Cases and language development (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

Cases and language development
Tags: Caucasian languages \| Grammar
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Alanjazz
Triglot
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United States
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Portuguese

Message 1 of 4

13 December 2011 at 3:34am | IP Logged

Not being a linguist, but more a language lover, I would like to know more about about development of cases in
languages.

I was reading the English-language Wikipedia article on the vulnerable Lezgian language, spoken in Dagestan
(Eastern Caucasus region.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lezgian_language

There are 4 grammatical cases and nothing less than 14 locative cases in this language. It got me thinking
the (possibly stupid) question - how do languages with so many cases come about? How can a language have so
many cases with each of them retaining some kind of explicitly knowable function? I ask this question in terms of
language development. Of course, it is as context-sensitive as anything. It just seems improbable to me that a
language would develop this way and I'd love any insights as to how or why it happens.

As a former German student, and current beginner in Russian, I have a basic feel for why cases are important and
how they work in a language. But 18 cases seems extreme - how do languages come to be like this?

Thank you!
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Chung
Diglot
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

Message 2 of 4

13 December 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged

See the following discussion for the very same question posted on LINGUIST List in 1994.

The summary of the discussion is as follows:

Griffiths, William J. “Origin of Case systems” in LINGUIST List 5.525, May 7, 1994 wrote:

In response to that part of my query dealing with shifts from analytic -> analytic and vice versa, it was brought to my attention that the issue of grammatical shift had already been addressed on LINGUIST (LINGUIST List: Vol-4-256 Sum: Grammar Shifts). On the origin of cases, it seems clear that and there is the most evidence for case systems arising from adpositions which become grammaticized--and to a lesser extent, adverbs and independent words. In the excerpts and the list of recommended works that follow, the origin of case endings in Turkish, Finno-Ugric languages, Proto Indo-European, Manda, Dravidian languages, Common Slavic, and Sino-Tibetan languages is discussed

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Марк
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Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*

Message 3 of 4

13 December 2011 at 6:23pm | IP Logged

There are probably no prepositions.
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Alanjazz
Triglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4613 days ago
65 posts - 129 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Portuguese

Message 4 of 4

14 December 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged

Thank you, Chung and Марк. The article had some technical vocabulary that I would need to look up in it, but these
are great starting points for this question!

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