rarissimum 49: an extra-large case inventory, of above 20 cases
- Where found
- Hungarian (Ugric, Uralic) (?)
- Domain
- morphology: inflection
- Subdomain
- complexity
- Keywords
- case
- Type
- rarissimum
- Universals violated
- none
- Source
- Plank, Frans (1986). Paradigm size, morphological typology, and universal economy. Folia Linguistica 20: 29-48.
Hungarian has variously been analysed as having 16, 18, 21, 23, or 27 cases.
For those Daghestanian (North-East Caucasian) languages that have gone on record, indeed the Guinness Book of Records, as having far more cases – 47 in Tabasaran, 126 in Tsez – these high numbers are greatly exaggerated: they result from not more than a dozen cases proper being combined with locational and directional markers. See Comrie & Polinsky 1998 and Kibrik 2002.
Comrie, Bernard & Maria Polinsky (1998). The great Daghestanian case hoax. In Anna Siewierska & Jae Jung Song (eds.), Case, Typology, and Grammar, 95-114. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (2002). Nominal inflection galore: Daghestanian, with side glances at Europe and the world. In: Frans Plank (ed.), Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.