Cases

Nominals in Qohenje carry a type of case marking to show the way in which they are involved with the verb. Unlike European languages, whose case-marking is determined by the verb, Qohenje case marks are meaningful, and are always a matter of choice. In European languages, cases are used to show gramatical roles like subjet and object, etc. In Qohenje, these roles are shown by word order (like they are in English). The Qohenje cases change the meaning of the sentence in important ways...

Qohenje has four cases:

Agentive (AG)

Marks the nominal as being consciously in control of the verbal by a deliberate act. The English sentence The man watched the trees would have the man translated by an AG nominal in Qohenje, because watching is a deliberate act on the part of the subject (the man).

Patientive (PT)

Marks the nominal as suffering or undergoing the relation in a passive manner. The patientive case implies either conscience of the relation, or else affectedness by it in some way that is externally visible. The Qohenje translation of The man saw the accident would have the man the PT case.

Accidental (AX)

Marks the nominal as playing no energetic role in the relation at all, neither aware of it, controlling it, nor affected by it. The objects of both the example sentences above (the trees and the accident) would be in the AX case in Qohenje.

Vocative (VO)

Used exclusively for calling out to someone. Only occurs on notionally AN nominals that are not in full sentences. Almost the equivalent of hey in "Hey Bill!"

 

The case morphemes are themselves relations at a finer level of organization, and hence they obey the pervasive LM-REL-TR order of the language (see Lexemes), occurring always between the nominal and the verbal - that is, after landmark nominals, and before trajector nominals. Each case morpheme has an affix and a clitic form, sometimes varying for LM / TR use, giving four possible forms for each morpheme.

The case morphemes also vary for animacy (see Lexemes). The animacy specification on the case mark is not an agreement phenomenon, and it does not have to parallel the inherent animacy of the lexeme. Crossing animacy categories produces a range of specific entailments that are listed below. The variation for animacy multiplies the inventory for each case by three, giving twelve possibilities.

The paradigm of case morphemes is as follows (note, all trajector morphemes are ligatures, while landmark morphemes are written in full.)

Trajector morphemes

ANIMATE

Patientive (PT)

Accidental (AX)

Agentive (AG)

Vocative (VO)

Prefix

Clitic

Prefix

Clitic

Prefix

Clitic

Prefix

Clitic

 

INANIMATE

Patientive (PT)

Accidental (AX)

(No Agentive)

(No Vocative)

Prefix

Clitic

Prefix

Clitic

 

ABSTRACT

Patientive (PT)

Accidental (AX)

Agentive (AG)

(No Vocative)

Prefix

Clitic

Prefix

Clitic

Prefix

Clitic

 

Landmark morphemes

ANIMATE

Patientive (PT)

Accidental (AX)

Agentive (AG)

Suffix

Clitic

Suffix

Clitic

Suffix

Clitic

 

INANIMATE

Patientive (PT)

Accidental (AX)

(No Agentive)

Suffix

Clitic

Suffix

Clitic

 

ABSTRACT

Patientive (PT)

Accidental (AX)

Agentive (AG)

Suffix

Clitic

Suffix

Clitic

Suffix

Clitic

These suffix forms cause vowel fusion when suffixed to a V-final stem, but drop their initial ‘ when suffixed to C-final stems.

 

 

 

These affixes/clitics are semantically full, and can be glossed as follows (it is good to think about them in this way, to better appreciate the real meaning of Qohenje constructions):

 

The entailments of crossing animacy specifications between the lexeme root and the case morpheme are as follows:

ANIMATE LEXEME	AN CASE	Concrete nominal - animate entity
	IN CASE	Concrete nominal - replica/representation of animate entity
	AB CASE	Abstract nominal - concept of animate entity
INANIMATE LEXEME	(AN CASE)	Inanimate lexemes cannot take animate case marks
	IN CASE	Concrete nominal - inanimate entity
	AB CASE	Abstract nominal - concept of inanimate entity
ABSTRACT LEXEME	AN CASE	Concrete agentive nominal - “X-ing one” / “X-er” (animate)
	IN CASE	Concrete instrumental nominal - “X-ing thing” / “X-er” (object)
	AB CASE	Abstract nominal - abstract entity

 

Some examples,

is marked as an Accidental Landmark ( ), indicating that it is construed nominally, and as an unaffected participant in the proposition. The lexeme is marked with a verbal auxiliary , showing that it is construed as the verbal core of the proposition, specifically in the remembered past (Pst), and asserted as a real event (Re), and the Trajector (TR) is Patientive (PT) indicating passive/involuntary action (seeing, as opposed to looking/watching).

Here, is marked as a Patientive LM ( ), indicating that it is construed nominally, and as an affected participant in the proposition. The lexeme is marked with the same verbal auxiliary as in the first example, and the TR is Agentive (AG) indicating active/voluntary action.

In this example, the LM is the lexeme , here marked as a nominal in an Inanimate (IN) AX case. The IN marking concretises the referent, giving the sense of killing thing or weapon.

In this last example, the LM is the lexeme , marked as an Animate (AN) nominal, hence seeing one, or seer. The lexeme is in the Aorist (AOR) aspect, because the state of being a seer is deemed permanent (in the NOR aspect, for instance, the sense would be "the one currently seeing (something)").