From: schuyler@violin.cis.ohio-state.edu (Carlton Schuyler)
Subject: Re: Cases vs. Adverbs (was: -ze and -the in Attic Greek)
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 18:28:53 GMT

In article <p9pjg7c@lynx.unm.edu> lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY) writes:
>Leo Connolly writes:
>> I suggest another distinction (which I'm sure isn't original but can't
>> attribute at the moment).  Only morphemes which apply to most or all nouns
>> (not NPs) may be called case.  Those which apply only to a very limited
>> subset of nouns (e.g. only to certain place names) should be called
>> adverbs.
>
>A problem for this characterization is that there are morphemes which 
>don't fall into either category -- they attach to NP's (not N's) but are 
>not at all restricted to any subset.
>
>The example I know best is Dieguen~o (or 'Iipay Aa), a Yuman language of
>southern California and Baja California, but the same things applies to
>Yuman generally and, I believe, to some languages of unrelated families in
>South America, Oceania, and maybe W. Africa.
>
>In Dieguen~o, there are six morphological case suffixes:
>  Nominative    -c [...hachek -- i.e. vl. alveopalatal affricate)
>  Accusative    -[zero]
>  Comitative    -m
>  Ablative      -k
>  Locative      -i
>  Inessive/Ill. -Ly [vl. alveopalatal lateral]
>
>In relative clause constructions, for example, the suffix attaches not to
>the head noun but to the verb of the relative clause (the language is
>verb final and relatives are so-called "internally-headed"). Similarly, 
>NP's which are conjunctions of N's have only the final N suffixed with 
>the case marker indicating the role of the NP. I don't see what's odd
>about this at all -- it *is* the NP which is semantically filling an
>argument role, not an N. But maybe I missed something...

I wonder what the Hungarian "case" suffixes are, then?  They can all
be attached to any noun or adjective used as a noun, but occur only with
the last noun of a string of adjectives/nouns.

There are nine which are spacial (toward, at, and away from surfaces,
enclosed spaces, and points in space), plus a dative, instrumental,
and other ones which I don't know the name of ("for the sake
of"/"because of", "into"/"becoming").  Anyhow, the interesting thing
about these "cases" is that some vowel harmonize with their noun,
while the two last ones listed do not, so that they may even be
considered to be separate words, I suppose.  Example:

	az alma'e'rt   "because of / for the apple"
	a ko~nyveke'rt "because of / for the books"

	az alma'nak    "to/of the apple"
        a ko~nyveknek  "to/of the books"

        az asztalon    "on the table"
        a ko~nyveken   "on the books"
        az alma'n      "on the apple"

-(V)n is the case meaning "on the surface of", and -e'rt means
"because of / for", -nak/nek is the dative suffix (which also
functions as genitive sometimes; there is no true genitive in
Hungarian, hence the "/of").  Vowel harmony is front/back, and ~ is an
umlaut, so that o~ and u~ are as in German (i.e., front).  So as you
see, (V), if it is necessary, becomes o or e depending on backness or
frontness of the vowels in the preceding word; -nak or -nek is chosen
similarly, but -e'rt does not change.

I'm wondering is perhaps this is evidence that the -e'rt suffix is
somehow different from the rest of the case suffixes (the -ve' suffix,
meaning into/becoming, does the same thing as -e'rt, that is, does not
harmonize.)

By the way, although -e'rt and -ve' are the only two noun suffixes
which contain [e'], there are verb suffixes which contain [e'] which
_do_ harmonize ([e']'s back counterpart in these cases is [a']), so I
don't think that a phonological explanation suffices to explain the
failure to harmonize, unless we say that -e'rt and -ve' contain
[e'] underlyingly, while the verb suffixes contain [a'] or something
which becomes [a'] ...)

-Carl
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