Re: Genitives and Possessive Adjectives

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, the Romani genitive occupies a
special position in the case system.  On the one hand it attaches to the
genitive noun, figuring in paradigmatic relation to all other Layer II case
markers, while on the other hand it shows morphological agreement in gender, number,
and case with its head, which makes genitives look like adjectives."  (from
_Romani: A Linguistic Introduction_ by Yaron Matras.)

Examples:

le rakleski dej
the boy's mother

le raklesko dad
the boy's father

Doug

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