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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