Case: case
| Values: | Abl | Acc | Com | Dat | Dis | Gen | Loc | Nom | Voc |
In Beja, Case is an inflectional feature of adpositions, determiners, particles and pronouns.
Case helps specify the role of the noun phrase in the sentence.
Abl: ablatif
Prototypical meaning: direction from some point.
Examples
- ajwa / adit whisi gajjarant / hoːj sallamaman ini // “ “I changed my voice, and I took it from him”, he said.”
Acc: accusative
Typically used when a noun or a personal pronoun is used as a complement for a predicate.
Examples
- uːn uː= tak / doːr han kan -aː =ji ki= i- ki / ti= takat hiːs =heːb =ajt // “this man had not even recognized me because he thought I was the woman.”
Com: comitive
The comitative case corresponds to English “together with …”
Examples
- naːn haːj jʔ -aː =t =oːk =t =u ? “What has brought you there ?”
Dat: dative
Dative marks indirect objects or recipients of verbs. Beja has a dative set of pronouns, but nouns are marked with the directional postposition.
Examples
- dhaːj jʔ -an =hoːb oː= tak / meːk dh# ## eːja =ajt oː= gaw / tam -ja eːn // “When I went to visit him, a man, a donkey, hum, came and ate his tent, they said.”
Gen: genitive
In Beja the genitive relation between a head noun and a dependent noun is marked by a suffix on the dependent noun.
Examples
- tak / ʔeːgirim // ʔajaːj tak -i iː- fi =t amsi iraːnaj rh -i / oː= kina / “There was an old man of my family and, gosh! I even saw him today.”
Loc: locative
In Beja, the locative is typically expressed by a enclitic postposition.
Examples
- beːn / i= ʃarg =iːb iː- fi =ajt // i= kaːm =iji “I was over there at Sharg”
Nom: nominative
Typically used when a noun or a personal pronoun is used as the subject of a clause. It is marked on determiners and pronouns in Beja.
Examples
- tak / kaːm =i / hoː kʷiɖ -ja i- ni // “A man said: “My camel disappeared.” “
- _uː= tak ɖaːb -iːni kaːm i- bari / “The man has a race camel”
Voc: vocative
In Beja the vocative is a suffix on nouns that marks the addressee.
Examples
- maːlk-i jhaː Malik!”
Case in other languages: [am] [apu] [arr] [bej] [bg] [cs] [el] [eme] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [fi] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [ka] [kmr] [koi] [kpv] [ky] [mdf] [myu] [myv] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj]