Questions tagged [cases]
Inflectional forms that indicate the grammatical functions of nouns, pronouns and their modifiers (such as adjectives).
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2answers
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Are there other languages, besides Latin, where a gender of a noun is determined by its genitive case ending?
Are there other languages, besides Latin, where a gender of a noun is determined by its genitive case ending?
0
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1answer
60 views
Is there a name other than “absolute” for this kind of construction?
In some languages there are absolute constructions like the Genitive Absolute in Greek:
Καὶ ἤδη ὥρας πολλῆς γενομένης προσελθόντες αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἔλεγον ὅτι ἔρημός ἐστιν ὁ τόπος καὶ ἤδη ὥρα ...
2
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1answer
71 views
Problem with [NOMINATIVE] Case in GB & Phase Theory (MP)
Most of works on case theory in generative syntax GB (Vergnaud, 1985; Chomsky, 1981, 1986, among others) and in MP (Chomsky, 1995, et seq; Gallego, 2010; Hornstein, 2011, among others) assume the ...
1
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1answer
64 views
“To whom” in pied-piped infinitive relative clauses
In English wh raised from, or in situ in, a direct object or prepositional object, you can almost always use "who" at least as well as "whom",1 and in some cases you can only use "who":
Who/whom did ...
2
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0answers
44 views
Direct–inverse marking on the noun, or the possiblity of inverse alignment
A direct-inverse language, Wikipedia claims, is one which
involve[s] different grammar for transitive predications according to the relative positions of their "subject" and their "object" on a ...
2
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0answers
41 views
What is configurational case assignment?
How does it differ with inherent case?
I found this definition from Maria Polinsky and Omer Preminger paper; Noun phrases are assigned case by virtue of their structural position relative to certain ...
2
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1answer
99 views
Drawing case specified trees for english gerunds
I'm reading Adger's Core Syntax book and am having a tough time with Exercise 1 of the functional categories chapter.
The exercise is about gerunds. Gerunds are specified by the form of suffixing -...
1
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1answer
69 views
Should Japanese postpositions be treated as belonging to the same category as English prepositions?
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and WALS, as well as Wikipedia, treat both English prepositions and Japanese postpositions (particles) as belonging to 'adpositions' (although CGEL ...
2
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0answers
29 views
Configurational assignment of accusative case?
I'm an undergraduate linguistics student, and I'm currently reading this chapter by Coon & Preminger (2015) (http://ling.umd.edu/assets/publications/Coon-Preminger-17-SplitErgativity.pdf), which ...
1
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1answer
52 views
Is there a grammatical case indicating displacement?
As part of a constructed language experiment I am trying to write phrases with clause structure of [noun supersedes noun] as just two words. For example, “death before dishonor” or “freedom over ...
0
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0answers
44 views
What does “referentiality” mean?
I have problems with the linguistic terms. I did not find satisfactory explanation
about "referentiality". On the other hand, what are the differences between "case" and "referentiality"? If there is, ...
2
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3answers
106 views
How does 'like a book' befit the Translative, and not Essive, Case?
McWhorter, J. PhD Linguistics (Stanford). The Language Hoax (2016). p. 56 Bottom.
I speak no Estonian. 1. But how does the preposition 'like' conveys the Translative Case? E.g., an encyclopedia ...
3
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1answer
31 views
Case of Nominal Associate in Clauses with Exceptional case-marking
I've been wondering whether the nominal associate of expletive there gets nominative, accusative or dative case in clauses with exceptional case-marking in other languages, since case isn't visible ...
4
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1answer
103 views
Instrumental - nominative inversion in Polish
While scrolling through a course in Polish, I saw the following sentence:
Wynikiem wyrażenia jest nowa relacja.
This is not the first time I notice this pattern, where the instrumental is used for ...
6
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1answer
178 views
Are there any languages with a case system like Esperanto's?
Thinking about Esperanto's case system, if I saw that in a natural language, I would think it was rather odd.
Esperanto only has two cases: accusative and non-accusative. The non-accusative, on is ...
0
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2answers
97 views
Doesn't Sanskrit use adpositions of any kind?
For some reason, the Wikipedia article makes no mention of any adpositions of any kind. I find it highly unbelievable that the language makes no use of such. It has a case system, but there's only 8 ...
