Case: case
| Values: | Acc | Nom | Voc |
In Khoekhoe, Case is a feature of nominals: nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. It is also an inflectional feature of other parts of speech (adjectives, determiners) that agree with nominals when they follow them, and of numerals that function as nominals (e.g., ǀguis ge ge kō “one looked”). Also some nominal adverbs (like tsîn(a) “also”, on(a) “too”) and the nominalizer s (as particle or subordinate conjunction) have the Case feature (only Nom and Acc) because they take the case of the whole noun phrase.
Nom: direct
Used for subject person-gender-number clitics, clause subjects in the place of person-gender-number clitics, and with most postpositions.
Examples
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_Petrub ge oms ǃnâ go ǂgâ._ “Peter entered into the house.”
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Ob ge ǁnâuǃgâǃkhaiba sida ǃoa nē ǁhōba go ao. “Then the court tossed his matter to us.”
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Sida tsîn ge a ǀū. “We also don’t know.”
Acc: oblique
Used for direct and indirect objects, clause subjects in clauses with separate subject person-gender-number clitic, and with some postpositions. The oblique case is usually marked with the suffix -a, except for dedicated pronominal objects.
Examples
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ǁîs ge ǁîra ǀaena ra mā. “She bundles firewood for them.”
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ǁGawaǁae te re. “Excuse me.”
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Ob ge ǁnâuǃgâǃkhaiba sida ǃoa nē ǁhōba go ao “Then the court tossed this matter to us.”
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ǁAmaxūǁgâuga ǃoa ta nî ī …. “I got to the store…”
Voc: vocative
The vocative case is a special form of nouns used to address someone. It is marked with the -e suffix.
Examples
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ǃGôahesatse, nēpa i ge ǃgomsiba hâ. “Sir, there is a difficulty.”
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Abotse, ǀûba te! “God, forgive me!”
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] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [uz] [xcl]