Case Form
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 592.
Prefix Example Description of class
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um(u) um-fana 'boy' persons
li li-dvolo 'knee' body parts, fruit
s(i) si-tja 'plate' instruments
in in-ja 'dog' animals
bu bu-bi 'evil' abstract properties
pha pha-ndle 'outside' locations
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Case
Still another type of inflectional contrast associated with nouns in many languages involves case – a category that encodes information about the syntactic role (subject, direct object, and so on) of an NP. In Modern English, this information is expressed largely through word order and the use of prepositions.
17)
Bette composed a song on the bus.
In this sentence, the subject Bette occurs to the left of the verb and the direct object a song appears to the right, while the element expressing location (the bus) is preceded by the preposition on. In many languages, however, these distinctions are marked by inflectional affixes. As an illustration of this, consider the following set of related nominal forms (called a nominal paradigm or declension) for the Turkish word ev 'house'.
Table 5.22 Turkish case
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Nominative ev
Accusative ev-i
Dative ev-e
Genitive ev-in
Locative ev-de
Ablative ev-den
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In general, the nominative (Nom) case (which is not overtly marked in Turkish) indicates the subject of the sentence; the accusative (Ac) the direct object; the dative (Dat) the indirect object or recipient, and the genitive (Gen) the possessor. The locative (Loc) marks place or location and the ablative (Abl) marks direction away from. The following sentences illustrate the use of these forms.
18)
a. Adam ev-i Ahmed-e goster-di.
man-Nom house-Ac Ahmed-Dat showed
'The man showed the house to Ahmed'.
b. Ev -in rengi māvi.
house-Gen colour-Nom blue
'The house's colour is blue'.
c. Adam ev-de kaldi.
man-Nom house-Loc stayed
'The man stayed in the house'.
d. Adam ev-den čikti.
man-Nom house-Abl went
'The man went from the house'.
The contrasts represented in the Turkish case system are intermediate in complexity compared to languages like Finnish, which has fifteen distinct case categories, and languages like Rumanian, which has only two contrasts. It is sometimes suggested that nouns in Modern English exhibit a maximally simple two-way contrast between the genitive (marked by –'s) and all other grammatical functions.
In many languages, number, gender, and case contrasts are expressed by the same endings, as the following nominal paradigm for Russian shows.
Table 5.23Russian nominal paradigms
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Masculine nouns (dom 'house')
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Singular Plural
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Nominative dom dom-i
Genitive dom-a dom-ov
Accusative dom dom-i
Dative dom-u dom-am
Locative dom-e dom-ax
Instrumental dom-om dom-ami
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Feminine nouns (ulica 'street')
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Singular Plural
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Nominative ulic-a ulic-i
Genitive ulic-i ulic
Accusative ulic-u ulic-i
Dative ulic-e ulic-am
Locative ulic-e ulic-ax
Insrumental ulic-oy ulic-ami
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Neuter nouns (čuvstro 'sensation')
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Singular Plural
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Nominative čuvstv-o čuvstv-a
Genitive čuvstv-a čuvstv
Accusative čuvsv-o čuvstv-a
Dative čuvstv-u čuvstv-am
Locative čuvstv-e čuvstv-ax
Instrumental čuvstv-om čuvstv-ami
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In this paradigm, a single ending is used to indicate the noun's number, gender, and case. Thus -ov, for example, is used to indicate that the noun belongs to the masculine gender, that it is plural, and that it functions as a genitive. A morpheme that encodes more than one grammatical contrast is called a portmanteau morpheme.
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