How many cases is too many?

[Jonlang]

I was rather bored at work today and I wandered into the rabbit hole of noun cases. I've never been particularly interested in them before, having basic knowledge of what the handful or so common European cases do and what they mean. However, seeing as one of my conlangs is meant to be pushing me out of my comfort zone, I decided it would be a fairly heavily inflecting language. So I naturally end up looking at Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, etc.

In the end I came up with a list of 21 cases:

• Nominative
• Accusative
• Dative
• Genitive
• Vocative
• Partitive
• Inessive
• Illative
• Elative
• Superessive
• Subessive
• Adessive
• Ablative
• Allative
• Translative
• Essive
• Excessive
• Instrumental
• Comitative
• Abessive
• Prolative

The idea is that these will all exist in the literary register, but many will merge or fall out of use in favour of adpositions in the colloquial register. It's only a handful or so more than Finnish, so it can't be that far-fetched, can it?

[zompist]

I'd suggest looking at Quechua, too.

Also, when you do something like this, lean into it! I mean, sure, you can have the case system declining, but Finnish and Quechua get by with a list like this, so why can't your con-speakers? (Quechua doesn't even have adpositions if it wanted to replace the system. But it's also agglutinative, so it's no harder than an adpositional system.)

[WeepingElf]

I recently reduced the number of cases in my main conlang Old Albic from 10 to 4. Makes the whole thing much more elegant, I think.

[Moose-tache]

21 is fine, but please don't make them perfectly regular. Most languages with cases have lots of quirks and exceptional uses. Otherwise what's the point?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I recently reduced the number of cases in my main conlang Old Albic from 10 to 4. Makes the whole thing much more elegant, I think.

There can be elegance in simplicity, but there's also some in having more concise ways of expressing ideas (as with cases, as opposed to periphrastic constructions); of course, there's always mixing the two together, as Indo-European languages seem often to have done in the past, and some still do.

[bradrn]

So I naturally end up looking at Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, etc.

I think it’s worth noting here that Finnic languages (and also Hungarian to some extent) have a fairly unique case system, where endings are arranged into triples of in/at/out cases: illative/inessive/elative, allative/adessive/ablative, and translative/essive/exessive (sometimes; the exessive is rare). Nakh–Daghestanian languages have a similar but less fusional system in their locatives. Given these examples, it may be useful to consider how your cases are arranged, especially since most of your cases are locatives.

I also recall an interesting paper concluding that most Hungarian ‘cases’ are better analysed as fused postpositions. I can try finding it when I have time.

[Moose-tache]

There can be elegance in simplicity, but there's also some in having more concise ways of expressing ideas (as with cases, as opposed to periphrastic constructions)

Elegant, sure, but concise? Most of these cases are just replacing prepositions. Is "cheese-with" any more concise than "with cheese?"

[Travis B.]

So I naturally end up looking at Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, etc.

I think it’s worth noting here that Finnic languages (and also Hungarian to some extent) have a fairly unique case system, where endings are arranged into triples of in/at/out cases: illative/inessive/elative, allative/adessive/ablative, and translative/essive/exessive (sometimes; the exessive is rare). Nakh–Daghestanian languages have a similar but less fusional system in their locatives. Given these examples, it may be useful to consider how your cases are arranged, especially since most of your cases are locatives.

I also recall an interesting paper concluding that most Hungarian ‘cases’ are better analysed as fused postpositions. I can try finding it when I have time.

The big reason you cannot call Finnic locative cases postpositions is that Finnic adjectives agree with their nouns with regard to case, which rules out calling them postpositions.

[Moose-tache]

This is an interesting analysis. We have two levels here:

1) syntactic rank
2) word formation

We can imagine each of these being binary states, creating four possibilities:

a) separate adpositions as phrasal head
b) separate adpositions on every word in a phrase
c) affixes as phrasal head
d) affixes on every word in a phrase

An example of a) would be postpositions or prepositions as they are normally imagined. Option d) is a language in which adjectives, quantifiers, etc. agree with the head noun of a phrase, while option c) would be a language in which only the head noun receives the case ending. This category might include languages like English, in which the 's ending attaches to a phrase rather than a word syntactically, but is not a discrete word on its own. The last option b) is, as far as I Know unattested. It would sound something like "with big with green with shoes on his feet" or "kawaii wa neko wa iru."

