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When you have a phrase like "a picture of X" or "a drawing of X", which case does X go into in natlangs and conlangs which have cases?

It likely depends on the language, and I'm sure there's a huge amount of variety, but I'd go for genitive in the majority of cases.

Have a read about different cases on Wikipedia. The detailed stuff can be a bit overwhelming at times, but use the examples to help you understand it.

I can't agree more with that. A genitive definitely makes sense here, but languages that do have cases but don't have a genitive would use another case, obviously. It all depends on how the case system works.

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:A genitive definitely makes sense here, but languages that do have cases but don't have a genitive would use another case, obviously. It all depends on how the case system works.

This is what I was wondering. Ablative or partitive cases seem more sensible to me.

araceli wrote:This is what I was wondering. Ablative or partitive cases seem more sensible to me.

Cases that would get labelled as "ablative" or "partitive" would work as well as genitive. In my conlang, the ablative would be used. However...

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:It all depends on how the case system works.

...this is the key point. I could also see semblative, comparative, equative, essive, etc. You could have 3 languages that all have genitive, ablative, and partitive noun cases, and each one could use a different case in this situation.

Keep in mind that "of" is richly ambiguous, even in languages with the genitive. Some vague answers may be better served by the dative. Modern Greek lost the dative some time ago, turning everything into either the dative or accusative.

You can use your imagination a lot choosing the way you want to mark this relation. Another wild possibility would be nominative, as in

X picture = "a picture of X"

Or instead of using a specific case for this construction the language might derive an adjective out of X,

X-ADJ picture = "a picture of X"

I also have to say that I wouldn't be surprised if some language that doesn't have a genitive would still use its attributive possessive construction to form such phrases. Think for example using possessive suffixes here, so that

X picture-(possible.extra.morphology)-POSS.SG3 = "a picture of X"

I included the possible.extra.morphology part here since there probably would be pressure to develop some differentiation between this reading and the standard possessive reading

X picture-POSS.SG3 = "X's picture"

And then you have those Polynesian languages which use one possessive construction for "a picture depicting X" and another for "picture belonging to X".

No one has mentioned relative constructions (i.e. "a picture which depicts X") yet, but I guess those are implicit in gach's X-ADJ picture = "a picture of X" given that these are adjectival in function.

In German "ein Glas Apfelsaft", which case is Apfelsaft in?

linguoboy wrote:And then you have those Polynesian languages which use one possessive construction for "a picture depicting X" and another for "picture belonging to X".

Well there you go. This was just a bit quicker than what I expected

ObsequiousNewt wrote:In German "ein Glas Apfelsaft", which case is Apfelsaft in?

Apfelsaft doesn't have distinct case forms, so this isn't a good example.

I Googled "ein Glas warme Milch" (N/A) and "ein Glas warmer Milch" (G), and got plenty of hits for both but an order of magnitude more for the former (i.e. 293,000 vs 12,500). The citation from Die Zeit had "warme" while Spiegel had "warmer", so this can't be put down simply to register either.

linguoboy wrote:

ObsequiousNewt wrote:In German "ein Glas Apfelsaft", which case is Apfelsaft in?

Apfelsaft doesn't have distinct case forms, so this isn't a good example.
I Googled "ein Glas warme Milch" (N/A) and "ein Glas warmer Milch" (G), and got plenty of hits for both but an order of magnitude more for the former (i.e. 293,000 vs 12,500). The citation from Die Zeit had "warme" while Spiegel had "warmer", so this can't be put down simply to register either.

It depends on the role of the matrix NP. I would say "ein Glas frischer Apfelsaft (N) steht auf dem Tisch", but "Ich trinke ein Glas frischen Apfelsaft (A)" - so in both sentences "Apfelsaft" has the same case as "Glas". The genitive "ein Glas frischen Apfelsafts" is possible in both sentences as an alternative, but it sounds rather stilted. (With linguoboy's example "warme Milch", the N vs A forms would be identical BTW.)

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:I can't agree more with that. A genitive definitely makes sense here, but languages that do have cases but don't have a genitive would use another case, obviously. It all depends on how the case system works.

There are languages with case that do have a genitive that don't use the genitive there! Finnish, for instance, uses the elative ('out of'), in spite of having a genitive.

Miekko wrote:There are languages with case that do have a genitive that don't use the genitive there! Finnish, for instance, uses the elative ('out of'), in spite of having a genitive.

I would've guessed partitive. This is why I will never speak good Finnish!

linguoboy wrote:

Miekko wrote:There are languages with case that do have a genitive that don't use the genitive there! Finnish, for instance, uses the elative ('out of'), in spite of having a genitive.

I would've guessed partitive. This is why I will never speak good Finnish!

Yeah, from a purely kind of detached linguistic cogitation, I feel cheated that it isn't the partitive. I bet some Finnic lang does that, though.

There are actually a couple of different ways to construct that type of a phrase in Finnish depending of the role the phrase takes. In object and predicative roles you can use either elative or genitive, i.e. either as N Mod-ELA or Mod-GEN N.

