Case Survey

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taylorS
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Re: Case Survey

Post by taylorS »

Micamo wrote:How's the topical case used? What if the topic's the same as, say, the agent?
It's used both as a vocative and in "topic-fronting" constructions like "The fire, he put it out!"

In Alpic that would be:

Poraf, mellezjas sa.
Pora-f mellezja-s sa
fire-TOP extinguish-3SG.A 3SG.P.INANIMATE
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Omzinesý
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Omzinesý »

I found that thread gain.
Omzinesý wrote:I really tried to avoid noun cases. So there are only 13 of them in Kácitxáli. (Nominative, accusative, oblique, ergative, genitive, possessive, locative, perlative, separative, lative, essive, associative, vocative). (Kind of split ergativity) Yes, there were all.
Then there are three numbers (singular, paucal, plural) and a generic deixis.
so there are 13 x 4 forms that have a different gruop of a prefix, an infix and an initial mutation.
Kàhicáli has developed a little, too little.

syntactic:
absolutive - I'm still considering make that the active case, instead
translative (maybe not the best name, but expresses effected patient, what is created in the action)
ergative (instrumental uses too)
oblique (some governance relation)

local: - I scrapped directions
locative
vialis (some instrumental uses)

adjective functions: - double case marking when attributes
genitive
comitative (also X and Y = X with Y)

Äh, it's still large.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Case Survey

Post by eldin raigmore »

Omzinesý wrote:I really tried to avoid noun cases. So there are only 13 of them in Kácitxáli.
About 38.3% of natlangs don't have cases at all;
another 9.2% have "exclusively borderline case-marking" (only concrete or peripheral or semantic "cases", such as locative or instrumental);
another 8.8% have only two cases;
another 3.4% have only three cases.

So, depending whether or not you count "exclusively borderline" as "no cases",
either 56.3% have no cases or only 2 cases or only "borderline" cases, or
50.6% have no cases or only 2 cases or only 3 cases.

More natlangs have no cases at all than have any fixed number of cases.

Among natlangs that do have cases, the median and the mode is 6 or 7. That is, 65.7% have 7 or fewer and 61.3% have 6 or more; and more have 6 or 7 than have exactly 2 or exactly 3 or exactly 4 or exactly 5 or 8-or-9 or 10-or-more.

If you were really trying to avoid noun-cases, you could have done without any; or could have had only borderline, concrete, peripheral, semantic cases; or had just two cases; or had just three cases.

Or if you wanted to be similar to those natlangs that do have cases, you could have had 6 or 7 cases.

Only about 9.2% of natlangs have 10 or more cases.
Only about 17.5% of natlangs with a full case-system (both syntactic and semantic cases, and both ad-verbal and ad-nominal cases) have 10 or more cases.
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Selinki
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Selinki »

Selinki has 5 cases:

Sg. Nominative
Sg. Genitive (-AE, or rarely -JE)
Sg. Locative (-Y). Locative functions also as dative
Sg. Accusative (if the last letter in nominative is A, O is added. The same: E+U, O+A. Others remain as nominative)
Sg. Instrumental (-NO)

Pl. Nominative (-M, -OM or -EM)
Pl. Genitive (-S, -AS or -ES)
Pl. Locative (-MY, -OMY or -EMY)
Pl. Accusative (-J, -AJ, -EJ, in rare cases -G or -AG)
Pl. Instrumental (-MNO, -EMNO or -OMNO)
Esmelthien
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Esmelthien »

My conlang, Chainduran, has got 9 cases:
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Ablative
Locative
Comitative
Instrumental
Vocative
It also has three numbers: Singular, Dual, and Plural.

There are four 'groups.' One for nouns that have a front vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a vowel, one for nouns that have a front vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a consonant, one for nouns that have a back vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a vowel, and one for nouns that have a back vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a consonant.
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Omzinesý
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Omzinesý »

Esmelthien wrote:There are four 'groups.' One for nouns that have a front vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a vowel, one for nouns that have a front vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a consonant, one for nouns that have a back vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a vowel, and one for nouns that have a back vowel in the stressed syllable and end in a consonant.
Can you explain that with examples?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
Esmelthien
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Esmelthien »

Omzinesý wrote:Can you explain that with examples?
Sure!