Now, you probably wouldn't say that option b) is an example of case rather than adposition simply because it works on the word layer and not the phrase layer. It's still adposition. Similarly, option a) is also an example of adposition rather than case, but not because it works at the phrase level. The idea that something applying at the word level rather than the phrase level cannot be sufficient to distinguish case from adposition. To illustrate:

"blue mountains on" - obviously not case, but is it because of word formation or syntactic rank?
"blue on mountains on" - if this is case, then word formation doesn't matter
"blue mountains-on" - if this is case, then syntactic rank doesn't matter
"blue-on mountains-on" - obviously case, but is it because of word formation or syntactic rank?

The common element is word formation. But this is also unsatisfying. Perhaps there are more syntactic tests to perform that will distinguish case from adposition, besides whether it attaches to a word or a phrase.

[bradrn]

Now, you probably wouldn't say that option b) is an example of case rather than adposition simply because it works on the word layer and not the phrase layer. It's still adposition.

Whyever would this be an adposition? It’s obviously a case marker. At the very least, it still forms a grammatical word with the following noun. You put spaces between them, but that doesn’t change anything — it’s just orthographical trickery. (Something which is unfortunately all too common in this area.)

"blue mountains on" - obviously not case, but is it because of word formation or syntactic rank?
"blue on mountains on" - if this is case, then word formation doesn't matter
"blue mountains-on" - if this is case, then syntactic rank doesn't matter
"blue-on mountains-on" - obviously case, but is it because of word formation or syntactic rank?

I’d say (1) is obviously an adposition, and (2) and (4) are obviously case. (3) is ambiguous, and will depend on the precise positioning of the element. e.g. if this language places articles after the noun:

“blue mountains-on the” — obviously case
“blue mountains the-on” — obviously an adposition

The key element here is not which bits happen to end up grouped together phonologically, but rather where everything is distributed in the sentence grammatically. I’d say that case-markers are things which are straightforward affixes (i.e. grammatically dependent on another word), and adpositions are things which are grammatically more independent of the head, so either clitics or particles.

There have been attempts at formalising more sophisticated definitions of case-markers as opposed to adpositions: e.g. that Hungarian analysis I mentioned earlier. Personally, I think such attempts are of limited use, given that the two categories are rather similar in any case. For instance, the Tongan ergative case-marker is in fact an adposition. It may be the case that ‘case-marker’ is best defined semantically — or that we need better terminology.

[Moose-tache]

Whyever would this be an adposition? It’s obviously a case marker.

I think you misunderstood me. Option B was the one where an independent word marks every content word in a phrase, like this: "on every on mountain there is a peak" or "with my with several with friends I went on a trip." In other words, the preposition appears with every word in the phrase, rather than being the head of the phrase.

[bradrn]

Whyever would this be an adposition? It’s obviously a case marker.

I think you misunderstood me. Option B was the one where an independent word marks every content word in a phrase, like this: "on every on mountain there is a peak" or "with my with several with friends I went on a trip." In other words, the preposition appears with every word in the phrase, rather than being the head of the phrase.

Yes, I understood this just fine. What you describe is obviously a case-marker. There is literally no reason to analyse it otherwise. How, exactly, is your example different from something like “onevery onmountain there is a peak”, which everyone would agree is a case-marker? There is no difference, apart from the orthography, which is an unreliable guide at the best of times.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Elegant, sure, but concise? Most of these cases are just replacing prepositions. Is "cheese-with" any more concise than "with cheese?"

In English, no, but if your word for "cheese", and its comitative case construction, were both disyllables (say kaisu, kaise), but your word for "with" was also a disyllable (perhaps medo), and you could use the dative (say kaisa) + the preposition, kaise would be more concise than medo kaisa, or something to that effect. Even if the language looses a bunch of final syllables, vowel gradation (kjoüs, kjēs, kās) could still carry much weight of meaning, such that kjēs is still more concise than mød kās.

