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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!osu-eddie!zwicky
From: zwicky@osu-eddie.UUCP (Elizabeth D. Zwicky)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Hor.Hacking Finnish/Estonian/Hungarian/Turkish
Message-ID: <803@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Nov-85 16:51:49 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.803
Posted: Thu Nov 14 16:51:49 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Nov-85 05:37:32 EST
References: <522@tjalk.UUCP> <688@osu-eddie.UUCP> <642@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: zwicky@osu-eddie.UUCP (Elizabeth D. Zwicky)
Organization: Ohio State Univ., CIS Dept., Cols, Oh.
Lines: 27

In article <642@spar.UUCP> michael@max.UUCP (System Administrator) writes:
>>It [Finnish] also has 16 cases, give or take; 2 are almost entirely poetic. 
>>Telling it by a lack of clusters is misleading though, because it
>>has clusters medially, just not initially or finally. (The rule is
>>that only a single consonant can occur next to a boundary; within a 
>>word clusters can occur where the syllable boundary falls between
>>the consonants).  -Elizabeth D. Zwicky
>
>    I am familiar with the case systems of many IndoEuropean languages
>    (8 seems to be the maximum), but 16 cases seems most outrageous!
>    If somebody has the time, I would be most interested to understand
>    how these cases are used. Do the other languages whose relatedness
>    to Finnish is established {Estonian, Hungarian} or suspected 
>    {Turkish, Mongolian, Korean} have case inflectional systems their
>    bear any resemblance? 
>    

I don't know about the rest of them, but Estonian also has 16 cases.
A Finnish linguist of my acquaintance has hypothesized (partly
in jest) that all languages have cases in numbers that are powers
of two, so that if you were going to have more than 8, you had to have
16. Estonian also has three possible lengths for vowels and
consonants, as opposed to two, (Finnish has two, short and long;
Estonian has short, long, and overlong) making it even more terrifying
for English speakers.

	-Elizabeth D. Zwicky