Case Survey

[Sequor]

I have so many short-lived projects. Vtayn (the name slightly changed) is one of the most developed ones.

Its clear cases are:
Intransitive case
Ergative
Accusative
Dative

Then there are two adjectival cases, which could be analysed as productive adjectival derivational suffixes as well. They still preserve the cases above.
Genitive
Comitative

Then there is a locative form, which is never used of animate nouns. It can be analysed as an adverbial derivation.
Locative

I really like this use of ambiguous cases, and have played with that myself too.

In one conlang I used:
- Direct (marking core arguments, basically a "nominative and accusative")
- Equative (marking the complement of the copula, and "as a X" in general including "I as a child used to do that", "I painted the wall green, "I named them (as) the leaders")
- Genitive
- Instrumental (limited to inanimate nouns and commonly idiomatic, could rather be analyzed as a derivational suffix for adverbs of manner, e.g. balance-INST 'equally', pain-INST 'painfully, regretfully')

The inspiration for the instrumental was standard Arabic, which uses a lot of "with [noun]" expressions where English would use adverbs, e.g. بسرعة bi-surʕa ("with speed") meaning 'fast, quickly'.


After happening to read a bit about fossilized morphology in expressions in Chaucer's English and things like the fossilized German singular dative -e in zu Hause 'at home' or im Grunde 'basically', the use of the marginal Punjabi ablative (which appears distinctly only in the singular! no plural) existing in alternation with the oblique + a postposition, similarly the formal-sounding genitive in German vs. von + dative, and the marginal Latin locative, in another conlang I tried playing with fossilized and marginal cases as well.

In one conlang I had:
Clear cases:
- Nominative
- Accusative (used with both direct and indirect objects, also an allative but only (regularly) for proper nouns and a very few common nouns like 'home')
- Prepositional
Secondary cases:
- Vocative (poetic)
- Perlative (poetic or legal)
- Locative (used only in a few proper and common nouns, like the names of a few major cities and 'in the countryside')
- Instrumental (fossilized limited to some noun + adjective expressions)

[Iyionaku]

Yélian has an asymmetrical case system. Pronouns have three cases - nominative, oblique, genitive - which are all formed with irregular forms. For instance, the first person singular: nominative re or òi (the latter being somewhat archaic), oblique rat or re (the latter form obsolete) and the genitive reo. Nouns have three cases as well, but different ones: nominative, genitive, enumerative (the latter being used with counting). The genitive is signified with a clitizied article, while the enumerative is a morphological case.
Example:

Spoiler:

a'broya - the man, nominative
o'broya - of the man, genitive
broya'i - X man, enumerative

Caelian has 28 cases for both pronouns and nouns, although one could analyze most of them as adverbial constructions with inpositions. They are:

Spoiler:

Nominative
Genitive
Accusative
Dative
Instrumental
Adessive
Locative (the adessive is somewhat nearby, while the locative is exactly at a place)
Allative
Ablative
Inessive
Illative
Elative
Superessive (onto sth.)
Sublative (on sth.)
Delative
Antative (in front of sth.)
Anteportive (moving in front of sth.)
Perlative
Benefactive
Comitative
Abessive
Prolative
Equative
Essive
Derivative (used for origins)
Possessive
Terminative
Vocative

The High German descendant Utseech has two cases, nominative and oblique, with the rather unique situation that in singular, the cases are not distinguished morphologically, but they are in plural. Examples:

Spoiler:

Nom/Acc:
De bân / De bân (The man)
De bäjna / de bäjnan (The men)

De nijd / de nijd (The child)
De nijd / de nijdech (The children)

De lock / De lock (The lock)
De locka / De lockan (The locks)

Bath'aso has nine cases: Ergative, Absolutive, Indirective (a catch-all for indirect objects and many prepositional objects), Genitive, Instrumental, Initiative, Durative, Terminative and Temporal (the latter being a de-facto Vocative case that's called temporal for legacy reasons). As Bath'aso is an agglutinative language, the case suffixes are unchangeable, save for the vowel harmony.

Spoiler:

tbro (the clock, absolutive)
tbro-z (the clock, ergative)
tbro-tuzh (the clock, indirective)
tbroto (of the clock)
tbrotuzt (with the clock)
tbrotosht (during the clock)
tbrotok (starting with the clock)
tbro-tnox (ending with the clock)
tbro-tzhupt (at the time of the clock; oh clock!)

And lastly, the Indo-European Paatherye has eight cases: Nominative, Accusative, Dative-Instrumental, Genitive, Allative, Ablative, Locative and Temporal. Paatherye is a fusional language, and the case suffixes differ heavily based on gender, number and the count of morae in the last syllable of a noun. Some cases trigger ablaut as well. The example noun is feminine, has ablaut and ends on a two-moraic syllable:

Spoiler:

canā (the woman, nominative)
canān (the woman, accusative)
ceynāti (of the woman)
canādur (the woman, dative)
mes ceynāyas (to the woman)
may ceynāday (away from the woman)
mu canāyu (at the woman)
cināșa! (Oh woman!)

[Sequor]

Nouns have three cases as well, but different ones: nominative, genitive, enumerative (the latter being used with counting).

Hey, I like that enumerative case. Do you happen to know of a natlang that has something like it by chance?

[Iyionaku]

Nouns have three cases as well, but different ones: nominative, genitive, enumerative (the latter being used with counting).

Hey, I like that enumerative case. Do you happen to know of a natlang that has something like it by chance?

Thank you! I have been asked about this case in the board before, and back then the hive mind told me that there is no instance of a case that works exactly like that (although there is no reason either why it shouldn't exist).

[Salmoneus]

My automatic thought would be that such a case could easily develop from the genitive. "Seven OF the apples" for "seven apples". The genitive could then be replaced - perhaps an 'of' preposition becomes cliticised - but the enumerative function, not being transparently possessive, is left with the old genitive, making it an enumerative case. This could also lead to fun, non-intuitive uses of the enumerative case with other relict non-possessive genitive constructions (like, say, objects of abstract nouns ("the idea OF food") or objects of containment ("a glass OF water").

[Creyeditor]

I was reminded of list intonation. Some languages with tonal morphology, such as Kinande, have a special tone pattern on words in lists (the other kind of enumeration ). Lists often involve numbers+nouns, in some cases even with special syntax. It's not the same, but maybe an inspiration to someone.

[Sequor]

I was reminded of list intonation. Some languages with tonal morphology, such as Kinande, have a special tone pattern on words in lists (the other kind of enumeration ). Lists often involve numbers+nouns, in some cases even with special syntax. It's not the same, but maybe an inspiration to someone.

I remember being surprised by the use of "[noun] + 啊 a" while listing items in Mandarin (where 啊 is otherwise usually a sentence-final particle with various affective meanings), used in every item. I could see that becoming a case...