[Moose-tache]

Whyever would this be an adposition? It’s obviously a case marker.

I think you misunderstood me. Option B was the one where an independent word marks every content word in a phrase, like this: "on every on mountain there is a peak" or "with my with several with friends I went on a trip." In other words, the preposition appears with every word in the phrase, rather than being the head of the phrase.

Yes, I understood this just fine. What you describe is obviously a case-marker. There is literally no reason to analyse it otherwise. How, exactly, is your example different from something like “onevery onmountain there is a peak”, which everyone would agree is a case-marker? There is no difference, apart from the orthography, which is an unreliable guide at the best of times.

This is also what I believe, but I would have never guessed in a million years that you were agreeing with this.

[bradrn]

This is also what I believe, but I would have never guessed in a million years that you were agreeing with this.

Ah, I see. Apologies for misinterpreting you.

(Upon re-reading your post, I see that I managed to misread ‘case-marker’ for ‘affix’, somehow… I thought you were setting case-markers and adpositions up as a binary opposition, as was the case for that Hungarian paper I mentioned.)

[jal]

As for the original question regarding 21 cases: as someone else also wrote, you need to group them. Which are purely grammatical (nom/acc/dat), which are locative, which are something else. And for the locative cases, how do they group together (stative/active or the mentioned three pairs, etc.).

As for the discussion when is something a case, when is something not, afaik, there's general linguistic agreement that cases are always phonologically and syntactically bound to the word they are modifying. This rules out clitics (which are bound phonologically but not syntacticaly) and prepositions (which are neither).


JAL

[bradrn]

As for the original question regarding 21 cases: as someone else also wrote, you need to group them.

I wouldn’t quite say ‘need’ here — rather, they may want to group cases. Plenty of languages get along just fine with no coherent organisation to their cases (although then again most languages don’t have 21 of them!). Still, it’s a useful thing to think about, as I mentioned earlier.

[jal]

I wouldn’t quite say ‘need’ here — rather, they may want to group cases. Plenty of languages get along just fine with no coherent organisation to their cases (although then again most languages don’t have 21 of them!). Still, it’s a useful thing to think about, as I mentioned earlier.

Yeah, "need" is a bit strong, but I'd advise it for sure :).


JAL

[Jonlang]

I appreciate everyone's feedback. This post may address some of the points raised.

The 22 cases will be grouped thus (though the order within each group is arbitrary):

Grammatical

Nominative
Dative
Accusative
Partitive
Genitive
Vocative

Locative - Internal

Inessive
Elative
Illative
Intrative

Locative - External

Adessive
Ablative
Allative
Superessive
Subessive

Existential

Translative
Essive
Exessive

Marginal

Instrumental
Comitative
Abessive
Prolative

Some points or ideas I have noted down so far:

1. I really like the Finnish use of the accusative and partitive for dealing with telicity. The accusative marks completeness/whole and the partitive shows incompleteness/partial.

2. In the colloquial register the translative and the excessive will probably fall out of use and their functions be taken up by the illative and elative, respectively. The translative and exessive will remain the literary register.

3. Likewise, the instrumental, comitative, and the abessive will fall out of use in the colloquial register. The instrumental will be lost and its function will move to the adessive. The comitative and abessive will be taken over by prepositions.

4. The vocative will erode away in the colloquial language and become identical to the nominative.

5. The prolative will be replaced by a preposition in the colloquial language.

Other than their basic functions one would expect from each case, I have not yet decided what else certain cases would be used for - however I do think I'll be using the partitive with numerals. Where the colloquial language has lost cases to prepositions I think one of the Grammatical cases (probably the genitive) will also become used as a prepositional case.

Progress with this is likely to be slow, but this is what I'm planning so far.

[evmdbm]

Upon re-reading your post, I see that I managed to misread ‘case-marker’ for ‘affix’, somehow… I thought you were setting case-markers and adpositions up as a binary opposition, as was the case for that Hungarian paper I mentioned.)

Is it this one? Afraid system won't let me attach a pdf.

http://repository.essex.ac.uk/399/1/Comrie-Fest.pdf