If case, and especially genitive, is marked (enclitically) at the end of NPs, then word order is mainly SOV, NP Postposition, Genitive Noun, Noun Adjective (Greenberg’s type 24).
Standardized
IF case, and especially genitive, is marked (enclitically) at the end of NPs, THEN word order is mainly SOV, NP Postposition, Genitive Noun, Noun Adjective (Greenberg’s type 24).
What is an issue here in the implicans is the right-edge-marking subtype of phrase-marking of case, as opposed to head-bound word-marking of case (as in flexive-type morphology). It might seem surprising that English is not considered a counterexample. But then Householder appears prepared to weaken the implicatum to “THEN (a) there are at least two cases and (b) the language is predominantly suffixing and (c) there are at least some subordinate clauses with V last or some NPs with adjective or other qualifier last” pg. 385. Householder also suspects a link with ergative alignment, on the strength of this implication (p. 386, rephrased): IF there is ergative alignment, THEN grammatical relations are either marked on the verb (agreement, cross-reference), with NPs being uninflected, or by case suffixes.
What is an issue here in the implicans is the right-edge-marking subtype of phrase-marking of case, as opposed to head-bound word-marking of case (as in flexive-type morphology). It might seem surprising that English is not considered a counterexample. But then Householder appears prepared to weaken the implicatum to “THEN (a) there are at least two cases and (b) the language is predominantly suffixing and (c) there are at least some subordinate clauses with V last or some NPs with adjective or other qualifier last” pg. 385. Householder also suspects a link with ergative alignment, on the strength of this implication (p. 386, rephrased): IF there is ergative alignment, THEN grammatical relations are either marked on the verb (agreement, cross-reference), with NPs being uninflected, or by case suffixes.