In my neck of the woods it's not uncommon for people to say "oh, no, I'm
not local, I'm from [3 miles away] and I only moved here 30 years ago".

Hatunen wrote:
"James Silverton" wrote:
John wrote:
"Alec Kojaev" wrote...
James Silverton wrote:

Just an ignorant question; does Latvian hold the record
for number of cases or are there languages with more?

Of those that I know of, Finnish has fifteen, Estonian
fourteen. There may be much more elaborate systems. A
cursory glance
at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases
makes me shudder.

Chantyal has 23 cases, which may well be the record.
Interestingly, the other Bodic languages (including closely
related Nar-Phi and Tamang) have only about five or six.
Classical Tibetan has seven.

There's not much sign of Finnish, Estonian, Chantyal or Tibetan
becoming world languages, I wonder why?

The Finns and Estonians failed in their attempt to establish an
empire.

Latvians once (1651-1652) laid claim to parts of Gambia and Tobago, but
that didn't turn out too well.

On Apr 24, 12:08 am, "Reinhold (Rey) Aman" <a...@sonic.net> wrote:
[Deleted <uk.people.parents>]

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

[...]

That particular occasion may have related to the cincture he was
wearing (a la bucking broncos in rodeos) to create the codpiece effect.

Codpieces are so gay!  Lots of them in San Francisco.

Nice to know the homophobe stares at gay men's crotches.

"Alec Kojaev" wrote...
John Atkinson wrote:
"Alec Kojaev" wrote...
James Silverton wrote:

Just an ignorant question; does Latvian hold the record for number
of cases or are there languages with more?

Of those that I know of, Finnish has fifteen, Estonian fourteen.
There may be much more elaborate systems. A cursory glance at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases> makes me
shudder.

Chantyal has 23 cases, which may well be the record. Interestingly,
the other Bodic languages (including closely related Nar-Phu and Tamang)
have only about five or six. Classical Tibetan has seven.

Hah! I see your 23 and raise you 42 (or 64, or even 126 by other
counts): Tsez (Dido) language, Northeast Caucasian family. Huge
number of locatives for various positions and directions, plus eight
syntactic cases.

I fold. The only NE Caucasian language I have a number for is Dargva,
which has a mere 18 locative cases (plus several syntactic cases).

Neither Chantyal nor Dido are included in the sample of 24 languages
with 10 or more cases listed in the World Atlas of Linguistic
Structures (Chap 49, http://wals.info/feature/49). But they have a
nice map showing the distribution of case numbers across the world.

There are models for language which formulate it as nothing more than
a great big collection of exceptions. Some exceptions occur frequently
in parallel than others and give the illusion of regularity.

[... T]he World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Chap 49,
http://wals.info/feature/49) [... l]ooks like a useful site
nevertheless, with lots of different stuff of the kind that tends to
come up here.. Quote: "WALS consists of 141 maps with accompanying
texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory size,
noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and "hand"/"arm"
polysemy)". Worth a browse!

John Atkinson skreiv:

[... T]he World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Chap 49,
http://wals.info/feature/49) [... l]ooks like a useful site
nevertheless, with lots of different stuff of the kind that tends to
come up here.. Quote: "WALS consists of 141 maps with accompanying
texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory size,
noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and "hand"/"arm"
polysemy)". Worth a browse!

Thanks. (Actually, I got the link yesterday from my occasional browse
of LanguageHat, but the exhaustion after finally tearing myself away
from the computer made me forget to bring it here.)

Looking on the little I'm familiar with, I'm a bit puzzled by some of
the details given for the Scandinavian languages:

[...]

Looking on the little I'm familiar with, I'm a bit puzzled by some of
the details given for the Scandinavian languages:

- _Front rounded vowels_ (<http://wals.info/feature/11?tg_format=map>):
Standard dialects of Norwegian and Swedish have the same vowels.

- _Tones_ (<http://wals.info/feature/13?tg_format=map>: Norwegian and
Swedish are equal in tonality.

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:57:22 +0200: Trond Engen
trondnet@engen.priv.no>: in sci.lang:

Looking on the little I'm familiar with, I'm a bit puzzled by some
of the details given for the Scandinavian languages:

[...]

You may be misinterpreting the map. Norwegian is mentioned, but
Swedish isn't. (Possibly, as you say, because it is so similar). The
white dot displayed in the middle of Sweden actually represent a
variant of Saami.

"Trond Engen" <trondnet@engen.priv.no> wrote...
John Atkinson skreiv:

[... T]he World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Chap 49,
http://wals.info/feature/49) [... l]ooks like a useful site
nevertheless, with lots of different stuff of the kind that tends to
come up here.. Quote: "WALS consists of 141 maps with accompanying
texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory size,
noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and "hand"/"arm"
polysemy)". Worth a browse!

Thanks. (Actually, I got the link yesterday from my occasional browse
of LanguageHat, but the exhaustion after finally tearing myself away
from the computer made me forget to bring it here.)

Looking on the little I'm familiar with, I'm a bit puzzled by some of
the details given for the Scandinavian languages:

[...]

Yeah. I haven't looked at much yet, but I've also picked up what I
reckon are errors. A couple of examples:

Feature 49 (unusual sounds): he claims Ngiyambaa (in central NSW) has
"th" (i.e., [T] or [D]). This surprised me, since no Australian
languages south of Cape York have any fricative phonemes at all. So I
checked with Tamsin Donaldson's big book on Ngiyambaa (she's the only
person who's studied this language, and the only author referenced by
WALS), and she seems pretty specific that the laminal stops <dh> and
dj> never become fricatives, even allophonically. Some dialects of
Bandjalang (NE NSW) have fricative allophones of stops between vowels
(like Spanish), but this is apparently not true of Ngiyambaa.

