Re: Genitives and Possessive Adjectives

Quoting Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>:

> 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. For an example I'll tack bits onto
> spanish since english doesn't actually have adjective agreement
> (forgetting about the occasional almost pair like blond and blonde).
> Suppose you could add the ending... I don't know... -oro to form a
> possessive adjective. Then you could have:
>
> el coche de Juan   =   el coche Juanoro
> las casas de Juan   =   las casas Juanoras
>
> etc. Would this be a workable alternative to having a genitive or
> something similar? The problem I suppose is that you couldn't apply
> adjectives to such a phase, unlike a genitive noun in a language like
> latin which can have its own adjectives. So you probably couldn't say
> "the big car's wheels", unless you have an augmentive affix... Anyway, I
> was wondering about that on the bus earlier today, so maybe someone else
> on the list has already considered it and has an opinion ready and waiting.
Well, you could make compounds - "big-car-ish wheels", or something like that.

Meghean genitives agree echo any accusative marker on the possessee - see
http://andjo.free.fr/conlang/meghean.html for more detail. This is known
as "Suffixaufnahme", and apparently happens in quite a few natlangs (Basque,
IIRC?). It's pretty similar to what you're suggesting.

The Professor never explained that particular issue to well, but the Quenya
possessive (not the genitive) is supposed to agree in number with the
possessee, as well as showing it's own number, yielding for forms in total -
eldava "elf's (sg), eldave "elf's (pl)", eldaiva "elves' (sg)",
eldaive "elves' (pl)" - and is said to have been and remained an adjective,
whatever that means; we don't know if it in turn could be modified by a
further adjective.

                                                             Andreas