Peter Clark's Introduction to Cases Whoa, that's a lot of intro! Well done. I had a few things come to mind while reading through it:
Lara gavorila Ivanu (Lara talked to Ivan) Ivanu gavorila Lara (To Ivan talked Lara)wished to say: 'Ivan talked to Lara' you would say: 'Ivan gavoril Larye' or 'Larye gavoril Ivan.' This is but one of the beautiful things about cases. Note that you could not do the same in English, a non-inflected language (for the most part--English does have case-like functions, but that's another story.) For example:Lara talked to Ivan means something completely different from Ivan talked to LaraMight not the gender-difference in the verb be confusing? When you're doing examples, it's probably best to be as clear-cut as you possibly can, with as few distractions as you can manage. Similarly, I'm not sure a dative example is what I'd start with, since English represents it specially with a preposition. After all, you CAN do this word-reordering in English: 'Ivan spoke to Lara.' 'To Lara Ivan spoke.' No problem. Where did you say anything about the 'to' having to stay anywhere? For English-speakers, an example like 'the man bites the dog' vs. 'the dog bites the man' probably is clearer.
Here too, do you really want to get into questions about passivity to explain transitive vs. intransitive? The second sentence is a passive sentence, where all sorts of things are different, case-wise and intuitively. Maybe stick with a plain, inarguably intransitive verb like 'sleep' or somehing (OK, OK, 'sleep' is transitive in Basque. So sue me).I hit the ball (transative sentence) NOM ACC The ball was hit (intransative sentence) NOMAnd here, if you want to treat this here (and you may have to, given the subject matter), I think you can't avoid dealing with middle-voice concepts. I often have to explain this sort ofthing on the Klingon list, the difference between 'The stick broke' and 'the stick broke the cup' (the former being closer to 'the stick was broken' than it is to the latter: it depends on what winds up in pieces). You need to make this sort of thing clearer, I think, or your readers are going to come away even less enlightened than when they started.The window broke (intransative) ACCBTW, the spelling is transitive/intransitive.
The dative case marks the indirect object of the sentance; in English this is usually handled by "to" or "for," as well as word order.This pretty much begs the question of what an indirect object is. What is its role in the sentence? Perhaps you could describe it a little, something like 'the object for whose "benefit" the action was done'? Nah, that isn't it. But "indirect object' is about as helpful as 'dative case' to someone who's reading this to find out what all this stuff means. You also need to run a spell-checker; it's 'sentence.'The genitive case, also known as the possessive case, is frequently used to express possession. English uses "'s" or "of" as the equivalent of the genitive case, as in "John's book" or "the book of John."Perhaps see/quote my post of a week or so ago about the (possible argument for the) qualitative distinction between genitive and other cases (i.e. most cases show how an object relates to the predication of the sentence as a whole. Genitive shows a relationship to a single other object, which in turn may fill a role in the sentence).Eto knuga Ivana That book.NOM Ivan.GEN (That is John's book)Indicates dependance on certain prepositions, such as 'on' or 'at'. For example, to say in Russian, 'The book is on the table,' you would say:Is the prepositional case peculiar to Russian? It might be worth mentioning the general relationship between cases and prepositions, that prepositions serve much the same purpose (showing how an object behaves within the predication of the sentence) and perhaps can be seen as a generalization of cases. It always seemed to me that prepositional case was there sort of as a catch-all. 'Well, the cases don't handle all relationships, of course, so we have prepositional phrases to cover what they miss. The prepositions govern objects, and they have to be in some case, right? So they'll be in this special one.'Once you get into that, you probably need to mention that other languages have prepositions giverning nouns in various other cases (ablative, accusative, etc), and maybe even the trick some langs use whereby when a preposition of location governs one case it's just location, but when it governs another case it means motion towards that location.
3. AllativeNeedless to say, many languages use one 'dative' to cover both meanings, etc. But maybe it isn't needless to say it.
Expresses "to" (don't confuse with dative; allative indicates direction, not the indirect object of the sentance.)d. Other CasesA reader may well start to wonder at this point why this isn't a verb, like it seems to be (The girl lacks a cat.) This may be worth exploring too.
This is the catch-all catagory for cases that are common, unusual, or just plain ecentric.1. Abessive (Privative)
Expresses 'lacking' or 'without.'Dob frietla Girl.NOM cat.ABE (The girl is cat-less, the girl is without a cat)2. Aversive, Evitative, CausalSort of like the way Sanskrit verbs of love take their objects in locative, and verbs of fear (in Hebrew too) have objects in ablative? I can see a reader needing help with this.
I like this case: it expresses what is to be feared and avoided.Dob kriyel fanramlomay Girl.NOM fear.PRES ghosts.AVE (The girl fears ghosts)3. Comitative (Sociative)
Expresses with whom an entity is located, usually used with animates. Often conflated with instrumental, but not always. An example of the difference might be good. ('I ate my soup with bread.' Three meaning actually. I might have used the bread to soak the soup up and thus used it as a tool, or just ate the soup together with the bread, or maybe the bread and I were sitting together at the table, both eating soup).Hope these comments help!
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Last updated: 8 October, 1997