Re: CHAT: Back on the list; Anti-conlanging bigots

Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> wrote:

Anton Sherwood wrote:
>"Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
> > one day we were discussing how GB handles case marking,
and the
> > question arose whether there are any languages whose
adpositions
> > assign nominative case.  I mentioned that I knew off the
top of my
> > head of no natural languages which marked case in that
way, though
> > I did know of a constructed language [Esperanto] that
did this. . . .
>
>um . . . remind me?
Hmm, as some people on this list may be aware, Tairezazh and
Steianzh
violate this rule by having prepositions followed by the
nominative*. Now,
in Kalini Sapak the accusative is the most basic case (used
as the lexical
form, as vocative etc). So, does this mean that it be
unnatural to have
adpositions govern accusative? It'd feel to me extremely
weird to have the
adpositions govern the nominative (otherwised strictly
reserved for
subjects), and I really don't want to have all adpositions
govern genitive.

                                                Andreas

"""""""""""""""""""""""""
same here. my conlang Tunu has no case tags. but all but six
"prepositions" are really verbs or nouns. as a result i
think it's unlikely they govern the nominative:

kami amoki watuci tama = I work using tool = I work with a
tool. (i guess "tool" is accusative)
tama u boke tanu = tool in front table = the tool is in
front of the table. (i guess "table" is genitive)

so the case flexions of the word "tama" ("instrument") are:
CASE : singular / plural / paripaucal
VOC. : tama! / tama! / tama!
NOM : tama / tama / tama
ACC. : tama / tama / tama
GEN. : tama / tama / tama
DAT. : tama / tama / tama
ABL. : tama / tama / tama
INS. : tama / tama / tama
FLEXCIRCUMPERALLATIVE : tama / tama / tama
8 cases! wow. there is no doubt that the INS. form "tama" is
used a lot. so much that the NOM. "tama" may derive from it.
(maybe.)
btw, making this one table was utterly exhausting. i wonder
where my fellow finno-ugrianizing conlangers scoop the
patience from to build a dozen of them :-)
but i like to peruse them on websites, so keep on the good
job!

As for Esperanto, i thought that the accusative -n tag is
not needed after a preposition because the object of the
preposition always immediately follows the preposition so
the word order is clear enough without the -n accusative
tag.

Mathias
www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm

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