Case Survey

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denarii
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Re: Case Survey

Post by denarii »

Kiswona currently has 17 cases: agentive, patientive, genitive, instrumental, benefactive, comitative, vocative, formal vocative, adessive, inessive, subessive, superessive, ablative, elative, allative, illative and perlative.
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hubris_incalculable
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Re: Case Survey

Post by hubris_incalculable »

Shkuloik (my non-silly main focus) has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Very German of me.
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Aevas
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aevas »

hubris_incalculable wrote:Shkuloik (my non-silly main focus) has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Very German of me.
For being so common among real languages, proper NGAD case systems are severely underused in conlangs.
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Systemzwang »

Aszev wrote:
hubris_incalculable wrote:Shkuloik (my non-silly main focus) has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Very German of me.
For being so common among real languages, proper NGAD case systems are severely underused in conlangs.
What languages outside of Germanic have that system?
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Lambuzhao
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Lambuzhao »

:con: :ell: Iveriki - NVAGD (Conservative daughterlang to (Koine) :ell:)

:con: Rozwi - NVAGD + Abl, Inst, Loc (Old Rozwi used to have NAGD + Abl, Inst, Temporal)

:con: Kwijin - NVAGD + Abl, Inst, Loc

BUT

:con: Sūðrasāl - NAG
:con: :ell: Gavik - NAG (but N,A are virtually identical for fem & neut nouns, masc nouns heading there as well)
:con: :lat: Çetara - substantives Ø cases; personal pronouns NAGD; in older language, definite articles were
declined NAGD+Abl, but now more common prep+article contractions indicate old cases
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Aevas
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aevas »

Systemzwang wrote:
Aszev wrote:
hubris_incalculable wrote:Shkuloik (my non-silly main focus) has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Very German of me.
For being so common among real languages, proper NGAD case systems are severely underused in conlangs.
What languages outside of Germanic have that system?
Good point. [:S]
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Systemzwang »

Aszev wrote:
Systemzwang wrote:
Aszev wrote:
hubris_incalculable wrote:Shkuloik (my non-silly main focus) has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Very German of me.
For being so common among real languages, proper NGAD case systems are severely underused in conlangs.
What languages outside of Germanic have that system?
Good point. [:S]
not a point actually, more like a serious question. I bet there must be many languages with it. But which ones?
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Aevas
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aevas »

Systemzwang wrote:
Aszev wrote:
Systemzwang wrote:
Aszev wrote:
hubris_incalculable wrote:Shkuloik (my non-silly main focus) has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Very German of me.
For being so common among real languages, proper NGAD case systems are severely underused in conlangs.
What languages outside of Germanic have that system?
Good point. [:S]
not a point actually, more like a serious question. I bet there must be many languages with it. But which ones?
Well in either case you got me thinking about it, because I was kinda assuming a bit blindly, which is never healthy. But now I'm on the hunt for them, though unsuccessfully so far [>:|]
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Avo
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Avo »

Barry J. Blake's "Case" mentions Germanic languages and "Yaqui and several Nilo-Saharan languages including Fur, Nuer and languages of the Didinga-Murle group".
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Aevas
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aevas »

Avo wrote:Barry J. Blake's "Case" mentions Germanic languages and "Yaqui and several Nilo-Saharan languages including Fur, Nuer and languages of the Didinga-Murle group".
Thanks, Avo!
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Lambuzhao
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Lambuzhao »

If you sort of forget about the Vocative for a moment, Classical Greek has a NAGD case system.
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Xing
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Xing »

Lambuzhao wrote:If you sort of forget about the Vocative for a moment, Classical Greek has a NAGD case system.
We can forget about the vocative - at least for the moment. (Some linguists feel that the vocative is not really a case, after all.) Then we get a nice NADG case system.

The workloads of the different cases are a bit different than in the Germanic languages, though. IIRC, PIE had something like:

NOM
ACC
DAT
LOC
ABL
INSTR
GEN

In the Germanic case system, LOC, ABL and INSTR was replaced by DAT, which became a kind of catch-all oblique case. In Classical Greek, did not ABL (or possibly some other case) merge with GEN?
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Click
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Click »

I can't say anything about Classical Greek, but I think that ABL merged with LOC in Croatian.
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Xing
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Xing »

I'd like to see more mid-sized case inventories. That is, inventories with 3-6 cases or so, which are the result of earlier, larger inventories where various cases have merged through the ages. Such inventories could feature various interesting kinds of case-polysemy, and the cases could interact with verbs and adpositions in subtle ways.
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MrKrov
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Re: Case Survey

Post by MrKrov »

Still no case system in any of mine, still just adpositions and applicatives.
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aseca »

If you sort of forget about the Vocative for a moment, Classical Greek has a NAGD case system.
Sanskrit also had the same as well, if you remove the vocative.

Japanese as well -
Nom - wa/ga
Acc - wo/ga
Gen - no
Dat - ni
Sikatāyām kaṇam lokasya darśasi, svargam phale vanye ca.
See a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Ānantam tava karatalena darasi, nityatām ghaṇṭabhyantare ca.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
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MrKrov
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Re: Case Survey

Post by MrKrov »

I don't think Japanese qualifies as 1) those are postpositions and not case affixes and 2) I'm fairly certain NAGD is restricted to languages with only nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases while Japanese has more would-be "cases" than that.
Aseca
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Aseca »

Ah yep you're right MrKrov, they just are 'added' to the noun/verb in question.

Aloha has NGAD case system, with 5 others -
5. Vocative(addressing someone, not always O... or hey!)
6. Locative/Semblative/Essive/Equative
7. Ablative(nouns/verbs)/Comparative(adjectives)
8. Instrumental
9. Passive/tillative
Sikatāyām kaṇam lokasya darśasi, svargam phale vanye ca.
See a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Ānantam tava karatalena darasi, nityatām ghaṇṭabhyantare ca.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
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ABC
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Re: Case Survey

Post by ABC »

Nolikan has absolutive, ergative, genitive, dative and locative.
Meljanese has no cases.
Yoketian has a massive case system:

nominative, accusative, dative, locative, ablative, allative, instrumental, comitative, prolative, comparative, essive and vocative
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Click
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Re: Case Survey

Post by Click »

Proto-Littoran has four cases:

Ergative: Taken by subjects of (di)transitive verbs.
Absolutive: Taken by for subjects of intransitive verbs.
Accusative: Taken by direct objects of intransitive verbs and recipients of ditransitive verbs.
Dative: Taken by direct objects of ditransitive verbs.

The ergative, accusative and dative are also taken by prepositional objects.

Most Littoran languages have merged the accusative and dative via syncope, giving a tripartite system.
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