Semantic Case

Abstract

Many Australian languages express meanings relating events and participants through endings, 'semantic cases', which share properties with cases such as Ergative and Accusative that express grammatical relations. Four classes of meaning are discussed: location in space and time (Locative, Allative, Perlative, and Ablative/Elative cases), purpose (intent, desire, and avoidance), association (which includes possession (Genitive and Proprietive), association with a place, accompaniment (Comitative), Instrumental, and the absence of something (Privative)), and finally resemblance (Semblative or Similative). Also discussed is the relation between adpositions and semantic cases, their morphological properties (allomorphy and derivation), their syntactic properties including whether they can act as the main predicate of a clause, where case-markers appear inside nominal phrases, and how agreement and case-stacking work. Examples are provided from 27 Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan languages across the continent. Show more