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Kloiten · **Posted:** Thu 27 Aug 2009 7:11 pm

Then it's not Arabic.
Anyway, is everyone still okay with the genitive case staying the prepositional case? In all honesty, I'm still for the 20+ case system.
But that's impractical.

adelgado · Joined:Sat 18 Apr 2009 11:16 pm Posts:35

Kloiten wrote:

Then it's not Arabic.
Anyway, is everyone still okay with the genitive case staying the prepositional case? In all honesty, I'm still for the 20+ case system.
But that's impractical.

I'm OK with the genitive case being the prepositional case.

But anyways, how would that 20+ cases system be? Which cases would it include? Most of them would be locational cases, right?

I think we could have a rich case system for precise indications, and maybe a set of prepositions for simpler assertions: We'd have a word meaning "by the" that could act as the adessive, inessive, allative, illative, etc. And another for motion away from, or being off of something...

This chart[1] seems neat!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gr ... asic_cases

Aeetlrcreejl · Joined:Sat 18 Apr 2009 7:56 am Posts:72

Talib wrote:

I don't really know what feature of Arabic that could be. I think Mayatec was referring to how genitives can be formed in Arabic and other Semitic languages by juxtaposition, eg. bayt aṭ̣-ṭālib or house DEF.student means "the student's house." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idafa#Geni ... C4.81fa.29

Classical Arabic had a three-way case system, though, with -u as nom. sing, -i as gen. sing (and also used with prepositions), and -a for acc. sing.

Talib · Joined:Sun 19 Apr 2009 8:22 am Posts:768 Location: Canada

Aeetlrcreejl wrote:

Classical Arabic had a three-way case system, though, with -u as nom. sing, -i as gen. sing (and also used with prepositions), and -a for acc. sing.

Yeah I know. Do you mean that he was referring to the genitive used with prepositions? Arabic certainly had no prepositional case.

Kloiten · **Posted:** Fri 28 Aug 2009 8:39 pm

I was. The genitive is just used for prepositions sometimes; that's what I meant to say.

Dan_ad_nauseam · Joined:Sat 18 Apr 2009 5:25 am Posts:199

Kloiten wrote:

. . . .
Anyway, is everyone still okay with the genitive case staying the prepositional case? . . .
. . . .

If we're trying to do this organically, let's see what sticks.

adelgado · Joined:Sat 18 Apr 2009 11:16 pm Posts:35

Dan_ad_nauseam wrote:

Kloiten wrote:

. . . .
Anyway, is everyone still okay with the genitive case staying the prepositional case? . . .
. . . .

If we're trying to do this organically, let's see what sticks.

As much as we'd try to make this fully organic, we still need to agree or at least set the communication rules, otherwise we don't understand each others.

So, at least until people stop using it this way; which, of course, might very well happen, or not.