Chainduran has 11 vowels, 6 front, and 5 back, plus their elongated counterparts:
Image

In Chainduran, stress lies on the first syllable that has a long vowel, or, if there is no long vowel, on the first syllable.
Each of the four groups, has its own set of case and number markers. For example, <phâ'nüü> /p̪ʰɑˈnyː/ 'man' (or more accurately, Chainduran male), has a front vowel in its stressed syllable, and ends in a vowel. This means, that it belongs to the first group. Words from the first group, get -ñgä'i /ŋgæʔi/ in their, for example, ablative plural form. Phâ'nüü -> phâ'nüüñgä'i. <öklâñ> /ˈʔœkɬɑŋ/ 'dagger,' belongs to the second group. Words from the second group, get -Parä in their ablative plural form, with P being a plosive that corresponds the the preceding nasal. Öklâñ -> öklâñgarä. <aploo'û> /ʔaˈp̪ɬoːʔʊ/ 'hand,' belongs to the third group, with a back vowel in its core, and ending in a vowel. Words from the fourth group, get -'ôtu /ʔɔtu/ in their ablative plural form. Aploo'û -> aploo'û'ôtu. <ââkrän> /ˈʔɑːkræn/ 'cloud,' belongs to the fourth group. Words from the fourth group, get -'o'mâ <ʔoɱɑ> in their ablative plural form. Ââkrän -> ââkrän'o'mâ.
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rickardspaghetti
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Re: Case Survey

Post by rickardspaghetti »

My latest conlang(still unnamed) will probably have several cases. I have not decided how many or which cases to use yet, but I recently finished my pronouns and they have five basic cases on which other cases can be stacked through affixation.
The five cases are: active, stative, pegative, direct, and reflexive. All cases are not used for all persons though. Active, stative, and pegative are used for first person and second person; direct and reflexive are used for third person and fourth person.
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Aevas
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aevas »

I use a boss style NGADV, with plenty of quirks.
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Systemzwang »

Wow, I thought I had posted in this thread ages ago!

Bryatelse:

Nom|Acc|Dat|Abl|Voc|Excl
The unusual one here, exclamative attracts the attention of listeners to something (c.f. vocative, which attracts someone's attention; something like "Look John, your car!" would be something like John.voc, Car.excl!) For inanimates, these are not morphologically distinguished.

The nom/acc distinction is lacking in neuters, where neuter subjects of transitive verbs get a masculine nominative determiner "typecasting" them to nominative. Which is kind of ergative-like.

BUT, on top of this, Bryatesle stacks another case system, where the following options can be stacked:

no extra case

possessed case (a bit like status constructus, but with a full suffix. This one is a really old secondary case, and has thus become fairly fusional)

partitive case, also relatively fusional. Does not combine with the dative in the main dialects. In some dialects, dative and ablative partitive have been merged, in some dialects they're distinct, etc.

the secondary subject, used to:
- > lessen degree of volition
- > sometimes marks objects of passives
- > in sentences along the line "I made X do Y", X is marked with this. In such, the secondary subject marking may be the only thing indicating it's a causative
- > with animate subjects, can mark the possessor of the subject if this possessor is the object, e.g. "dog bit me.secsubj" will mark that I also am the owner of this dog. Some varieties only use this the owner is not a patient, but is affected in some less way (experiencer, etc)
- > sometimes, the subject is marked with this and the instrument of an action is promoted to subject status

the reciprocal object
when two objects (or other participants) are made to act on each other, they're marked with this. e.g. "I beat the rocks together -> I beat rocks.rcpobj. Fairly recent and agglutinative.

negativity agreement
varies from dialect to dialect, in some it's the same as the partitive. In some it's not marked.
In some, it has a separate suffix.

definite article
A bit like English "the", only it's suffixed, and in complementary distribution with the other secondary cases.

suggestion marker
Can also be used on verbs, and would be something like "[do you want some] coffee?", "[how about a]trip to the countryside", "[why don't you try a] wrench?". However, as it's in complementary distribution with the secondary cases it also earns a place in this list.

The secondary cases furthermore exist in a hierarchy, such that when more than one is called for, the highest one in the hierarchy will be used.

This hierarchy varies a bit, here are two examples:
rcpojb|secsubj > poss > neg > part > def > sugg
rcpobj|secsubj > poss > part > def > sugg > neg

Tatediem fuses case, definiteness and number. Dative only occurs in the definite, absolutive and ergative are unmarked in the indefinite, the dual has no indefinite forms whatsoever, and mass nouns do not distinguish indefinite from definite and merges part, erg and abs. Basically this is ({singular, plural} * {abs, erg, instrumental, dative, partitive} / {dat indef}) + {dual def} * {abs, erg, instr,dat,part} + {mass} * {absergpart,instr, dat}

Dairwueħ has a rather standard nom,acc,dat,gen,abl, although their uses is somewhat in flux. The genitive for one is also used for definite subjects of transitive verbs. The dative is also used for direct objects when the action is not beneficial for first or second person (although the second person beneficiality can be ignored if one is being impolite).
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Curlyjimsam »

Neither of my main conlangs - Viksen and Greater Atlian - have case, relying basically on word order alone. Historically Viksen had two cases, ergative and absolutive, the former used for transitive subjects and the latter for nearly (though not quite) everything else.

Looking at a selection of my more minor conlangs:

- Imperial Naktic has five cases: nominative, accusative, instrumental-genitive, locative and prepositional.
- Burran has three cases (ergative, absolutive and genitive) for pronouns only. Otherwise grammatical relations are shown through word order and (very limited) subject agreement.
- Koshenian nouns do not mark case. Grammatical relations are shown by word order and subject agreement on verbs.
- Yeppish has nominative, accusative, oblique and vocative cases.
- Modern Telarian has nominative, accusative and prepositional cases. The prepositional is derived historically from the classical genitive case; the classical language also had an instrumental.
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kiwikami
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Re: Case Survey

Post by kiwikami »

Evelēranēl has an accusative, possessive, and dative case. That's... it, really. It's prepositional.
Genljøŋ has... lots of cases. Upwards of forty.
But that's nothing compared to HyPry. It has about 75 or so - I'm adding them as I need them. They mostly take the forms of suffixes, derived from postpositions in an earlier language, with the exception of the ones for morphosyntactic alignment, which are... complicated.
I like noun cases. I really do.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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natanruss
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Re: Case Survey

Post by natanruss »

Casing wise I tend to have them. I enjoy them but usually the conlang will evolve and lose a number of the cases. After that usually taking a particle or just having a fixed word order. Nothing too fancy [:)]

When they have them I usually give them 4 ~ 7 Nom, gen, dat, acc, loc, inst, voc. Though sometimes I put casing up to 10 or 12 but that does not happen to often.

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Chagen
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Chagen »

Pazmat possess a Nominative, Accusative, Ergative, Absolutive, Genitive, and Locative.

I still don't know WTF the ergative and absolutive do, because I keep them a shitload of wierd-ass uses.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Ànradh
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Ànradh »

Iriex will have nominative-vocative, accusative, possessed, dative, locative and ablative casses when it's complete.
Currently, it has nominative-vocative, accusative, possessed (currently with animate and inanimate paradigms, which may extend to other cases) and locative.
Sin ar Pàrras agus nì sinne mar a thogras sinn. Choisinn sinn e agus ’s urrainn dhuinn ga loisgeadh.
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Omzinesý
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Omzinesý »

I'm testing tripartite alignment in Vtain, though I don't know anything of it.

so:
absolutive
ergative
accusative
maybe some oblique cases
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Case Survey

Post by eldin raigmore »

Aszev wrote:I use a boss style NGADV, with plenty of quirks.
What does "boss style" mean?
And, does NADGV mean Nominative-Accusative-Dative-Genitive-Vocative?
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Ossicone »

I am here to tell you, everything momma hen Aszev does is 'boss style.' [xD]
Solarius
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Solarius »

For Keoriki, I have 5 cases: Ergative, Absolutive, Locative, Instrumental, Vocative.
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Click
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Click »

In Rutān there are only two cases: Nominative and Oblique.
Nominative is used for subjects and non-verb parts of predicates, and Oblique is used for everything else. It is always used together with an appropriate preposition except when a noun in Oblique is a direct object.
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