6 Responses to “Position of Case Affixes”

1. Thomas Hart Chappell Says:
   February 23rd, 2010 at 11:43 pm

   http://wals.info/feature/combined?id1=28&id2=51
   What is meant by saying English, Fijian, French, and Spanish have case syncretism, when they have no case-affixes nor adpositional clitics?

2. Thomas Hart Chappell Says:
   February 23rd, 2010 at 11:49 pm

   http://wals.info/feature/combined?id1=49&id2=51
   Why are Lavukaleve, Oneida, Zuni, Zulu, and Swahili mentioned as having no morphological cases in Feature 49 but as having case suffixes or case prefixes or mixed morphological case in Feature 51?

3. Thomas Hart Chappell Says:
   February 23rd, 2010 at 11:55 pm

   http://wals.info/feature/combined?id1=50&id2=51
   Why are Lavukaleve, Oneida, Zulu, and Swahili listed as having no morphological case-marking for feature 50 but case suffixes or case prefixes or mixed morphological case for feature 51?

4. Matthew Dryer Says:
   February 25th, 2010 at 1:55 am

   The morphemes in Oneida are locative suffixes that are often viewed as derivational suffixes that derives nouns denoting places rather than as case suffixes. The last syllable -ga in a number of place names in Iroquoian-speaking areas (such as Saratoga and Ticonderoga) is one of these suffixes, and when it occurs in names of places, it looks much more like a derivational affix than a case affix. Other uses are more case-like, though they could be still be viewed, perhaps, as derivational. Its properties are similar, in fact, to a suffix in Algonquian languages that also shows up in many place names in Algonquian-speaking areas (the -ing in Kapuskasing, the -ish in Antogonish), yet the author of Chapter 49 cites this suffix in Cree as an instance of Exclusively borderline case-marking. However, this suffix it is often described by Algonquianists in a way that makes it look more case-like than the analogous suffixes in Oneida, so this difference between Chap. 49 and Chap. 51 reflects the fact these locative suffixes in Oneida can be analysed in two different ways..

   As far as Zulu and Swahili are concerned, there is again room for debate as to whether the affixes that are treated as case affixes in Chap. 51 are really case. These are certain noun class prefixes, especially locative noun class prefixes, which in the morphological system in Bantu languages belong to a set of prefixes that mostly indicate just noun class and number but which, in at least some Bantu languages, are used in at least some contexts in a way very similar to the way in which locative case affixes are used in other languages. And in some Bantu languages, they code case-like meanings other than location, such as the prefix glossed ‘with’ in eg (2a) in Chap. 51 for Tonga.

   Lavukaleve has a single locative suffix, but I am not sure why the author of Chap. 49 didn’t code it as a language with Exclusively borderline case-marking.

   I code Zuni for Chap. 51 as case suffixing, with an single nonnull case that is used for primary objects and possessors modifying nouns, based on Nichols 1997. The author of Chap. 49 based his coding of Zuni based on Newman (1965).

5. Claire Bowern Says:
   June 6th, 2011 at 4:12 pm

   Regarding the inpositional clitics in Australia (e.g. Yawuru), I would argue that for several of those languages, they are actually affixes, where the case is marked once per phrase (initially in the phrase instead of finally, like in Japanese or Turkish). They show features of inflection rather than cliticization.

6. Martin Haspelmath Says:
   June 7th, 2011 at 6:20 pm

   Note that Dryer defines (adpositional) clitics as follows: “while they attach phonologically to some word, the word they attach to need not be a noun, and which word they attach to is determined syntactically”. Note that elements which are clitics in this sense may well “show features of inflection” in other respects. Thus there is no contradiction.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website