1
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2answers
108 views
Grammatical Case for Noun Phrase in English
Consider the sentence:
John's book is blue.
What is the grammatical case of "book" here? The two obvious choices are nominative or genitive.
Most information online suggests it is nominative, ...
17
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3answers
2k views
What is “case”?
As a non-linguist, I am confused about the concept of case. What is its definition, as linguists use it? Is it about the different forms that nouns/pronouns can take? Is it about the function of the ...
1
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0answers
80 views
What does CGEL mean by 'instability in the system' in their explanation of case?
Consider the following passage from CGEL (p. 458, boldfaced emphasis mine):
We look first at the contrast between nominative and accusative case, where we find a considerable amount of variation ...
5
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0answers
55 views
List of Hungarian toponyms by interior/surface case
Hungarian toponyms can be grouped grammatically according to whether they take the "interior" cases (inessive, illative, and elative) or the "surface" cases (superessive, sublative, and delative) to ...
3
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1answer
137 views
Do case endings really make sentences shorter?
In the Language Construction Kit, Mark Rosenfelder makes the claim that case endings 'makes things compact and frees up word order'. The latter is pretty obvious, but do case endings really make ...
3
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2answers
70 views
Is there a language where in declension number is affixed peripherally to case?
Is there a language where, given that number and case are affixed seperately not fusionally, a noun can have the structure of , e.g. ithawen = itha-w-en [woman]+GEN+PL ("of the women, the women's")? I ...
4
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1answer
91 views
Are there any languages where possessive nouns have to agree with the head noun?
I know there are plenty of languages out there where possessive personal pronouns can and do agree with the head noun in number and case. But I was wondering if there were any where nouns also had to ...
4
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3answers
293 views
As French is a so-called Roman language, where are the cases? [duplicate]
French language is known to be a Roman language, just like Spanish, Italian, Swiss Roman…
Those Roman languages are told to be originating from Latin language.
When I learnt Latin, one of the first (...
2
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5answers
178 views
How do languages with case deal with 'sentential arguments'?
I'm not 100% sure of the proper terminology here, so I'm just using the one used in the LCK.
What I mean by a sentential argument is an argument that is a sentence rather than a noun phrase.
Case in ...
1
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2answers
86 views
Why is it that direct object may be marked with either ACC or GEN case, depending on the verb in Slavic languages?
Why is it that in many or all Slavic languages e.g. the verbs “need” and “see” mark the direct object with genitive case, whereas the nouns “buy” and “eat” do so with accusative case?
Is it related ...
2
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0answers
61 views
Subjective pronouns in English copulas: gradual loss of objective case, or emphatic construction taking over?
I'm interested in the historical linguistics of constructions like "that's me" versus "this is she" when answering the phone. Searching online led to a Google Books peephole view of a book that ...
1
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1answer
214 views
Is case-marking really useful for such languages?
CASES
The function of cases is to differentiate nouns in order for the reader/hearer to know what syntactic/semantic function it is performing in a sentence since others languages, such as Portuguese,...
-1
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2answers
319 views
Need for English not to have many grammatical cases
In other languages (mainly Romance languages such as: Portuguese and Spanish), we have many grammatical cases such as: abessivo
ablativo,
absolutivo,
acusativo,
adessivo;
English doesn't feature such ...
4
votes
0answers
71 views
Are there any universals about how m-case can pattern for predicate NPs?
Predicate noun phrases (NPs) have different patterns of case in different languages.
Even closely related languages can show significant differences (Sigurðsson 2008). For example, among the Germanic ...
6
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3answers
330 views
How dissimilar must case endings be to each other?
I'm asking this question for a conlang. I know that's normally too subjective for this forum, but honestly, I think this may be an exception.
I tend to try to keep things as terse as possible. Often ...
2
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1answer
106 views
Theta-Marking, Case-Marking and Argumenthood in Copular Sentences
Nominal predicates in copular sentences are peculiar because in certain languages, they acquire case other than accusative case. Even English was so, e.g. "it is I (NOM)" vs. "it is me (ACC)." Perhaps ...
3
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1answer
179 views
Case assignment with prepositions
Consider these examples:
'I am happy with my parents'
my parents gets assigned Case by 'with'.