Predicative:

Seinä-llä ol-i kuva koira-sta.
wall-ADE be-PST.SG3 picture dog-ELA
"There was a picture of a dog on the wall."

Seinä-llä ol-i koira-n kuva.
wall-ADE be-PST.SG3 dog-GEN picture
"There was a picture of a/the dog on the wall."

Object:

Nä-i-n seinä-llä kuva-n koira-sta.
see-PST-SG1 wall-ADE picture-ACC dog-ELA
"I saw a picture of a dog on the wall."

Nä-i-n seinä-llä koira-n kuva-n.
see-PST-SG1 wall-ADE dog-GEN picture-ACC
"I saw a picture of a/the dog on the wall."

The choice between the elative and genitive constructions isn't totally random but pinpointing any waterproof rules for selecting between them is actually quite hard. I would perhaps correlate the genitive construction a bit more with topical modifiers, which is why I provided a definite translation for them. The elative constructions can also be used with topical modifiers but I associate them myself more with longer distance topics that are retrieved from somewhere further back in the discourse.

The genitive construction can still be used as a subject but the elative construction sounds more natural to me when transformed into a more complex one that's based on a relative clause. In adverbial roles the basic elative construction is fully prohibited as it's itself based on the use of an adverbial modifier.

Subject:

? Kuva koira-sta näytt-i vanha-lta.
picture dog-ELA seem-PST.SG3 old-ABL
"The picture of the dog looked old."

Koira-sta ote-ttu kuva näytt-i vanha-lta.
dog-ELA take-PST.PASS.PART picture seem-PST.SG3 old-ABL
"The picture taken from the dog looked old."

Koira-n kuva näytt-i vanha-lta.
dog-GEN picture seem-PST.SG3 old-ABL
"The picture on the dog looked old."

Adverbial:

Kävel-i-n koira-sta ote-tu-n kuva-n ohi.
walk-PST-SG1 dog-ELA take-PST.PASS.PART-GEN picture-GEN past
"I walked past the picture taken from the dog."

Kävel-i-n koira-n kuva-n ohi.
walk-PST-SG1 dog-GEN picture-GEN past
"I walked past the picture of the dog."

araceli wrote:When you have a phrase like "a picture of X" or "a drawing of X", which case does X go into in natlangs and conlangs which have cases?

Russian, and Polish would all have the genitive here, independent of whether X designates the content of the owner of the picture. In both languages, the genitive could also designate the author ("a picture / drawing by X"). In German, the genitive can also be used for all three meanings, but I'd say the default meaning would be author or content, while ownership would be more likely expressed by ein Bild im Besitz von X or ein Bild, das X gehört "a picture owned by X".
Tautisca (my conlang) would have content and author in the genitive, owner in the dative.

*assuming it's OK to post other "What case is used for..." questions here*

If a language had a specific grammatical case to mark the agent in a passive sentence, what would be the name of that case? And in languages without a specific grammatical case for that function, what case is more likely to be used (depending, of course, of the number of cases the language has)? Russian, for example, uses the Instrumental. And if a language marks the agent in passive sentences with a non-specific adposition, what other functions would you expect that adposition to fulfill? Spanish uses the preposition "por", also used to mark cause or reason, among other functions; German uses "von", a preposition with many Genitive-like functions, but also equivalent to "from", etc.

Benturi wrote:*assuming it's OK to post other "What case is used for..." questions here*

If a language had a specific gramatical case to mark the agent in a passive sentence, what would be the name of that case? And in languages without a specific grammatical case for that function, what case is more likely to be used (depending, of course, of the number of cases the language has)? Russian, for example, uses the Instrumental. And if a language marks the agent in passive sentences with a non-specific adposition, what other functions would you expect that adposition to fulfill? Spanish uses the preposition "por", also used to mark cause or reason, among other functions; German uses "von", a preposition with many Genitive-like functions, but also equivalent to "from", etc.

Latin uses ab/ā, meaning "from". In Kíndai, I apparently used accusative for agent (not sure how realistic this is, though. Elmin doesn't have voice conjugation; rather, the most important word goes head-initial.) Finnish, for all its cases, apparently has no way to mark passive agent.

Benturi wrote:If a language had a specific gramatical case to mark the agent in a passive sentence, what would be the name of that case?

If indicating an agent in a passive voice is its only function (which I'd guess is doubtful), then ergative would probably serve as well as anything. You could maybe label them as genitive or ablative as well if those aren't otherwise used.

Benturi wrote:And in languages without a specific grammatical case for that function, what case is more likely to be used (depending, of course, of the number of cases the language has)? Russian, for example, uses the Instrumental.

I believe genitive and ablative cases are often used for reintroducing oblique agents into passive sentences. Instrumentals are not uncommon either.

ObsequiousNewt wrote:Latin uses ab/ā, meaning "from". In Kíndai, I apparently used accusative for agent (not sure how realistic this is, though. Elmin doesn't have voice conjugation; rather, the most important word goes head-initial.) Finnish, for all its cases, apparently has no way to mark passive agent.

Hän ol-i koira-n jahta-amana.
3SG be-PST dog-GEN chase-FUCK.THIS
He was chased by the dog.

