

* = what was originally a dative singular ending on the noun;  archaic
and basically not used today
^ = the two exceptions, an -s for genitive singulars (like English) and
an agglutinated -n for dative plurals

Here's an example of a weak noun, in case you're interested:

<Herr>, "Sir, lord, master, Mister"

            Sing               Pl
Nom    der Herr        die Herren
Acc     den Herrn      die Herren
Dat      dem Herrn     den Herren
Gen     des Herrn      der Herren

> Can you think of any pitfalls waiting for me in this approach?
There's nothing particularly wrong with it.  There is less redundancy,
however, if you do it this way;  unless you also inflect the noun (or
adjective) itself for case, you put more of a burden on the listener to
pick up meaning.


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
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