jbdp@jenny.UUCP (Julian Pardoe) (11/19/85)
> I am familiar with the case systems of many IndoEuropean languages (8 > seems to be the maximum), but 16 cases seems most outrageous! If > somebody has the time, I would be most interested to understand how > these cases are used. Well, mostly the cases express relationships that we use prepositions for. The English prepositional phrase "of John" has an equivalent in the Genitive "John's". We could equally well use some case form to express the idea "in London". The cases of Estonian are as follows (I think; obviously a single English translation cannot really capture the range of meaning of a case): nominative raamat a book (is...) genitive raamatu of a book partitive raamatut (some/any) book illative raamatusse into a book inessive raamatus in a book elative raamatust out of a book allative raamatule (on)to a book adessive raamatul on a book ablative raamatult from a book translative raamatuks (turn...) into a book essive raamatuna as a book terminative raamatuni as far as a book abessive raamatuta without a book comitative raamatuga with a book The case system of Finnish is of course very similar. Without a reference book I wouldn't like to claim accuracy for the following list, but it might give people an idea. (I can't remember the declension of the Finnish word `raamat'[?] which means `Bible', so I'll use `kirja', book): nom: kirja gen: kirjan par: kirjaa (ending orig. -ta) ill: kirjaan ine: kirjassa ela: kirjasta all: kirjalle ade: kirjalla abl: kirjalta tra: kirjaksi ess: kirjana ter: NONE abe: kirjatta com: NONE There is also a case meaning `along': kirjatse[?, the translative?]. The -na case is used mainly (only?) with expressions of time: p"aiv"an"a, "on the day", used in dates. Hungarian had the same two `in' and `on' series (-ba, -ban, -bol and -ra, -an, -rol). There are also some endings with a -t-, but I'm not sure where they fit in. I think I've seen a `-tol' and the ending `t' is used with some place names: Kolozsvart: in Kolozsvar/Cluj. In Hungarian as in Finnish one lives *in* some towns but *on* others! Turkish has the just one positional series (-e, -de, -den). More detailed relationships are expressed using nouns like "ust, `top': ev "ust"unde : house at-its-top: on the house. There is also an ending `-ki' which adds a `which is': Topkap\idaki camiler: the mosques (which are) at Topkap\i. Apologies for the many inaccuracies, but I wanted to give people a flavour of how languages can make use of many cases. Julian Pardoe ------------- University of Cambridge Tel: +44 223 352435 ext. 265 Computer Laboratory Arpa: <@ucl-cs: jbdp@cl.cam.ac.uk> Corn Exchange Street Janet: jbdp@UK.AC.Cam.CL CAMBRIDGE, CB2 3QG UUCP: mcvax!ukc!cl-jenny!jbdp Great Britain