All Questions
22 questions
2
votes
1
answer
149
views
Is there a reason why certain verbs use certain cases?
For examples, in German there are certain verbs that always use the dative cases and others that always use the accusative case. Is there a logical or semantical reason for this?
Does the use of a ...
- 121
0
votes
2
answers
122
views
Mysterious uncertainty about ablative case in Turkish
Yesterday I was watching a Turkish trivia game show on TV when a question came up about the ablative case in Turkish. The question, asked during a part of the show when questions are generally deemed ...
- 1
1
vote
1
answer
433
views
How many grammatical cases does Telugu have?
I can't figure out how many grammatical cases Telugu has:
Wikipedia says 8 (Telugu grammar)
Telugu itself says 8, but I'm not sure if they map 1-1 to linguistic cases (విభక్తులు/viḅaktulu)
I found a ...
- 113
0
votes
1
answer
142
views
Question about a phrase with the Polish case genetive (dopełniacz)
in the following sentence:
"Teraz idę do żabki po sok"
What is the function of the genitive case applied on the noun "żabka"?
I'm aware that with the preposition "do", ...
- 263
1
vote
2
answers
782
views
Does English have animate/inanimate distinction?
I know we have the "'S" genitive and the "X of Y" but I don't exactly understand the rules of using these even as a native English speaker and I'm unsure if English makes other ...
- 169
4
votes
1
answer
688
views
why in Polish we change ją to jej when negating the phrase?
ja lubię ją - I like her
ja nie lubię jej - I do not like her
Do I understand correctly what these sentences mean?
If yes, why do we change ją to jej when negating the phrase? In both cases the ...
- 163
0
votes
4
answers
169
views
What can explain the appearance of "self-made" language features if neither of languages a person speaks or learns have similar features?
I know a woman, whose native language is Kyrgyz (Turkic family) and who learned Russian as an adult (mostly, maybe she was somewhat exposed to it before as well).
What striked me is that she invented ...
- 6,711
5
votes
2
answers
897
views
Is it possible in Sanskrit to distinguish between the names Rāma and Rām i.e. राम and राम् when used in a sentence?
Consider this sentence:
रामो लेखन्या लिखति
Is रामो in that sentence always referring to someone named राम (Rāma) or could it be equally possible that the person's name was राम् (Rām)? Are names like ...
- 61
0
votes
1
answer
83
views
What is case for pronouns in different positions? [closed]
Can we say "the case of subject in a sentence is nominative, the direct object of a verb is accusative, the second object of a ditransitive verb is accusative, the objective of a preposition is ...
user27687
4
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Absense of cases in Bulgarian
Nowadays, Bulgarian and Macedonian are the only Slavic languages where the system of cases isn't developed. Bulgarian and Macedonian are very close to each other, but are considered to be 2 ...
- 81
0
votes
1
answer
162
views
How does the Thai language express the instrumental?
In English and many European languages the instrumental is expressed with a preposition:
I eat noodles with chopsticks.
(But "with" is not dedicated to this function and has other uses such as the ...
- 14.8k
6
votes
1
answer
231
views
What is considered a grammatical case in the framework of turkic languages?
Let's take kazakh language as an example. In every source I've read there are 7 cases in kazakh language:
nominative üi - a house, baqşa - garden;
genitive üi-diŋ - of a house, baqşa-niŋ - of a ...
- 257
1
vote
1
answer
859
views
Grammatical case vs semantic case
I'm not sure what these terms mean. In my lecture notes I wrote that grammatical case is used to show the syntactic functions of a nominal syntagm, depending on its relation to the verb. Semantic case,...
- 939
1
vote
1
answer
81
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 ...
- 273
5
votes
1
answer
320
views
Instrumental - nominative inversion in Polish
While scrolling through a course in Polish, I saw the following sentence:
Wynikiem wyrażenia jest nowa relacja. -- *resultant (of the) expression is (a) new relation
This is not the first time I ...
- 153
0
votes
2
answers
471
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 ...
user19661
2
votes
0
answers
82
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 ...
user12663
3
votes
3
answers
3k
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 ...
- 31
7
votes
1
answer
2k
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 ...
- 205
2
votes
2
answers
113
views
accusative being used to express an origin?
I read in Plutarch (Demosthenes.1) the phrase
ὑπάρξαι ‘τὰν πόλιν εὐδόκιμον‘ (~ to be born in ‘a famous city’).
(τὰν πόλιν εὐδόκιμον being a quote from (pseudo-?)Euripides' ode to Alcibiades, cf ...
- 2,017
-3
votes
1
answer
181
views
What are other 'tacit perfectiveness/imperfectiveness event markers' in Russian? [closed]
I have discovered that making a communicative wishing constructions (like in 'have a good trip' or 'merry Christmas') in Russian, they use different structures depending on perfectiveness/...
- 2,779
14
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Are there any papers etc analyzing Japanese as a language with noun cases rather than particles?
Japanese is often included in lists of agglutinating languages.
Many (most?) agglutinating languages are analysed as having case systems.
Of course cases and prepositions/postpositions fill the same ...
- 14.8k