I'll let someone else clear this up, I'm too tired... ZZZ

hwhatting wrote:

araceli wrote:When you have a phrase like "a picture of X" or "a drawing of X", which case does X go into in natlangs and conlangs which have cases?

Russian, and Polish would all have the genitive here, independent of whether X designates the content of the owner of the picture. In both languages, the genitive could also designate the author ("a picture / drawing by X"). In German, the genitive can also be used for all three meanings, but I'd say the default meaning would be author or content, while ownership would be more likely expressed by ein Bild im Besitz von X or ein Bild, das X gehört "a picture owned by X".
Tautisca (my conlang) would have content and author in the genitive, owner in the dative.

But it's not the cases that make this complicated. In Dutch the phrase "een foto van X" (no cases there!) can also have the three meanings specified: it can be a picture belonging to X, a picture where X is depicted, and it could mean that X made it. In the last meaning it would probably be a (well known) artist though, not anybody playing with a smartphone.

I think this is pretty rare, perhaps even non-existent outside Zulu and its closest relatives, but Zulu uses the copular form for agents of passives. In Zulu, if you want to use a noun phrase in copular sentences it preceded by a morpheme called the copular particle, that varies with amongst others the noun class. For instance, if you want to say I am a man you say ngi-y-indoda, where ngi is the 1st person singular subject agreement y- is the copular particle, and indoda means man. For agents of passives, you use the same form of the copular particle followed by the noun (or noun phrase) that forms the basis of the copular forms. So if you want to say "I was killed by a man" you say ngi-bulewe y-indoda 1sg-kill.perfect.passive cop-man.

araceli wrote:When you have a phrase like "a picture of X" or "a drawing of X", which case does X go into in natlangs and conlangs which have cases?

Spanish uses the same construction that English uses if we're talking about floating NPs like those. Una imagen de X, un dibujo de X. But it has something that might be of interest to you here, with regards to the particular use of una foto de 'a photo of X':

• http://mshang.ca/syntree/?i=%5BVP%20%5B ... atua%5D%5D
  Le tomé una foto a la estatua.
  le-tom-é un-a foto a la estatua
  3S.DAT-take-1S.AOR a-3SF photo[F] DAT the.3SF statue[F]
  'I took a photo of the statue.'
  ("le" is attached to the verb as a clitic since Spanish has compulsory verbal agreement with indirect dative object arguments.)
  
  http://mshang.ca/syntree/?i=%5BVP%20%5B ... D%5D%5D%5D
  Tomé una foto de la estatua.
  tomé un-a foto de la estatua
  take-1S.AOR a-3SF photo[F] of the.3SF statue[F]
  'I grabbed a photo of the statue.'

As you can see in the sentences above, the phrase 'to take a photo of something' in the sense of grabbing a camera, focusing and pressing the button to make a visual impression of something or somebody is actually translated with a construction involving a direct object and an indirect object. Literally, "to take something a photo", "to take a photo to something".

Using one NP as the direct object would mean something different: "to grab a photo of something", that is, extending one's arm to take a ready-made photo of something among a collection of other photos.

ObsequiousNewt wrote:Latin uses ab/ā, meaning "from". In Kíndai, I apparently used accusative for agent (not sure how realistic this is, though. Elmin doesn't have voice conjugation; rather, the most important word goes head-initial.) Finnish, for all its cases, apparently has no way to mark passive agent.

Classical Arabic truly seems not to have had a way to mark the agent of a passive voice verb. Modern Standard Arabic uses a prepositional phrase for that, من قبل min qabl 'from before' followed by the noun phrase, which El-Said Badawi et al. in Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar (2002) say has become common as an influence from Western languages, more specifically, translationese.

Qwynegold wrote:

ObsequiousNewt wrote:Latin uses ab/ā, meaning "from". In Kíndai, I apparently used accusative for agent (not sure how realistic this is, though. Elmin doesn't have voice conjugation; rather, the most important word goes head-initial.) Finnish, for all its cases, apparently has no way to mark passive agent.

Hän ol-i koira-n jahta-amana.
3SG be-PST dog-GEN chase-FUCK.THIS
He was chased by the dog.

I'll let someone else clear this up, I'm too tired... ZZZ

Judging from your gloss, it seems to simply use the genitive?

merijn wrote:So if you want to say "I was killed by a man" you say ngi-bulewe y-indoda 1sg-kill.perfect.passive cop-man.

So, literally, "I-was-killed is-man" (or perhaps "I-was-killed it's-man"?). I love this.

Qwynegold wrote:

ObsequiousNewt wrote:Latin uses ab/ā, meaning "from". In Kíndai, I apparently used accusative for agent (not sure how realistic this is, though. Elmin doesn't have voice conjugation; rather, the most important word goes head-initial.) Finnish, for all its cases, apparently has no way to mark passive agent.

Hän ol-i koira-n jahta-amana.
3SG be-PST dog-GEN chase-EXPL
He was chased by the dog.

I'll let someone else clear this up, I'm too tired... ZZZ

ftfy