From: JOHN BERRY
Message: 20675
Date: 2003-04-02
Without taking sides on the creole/non-creole issue, and bearing in mind that my knowledge of Japanese is 20 years old:
Nominative: -wa, -ga
Accusative: -o, -ga (direct object of verb "to be" (arimasu)
Genitive: -no
Dative (or essive): -ni, or -te (they do it FOR me)
Ablative: -de or -e
Locative: -ni (at, or in) (literary form -ni te)
or -e (to a place)(similar to Finnish essive?)
Instrumental: -de
The uses of -ni, -de, -te, and -e are complicated and do not correspond exactly to dative, ablative, locative, etc.
Others: for the use of X = X-yo
intended for X = X-muke
In general, Japanese grammar regards these post-positions as particles, under the influence of Chinese grammarians. They could just as well be regarded as case endings, and in that case, there are enough of them to make a Finn very happy!
John
>What are the common nom, acc, gen, dat, abl, loc, instr endings?Japanese doesn't retain the Altaic case system, that's clear. In this