CasesystQual: Case marking is qualitatively asymmetrical; the differing groups display such a degree of divergence that cases within each system cannot be compared and thereby form incommensurable paradigms.
case | noun (’pot’) | personal pronoun (’he/she/it’) |
Nom. | pūt | taw |
Loc. | pūt-t | - |
Lat. | pūt-n | - |
Abl. | pūt-nǝl | tawe-nǝl |
Transl. | pūt-yγ | - |
Instr. | pūt-ǝl | - |
Acc. | - | tawe |
Dat. | - | tawe-n |
Com.-Instr. | - | tawe-tǝl |
[based on Kálmán (1976)]
Case-marking is substantially different for nouns and pronouns in Northern Mansi (Kálmán 1976, Riese 2001). While nouns have only one grammatical and five oblique cases, personal pronouns can express three grammatical and two oblique cases. The other cases, which cannot be expressed by attaching a morpheme to the end of nouns or pronouns, are expressed with postpositions.