s_allard wrote:Chung wrote:...
s_allard, you'd probably find this summary about grammaticalization to be enlightening as well.
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So far we've been focused on degree of case-marking as a sign of how analytical or synthetic a language is. What about the verbs? Is conjugation less important than case-marking or are we doing something like hand-waving and just taking the elaborateness of conjugation as a given because of the bias arising from our native and target languages? It's easy as hell for me to express in Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian or even Hungarian what some western Europeans nit-pick as subjonctif (présent, imparfait, passé, plus-que-parfait?), Konjunktiv (I oder II?), or imperfect, perfect and past perfect. That insight would never have come to light if I had never ventured outside FIGS.
I will take the unsolicited recommendations for my further studies in linguistics under advisement. In the meantime, I want to return to the question of the OP which I have tried to address in a number of ways: Grammatical cases: Why are they considered so hard?
I was not addressing the issue of evolution of analysis to synthesis or vice versa. I have no first-hand knowledge of Bulgarian, Macedonian, Old Church Slavonic, Sorbian, Estonian, Finnish, Old Hungarian, Modern Hungarian, proto-Uralic, Obdorsk Khanty, Cambodian, Munda languages, Vietnamese, Proto-Austroasiatic, Korku and any others that I may have missed. I therefore won't comment on their case systems. I must also confess that I don't have time at the present moment to investigate them. So, I don't bother reading the examples.
My area of expertise and academic publication is French. I've learned English, some Spanish and the German that I am in the process of studying. My attempt to answer the OP's question is based on my knowledge of these languages and started with a basic observation. It seems that all observers and teachers of German agree that one of the most difficult parts, if not the most difficult part, of German grammar is the grammatical gender and the noun declension system that go together. There are other difficulties, of course, such as verb conjugation forms and usage.
Interestingly, I see something similar in the learning of French. The two biggest difficulties are the grammatical gender system and the verb conjugation forms and usage. Judging by my own experience in learning the German noun declensions and in teaching French, I believe that the reason the German noun case is so difficult is twofold: 1) duplication of morphological forms for different grammatical meanings and 2) the lack of meaning other than grammatical. In other words it is a complex system that is highly redundant and carries little useful meaning.
By the way I say the same thing of the French grammatical gender system and of the French subjunctive mood.
I do not attempt to state the same of Hungarian or Lituanian cases. Maybe they are simple and carry a lot of meaning. And consequently they are not that difficult to learn. I don't know.
All of this to say that I don't think that all cases systems are alike and all are difficult to learn. But I do notice that in the languages of Western Europe that I am most familiar with - and I admit, once again, my ignorance of other linguistic universes -, there has been considerable simplification of the various case systems. In German, this is to be found in various dialects and even in some aspects of standard German, i.e. the genitive controversy.
In all this, it is striking that English has eliminated both grammatical gender and grammatical cases. I have gone so far as to say that this has made English easier to learn than languages that retain these grammatical features. This has brought upon me endless grief and opprobrium as people in this thread have pointed out that the ease of learning of a language depends on one's language of origin. For example, it is quite possible that Hungarian speakers find German much easier than English because of the case system. But that will be a debate for another day.
All that said, I am curious to hear of case systems that are considered easy to learn. In all seriousness I think such a case system could exist.
Where to begin.... A couple of things:
1) Cute trick. First you generalize that simplification (or more specifically erosion of cases) is the norm, all based on the experience of four languages native to western Europe (when there are about 6000 worldwide), three of which are typologically similar (i.e. English, French, Spanish). You then ask for examples of European languages that have not shown this trend. When up against the fact that some Uralic languages have added to their count of cases over a few millenia (cf. compare Proto-Uralic with Hungarian), you then scurry off pleading ignorance, denying that this talk about eroding cases is in reality a special case of synthesis to analysis (if you've ever bothered to learn the fundamentals of linguistics, this would have been clear as day to you). To embarrass yourself more you silently move the goalposts by restating your expertise in teaching one of your native languages as if that can mask the dubious outcomes of your train of thought based on such a small sample. The truth is that you have to look outside (western) Europe for evidence of any language getting more "complicated" (if we use the degree of explicit case-marking as a proxy for "complexity", questionable as that is). When offered a monograph summarizing research in Austroasiatic languages, you try to deflect your way out of the fix by playing dumb some more about those languages and hinting that ignorance of them still makes your conclusion about inevitable case-erosion unassailable.
2) Based on your posts so far, I'd bet my pension that there's no such language with case-marking that's universally considered easy to learn - especially for you with your linguistic hard-wiring so rigidly stuck in the ways of English, French, and Spanish. German declension has clearly been a bother for you as seen in your posts (and that's considered one of the easier languages for a native speaker of English) and we'd very likely go through the same circus if you were learning Romanian (despite its Latin base, it can still drive your fellow Francophones nuts). tarvos would probably have to set you straight in that case as I've forgotten most of my Romanian.
I have to conclude that the only way for you to find out if there is a language with lots of case-marking that's easy to learn is to stop hiding in the FIGS-bubble and spend a good while studying only languages with extensive declension. No one's going to do the work for you when you're just going to flash your Anglo-Franco-Hispanic prejudice by talking şђïť about case-marking before you begin learning another language or not long after you begin as seen with your experience with German.
