From: J.Theodore.Schuerzinger@dartmouth.edu (J. Theodore Schuerzinger)
Newsgroups: alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc
Subject: Re: U` => Declension cases in Esperanto
Date: 11 Nov 92 17:18:24 GMT
 <1992Nov10.102313.15918@ccsun.strath.ac.uk> 
 <BxI51o.916@cck.coventry.ac.uk>  <1992Nov11.112117.11639@ugle.unit.no>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
X-Posted-From: InterNews1.0a5@newshost.dartmouth.edu

From what I've learned *so far* (and don't flame me for this),
Esperanto could be said to have AT MOST four cases.  Two, obviously,
are the nominative and the accusative.  The other two would be
prepositional cases -- one denoting motion into, and the other denoting
all other uses of prepositions.  The difference in the two
prepositional cases (assuming, of course, that they exist -- and this
is a big assumption) is shown in the following two sentences:

Mi promenas en la g^ardenon.

vs.

Mi promenas en la g^ardeno.

The first sentence shows motion into, while the second sentence shows
location in (or more precisely, motion within, as opposed to motion
into).  Many languages with cases have distinctions between motion and
location.  German, for example, has a whole class of prepositions that
take accusative if they refer to motion, and dative if they refer to
location (an, auf, hinter, in, neben, ueber, unter, vor, zwischen, for
you linguists on the net).  Finnish uses two cases for motion
into/onto, and two for location in/on.  Russian uses a 'locative' case
as well; motion in or to is denoted by the same preposition using the
accusative case (except of course with people, which uses yet another
set of prepositions and cases...).  So the thought of having different
cases for different uses of prepositions is not uncommon; perhaps
Zamenhof might have meant for these to be different cases (although I
don't know how Polish, which I believe was Dr. Zamenhof's native
language, handles this).

As for different cases having the same ending, so what?  German uses
the same case markers for different cases, for one.  The article 'die'
means 'the' for both the nominative and accusative feminine singular,
as well as the nominative and accusative plural.  'Der' means 'the' in
nominative masculine singular and dative feminine singular.  Go figure.
 The adjectival ending -en is used all over the place in German. 
Russian also repeats endings for cases.  The adjectival ending -oj is
used for feminine adjectives in four of the six cases.  The ending -om
is used for masculine and neuter nouns in the instumental case, and
masculine and neuter adjectives in the prepositional cases.  So using
the same case endings for different cases is not too uncommon either.

Perhaps it would be easier to learn Esperanto if it were described as
having four cases, but only two sets of endings.  That way, students of
Esperanto would be less likely to get confused when learning about
prepositions followed by an object in the nominative (?) case -- after
all, doesn't the nominative case specifically by name that it's the
subject?  Likewise, it might then be easier to understand the
differences between the uses of the prepositions in the two example
sentences I included.

Of course, that's just my two cents' worth.

--Ted Schuerzinger
email: .zed@Dartmouth.EDU
"I should have realized it would be bad vodka when all the label said
was 'Russian Vodka'."
Newsgroups: alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc