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Re: Case

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Monday, November 10, 2008, 18:34
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 1:16 PM, Campbell Nilsen <cactus95@...>wrote:

> So, for several conlangs I have nominative-accusative alignment+passive > voice. > > For 1 language which has the passive, there is the construction > "[noun]+[passive voice verb] by [noun2]". The construction "by noun" has a > special case, BUT I don't know what it's called.
Well, there are a variety of options, depending on exactly how it works, but the most likely suspect is the "instrumental" case, found in e.g. Russian. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_case. Other languages use a different case, often one with a broader meaning that serves as a sort of catch-all, perhaps with prepositions governing it to disambiguate. This is the case in Latin, which uses the ablative case for your example (called the "ablative of means"). The ablative was originally used for the origin of motion (e.g. "away from X"), but the meaning expanded over time to include a wide variety of other purposes. -- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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Campbell Nilsen <cactus95@...>