Case affixes (I forget the feature number). He includes in this
category languages with enclitics following the noun phrase. I would
think this would be true of Japanese, which (according to the map)
doesn't have them. (But I don't know enough about Japanese to insist on
this!)

All a bit surprising, since the authors of most of the chapters are the
real heavies of their fields, so you wouldn't expect them to make
careless errors.

John Atkinson skreiv:
"Trond Engen" <trondnet@engen.priv.no> wrote...
John Atkinson skreiv:

[... T]he World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Chap 49,
http://wals.info/feature/49) [... l]ooks like a useful site
nevertheless, with lots of different stuff of the kind that tends
to come up here.. Quote: "WALS consists of 141 maps with
accompanying texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory
size, noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and "hand"/"arm"
polysemy)". Worth a browse!

Thanks. (Actually, I got the link yesterday from my occasional
browse of LanguageHat, but the exhaustion after finally tearing
myself away from the computer made me forget to bring it here.)

Looking on the little I'm familiar with, I'm a bit puzzled by some
of the details given for the Scandinavian languages:

[...]

Yeah. I haven't looked at much yet, but I've also picked up what I
reckon are errors. A couple of examples:

Feature 49 (unusual sounds): he claims Ngiyambaa (in central NSW)
has "th" (i.e., [T] or [D]). This surprised me, since no Australian
languages south of Cape York have any fricative phonemes at all. So
I checked with Tamsin Donaldson's big book on Ngiyambaa (she's the
only person who's studied this language, and the only author
referenced by WALS), and she seems pretty specific that the laminal
stops <dh> and <dj> never become fricatives, even allophonically.
Some dialects of Bandjalang (NE NSW) have fricative allophones of
stops between vowels (like Spanish), but this is apparently not true
of Ngiyambaa.
[...]

All a bit surprising, since the authors of most of the chapters are
the real heavies of their fields, so you wouldn't expect them to make
careless errors.

True, but each author is responsible for a feature, not a language.
They can't possibly know each and every language intimately, so
essentially they'll have to browse the literature for descriptions of
thei
particular feature (or, being experts, have done so for years).
Reference grammars might differ in borderline cases, as I suggested,
or be misinterpreted for languages the experts don't know, as you seem
to have spotted.

"Trond Engen" <trondnet@engen.priv.no> wrote...
John Atkinson skreiv:
"Trond Engen" <trondnet@engen.priv.no> wrote...
John Atkinson skreiv:

[... T]he World Atlas of Linguistic Structures [...] Worth a
browse!

Looking on the little I'm familiar with, I'm a bit puzzled by some
of the details given for the Scandinavian languages:

Yeah. I haven't looked at much yet, but I've also picked up what I
reckon are errors. A couple of examples:

Feature 49 (unusual sounds): he claims Ngiyambaa (in central NSW)
has "th" (i.e., [T] or [D]). This surprised me, since no
Australian languages south of Cape York have any fricative phonemes
at all. So I checked with Tamsin Donaldson's big book on Ngiyambaa
(she's the only person who's studied this language, and the only
author referenced by WALS), and she seems pretty specific that the
laminal stops <dh> and <dj> never become fricatives, even
allophonically. Some dialects of Bandjalang (NE NSW) have fricative
allophones of stops between vowels (like Spanish), but this is
apparently not true of Ngiyambaa.
[...]

All a bit surprising, since the authors of most of the chapters are
the real heavies of their fields, so you wouldn't expect them to
make careless errors.

True, but each author is responsible for a feature, not a language.
They can't possibly know each and every language intimately, so
essentially they'll have to browse the literature for descriptions
of their particular feature (or, being experts, have done so for
years). Reference grammars might differ in borderline cases, as I
suggested, or be misinterpreted for languages the experts don't
know, as you seem to have spotted.

In the case of Ngiyambaa, there's only one reference grammar, the one
I have and the one WALS references. So, if the author actually read
it, he certainly "misinterpreted" what he read. My best guess is
that he saw the letters "dh" and jumped to the conclusion that it
meant the fricative /D/. Actually, it's standard notation in
Australian linguistics for the laminodental stop (some prefer "th"
instead). So, why didn't he make the same "misinterpretion" for the
other Australian languages in his sample?

I think "carelessness" is an more accurate description than
"misinterpretation" for what he did.

Hah! I see your 23 and raise you 42 (or 64, or even 126 by other
counts): Tsez (Dido) language, Northeast Caucasian family. Huge number of
locatives for various positions and directions, plus eight syntactic
cases.

John Atkinson skreiv:
"Trond Engen" <trondnet@engen.priv.no> wrote...
John Atkinson skreiv:
"Trond Engen" <trondnet@engen.priv.no> wrote...
John Atkinson skreiv:

[... T]he World Atlas of Linguistic Structures [...] Worth a
browse!

[...]

Feature 49 (unusual sounds): he claims Ngiyambaa (in central NSW)
has "th" (i.e., [T] or [D]).

And I wonder why 'th'-sounds are "uncommon consonants" while
(phonemic) dental laminals, or e.g. retroflex dentals, are not. I
suppose that's a choice made by the author.

But it's related to a choice made for the presentation of phonetics
in general. It would be fun to generate absence/presence maps for any
part (or combination of parts) of the united phonemic inventory in
stead of relying on the editor's choice of interesting features. The
latter is an obvious limitation for an atlas printed on expensive
paper, but it seems unnecessary for what's essentially an online
database. Maybe what we see is just the first step.

--
Trond Engen
- still positive