Telugu Case Inventory

[KG85] [McF18]

Telugu (Dravidian) has 5 core cases with agglutinative suffixes: NOM (∅), ACC (-ni), GEN (∅), DAT (-ki), and a locative postposition (-lō 'in'). [KG85] list these as the productive case/postposition forms for modern Telugu nominals.

Like Tamil and other Dravidian languages, Telugu shows a robust NOM-vs-oblique split in stem allomorphy: the nominative stem form differs from the form used in all nonnominative contexts ([McF18]). This split is predicted by the case containment hierarchy ([Cah09]), where all nonnominative cases include the ACC feature in their syntactic representation.

See Studies/Aitha2026.lean for the full analysis of Telugu stem allomorphy patterns.

def Telugu.Case.caseInventory : Finset Case

Telugu 5-case core inventory. ACC, GEN, DAT are inflectional suffixes within the prosodic word; LOC is realized by a postposition (-lō) in a separate prosodic word.

Equations

• Telugu.Case.caseInventory = {Case.nom, Case.acc, Case.gen, Case.dat, Case.loc}

theorem Telugu.Case.acc_nonnom : Case.acc.IsNonnominative

All nonnominative Telugu cases bear the ACC feature.

theorem Telugu.Case.gen_nonnom : Case.gen.IsNonnominative

theorem Telugu.Case.dat_nonnom : Case.dat.IsNonnominative

theorem Telugu.Case.loc_nonnom : Case.loc.IsNonnominative

theorem Telugu.Case.nom_not_nonnom : ¬Case.nom.IsNonnominative

theorem Telugu.Case.nom_vs_oblique_contiguous : { nom := 0, acc := 1, gen := 1, dat := 1 }.IsContiguous

Telugu's NOM-vs-oblique split is an ABB pattern — contiguous on the containment hierarchy, consistent with case-conditioned VI.

theorem Telugu.Case.telugu_subset_tamil : caseInventory ⊆ {Case.nom, Case.acc, Case.gen, Case.dat, Case.loc, Case.abl, Case.inst, Case.com}

Telugu and Tamil share the same core case spine on Blake's hierarchy. Both have NOM, ACC, GEN, DAT, LOC (Tamil additionally has ABL, INST, COM).