Re: Genitives and Possessive Adjectives

On Wednesday, February 25, 2004, at 04:14 PM, Doug Dee wrote:

> In a message dated 2/25/2004 10:30:19 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> christopher.bates@NTLWORLD.COM writes:
>
>> Do you think it would be workable to have a language which derived
>> possessive adjectives instead of having a genitive? What I mean is...
>> the latin genitive for instance, does not agree in gender or case with
>> its noun, because it is a noun in itself with its own gender in the
>> genitive case. But instead, you could derive a possessive adjective
>> which did agree with its noun.
>
> Romani possessives work that way:
>
> "Like its cognate morphemes elsewhere in NIA,
'sright - it works like that in Hindi/Urdu and other related langs.

[snip]
The 'genitive' of Hindi 'mard' (man) is:
'mardkā' nom. sing. masc.
'mardke' oblique sing. masc.; plural masc. (all cases)
'madkī' feminine sing. & pl.

The same feature was found in ancient Luwian (in Asia Minor) where
possessives were adjectives formed from nouns with the endings -assis or
-assas (the final -s being nom. sing. ending IIRC).

So, not only is it workable in theory, it has been & still is workable in
practice  :)

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

Reply