*'I am proud with my parents'
My question is as follows:
What is the reasoning for 2 being ...
3
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1answer
93 views
How do you assign Case to sentences with an infinitval clause?
Look at this example:
For the butler to attack the robber would be surprising.
Here, the butler and the robber are assigned accusative Case. Is 'For' assigning case to the butler and 'to attack' ...
1
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0answers
120 views
wals chapter 50 regarding german language
Regarding asymmetrical case marking in German referring WALS chapter 50, I understand the asymmetry in German (ich : I; mich : me; mir : to me; er : he; ihm : to him; ihn : him, etc.) but the value is ...
8
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4answers
398 views
Languages preserving loanword inflections
Erudite English has an interesting practice where the plural form of loanwords may follow the inflectional grammar of the source language. Thus "campi" as well as "campuses", "minima" as well as "...
4
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3answers
160 views
Constructions like the double accusative outside of the Ancient Greek word “διδασκειν”
I'm looking for examples of having 2 or more nouns in the same case but with the different semantic roles given by the differing referents of the nouns, not entirely by one of morphological case, ...
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0answers
207 views
Overt Subjects of Non-Finite Clauses and Accusative Case
How do overt subjects of non-finite clauses such as the gerund clause below obtain accusative case despite there being no accusative case or ECM assigner?
Me arriving late is a sure thing
I think I ...
3
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3answers
1k views
How should I form grammatical cases in my conlang?
Now, I'm a Latin student, and that being said, I understand how cases operate and what they do for a language, but I've never enjoyed learning/studying/keeping track of them. That being said, I feel ...
8
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1answer
652 views
Declensions in Polish
Declension, as far as I know, corresponds to the act of creating boxes where you can pile up nouns that follow the same rule when inflected (generally due to cases). Classical Latin is often said to ...
4
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0answers
115 views
Month names variants
Regarding the question on TeX.stackexchange I am looking for generally used languages that use different cases for their month and day names.
Based on Czech and Slovak languages I can imagine two ...
11
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1answer
335 views
Do languages ever get new cases?
In my education, I've learned about a lot of languages whose case systems have atrophied, especially from PIE.
Wikipedia had a reference to The Evolution of Case Systems for Marking Event Structure, ...
4
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4answers
203 views
Are there any languages where numbers have cases?
Are there any languages which use different cases of numbers for different uses?
3
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2answers
181 views
What would you call a case specifying something is far away from a noun?
There's the adessive case, which can be used to specify something is near a noun, but is there an opposite? Is there a case specifying a far distance from a noun? I'm including this case in my conlang ...
0
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1answer
168 views
Are there languages with more cases than Latin?
I am currently busy with a project that involves production rules.
From my years in Latin at college, I learned about the six basic ones. But if I am not confused, ablative could represent several ...
0
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3answers
322 views
Is there a language in which the verb “to ask” can be followed by a dative case?
So far as I know, the ditransitive verb "to ask" takes two accusatives in German (fragen), and the verb "to give" takes one dative and one accusative in many languages.
Is there a language in which ...
2
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1answer
74 views
Grammatical case for provenience
I am looking for the term for the grammatical case expressing provenience or origin, roughly corresponding to the English prepositions "of, from, out of, made from" as for example:
He is from Sweden.
...
2
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0answers
65 views
What is some standard analysis for “Look me in the eye”
I am looking for hints where to find a ("standard") analysis of something like this english dative construction:
Look me in the eye
Clearly, the "the" in this phrase is semantically scoped BY the me ...
0
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1answer
151 views
What motivated the terms 'ergative' and 'absolutive'?
Source: p 195, Understanding Syntax (4 ed, 2014) by Prof. Maggie Tallerman PhD in Linguistics (U. Hull)
ERGATIVE is the case of A – the subject of transitive verbs. ABSOLUTIVE is the case of both ...
1
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1answer
116 views
Grammatical mistake in the Gita
I am studying Sanskrit. I encountered a sentence in verse 19 of chapter 1 of the Bhagavad gita - as it is. The sloka is as follows:
स घोषो धार्तराष्ट्राणां हृदयानि व्यदारयत्।
नभश्च पृथिवीं चैव तुमुलो...
