Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!oliveb!Glacier!decwrl!spar!michael From: michael@spar.UUCP (Not Bill Joy) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Hor.Hacking Finnish/Estonian/Hungarian/Turkish Message-ID: <642@spar.UUCP> Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 13:35:43 EST Article-I.D.: spar.642 Posted: Thu Nov 7 13:35:43 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 11-Nov-85 05:48:46 EST References: <522@tjalk.UUCP> <688@osu-eddie.UUCP> Reply-To: michael@max.UUCP (System Administrator) Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 20 >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? Lappish and, I believe, an AmerIndian language spoken by those who once occupied the San Francisco bay area have also been linked to the Finno-Ugric languages, BTW. -michael