[Lingtyp] "Super", "superlocative" or 'top' cases outside the Caucasus and Uralic?

[Jess Tauber]

Yahgan (a newly extinct genetic isolate from Tierra del Fuego) has a form
wa:gun (colon : marks tenseness of the vowel preceding it) meaning 'above,
on top (of)' but it isn't a superlocative per se, but still largely
lexical. In fact the termination -vn (v being any vowel influenced by the
root vowel) itself is the generic spatiotemporal locative case mark. Yahgan
has/had an extensive differential case-marking system, but was weak on
differentiating locatives. Wa:gun appears to have still been
grammaticalizing at the time of its recording. vkvhr-wa:gun 'on top of the
house' (v here is schwa, and hr a voiceless alveolar trill) versus
vkvhr-killu: 'under the house'. tu:lar'ua:gun 'on top of the mountain'
(tu:lara 'mountain', tu:laran 'on/at the mountain', ta:sh'u:agun 'on top of
the head' (ta:sha 'head, ta:shan 'on/at the head). 'In' was yvn, containing
ya- 'mouth, leading end/edge (often with an opening)' plus -vn general
locative. It was also not completely grammaticalized, and appeared
unsuffixed to its referent.

Jess Tauber.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 7:09 PM Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at oulu.fi>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>
>
> More than a year ago, in the midst of another discussion, I asked about
> something that was never explicitly confirmed or refuted, and I would now
> like to repeat my question (archived at
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/2021-March/008683.html
> ):
>
>
>
> – – While many "Super", "superlocative" or 'top' cases can indeed be
> found in Uralic and in the languages of Caucasus (Ossetic (Indo-European)
> included), are there any other corners of the world with such specialized
> cases? In other words, I'm looking for morphological case distinctions as
> seen in the following Finnish word pairs:
>
>
>
> lipasto-ssa 'in the drawer' vs. lipasto-lla 'on the drawer'
>
> tule-ssa 'in the fire' vs. tule-lla 'on the fire'
>
> mere-ssä 'in the sea' vs. mere-llä 'on the sea'
>
>
>
> I'd be happy to locate similar morphological distinctions outside the
> Uralic family and the Causasus region.
>
>
> (Edit: Frankly, at the time of correcting the proofs of a paper, I'd be
> happy not to locate such cases elsewhere, but the truth must win out.)
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
>
> Jussi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20220707/916b1a0d/attachment.htm>