Possessive Frenchies (was: Re: No more plural? No, more plural!)

Carsten Becker wrote:

> FWIW, "miei", "nosso" and "sos" nevertheless remind me of
> the French "miens", "nôtre" and "siens": Les amis, les
> siens; Protège le bonne nom, le nôtre; de ses yeux, les
> siens. I don't know if you still use those forms, though.
> Remi? Max?
Yes, we still use these adjectives/pronouns/substantives in French but
nobody would say a sentence like yours. :-)

First, the adjectival use is rather obsolete:

/Ces terres sont nôtres./

Ces     terre-s  sont   nôtre-s
DEM.PL  land-PL  be.PL  ours.ADJ-PL

= These lands are ours.

Instead we would rather make a pronominal construction:

/Ces terres sont les nôtres./

Ces     terre-s  sont   les     nôtre-s
DEM.PL  land-PL  be.PL  DEF.PL  ours.PRON-PL

= **These lands are the ours.

But most of the time, these possessive pronouns are used with a
resumptive value:

/Ce sont ses amis, les siens./

Ce   sont   ses      ami-s
DEM  be.PL  POSS.PL  friend-PL

les     sien-s
DEF.PL  his.PRON-PL

= These are his friends. His!

Meaning "His friends, not mine".

I can get closer from your (mis-)construction and keep the same meaning
if I say:

/Ce sont les siens d'amis./

= As for whose friends they are, they are his.

(Very difficult to render this indirect construction in English!)

Other examples:

/Ce sont nos affaires, les nôtres !/

= This is our business. Ours!

Meaning "Our business, none of yours".

/Mets ton pull, je vais mettre le mien./

= Put your jumper on. I go and put mine too.

Where /le mien/ stands for "my jumper". The resumptive function applies
only to "jumper".

Ad nauseam! We couldn't live without these pronouns. (I leave the
substantive use aside because its relation to possession isn't obvious
despite we use the same words.)

Mais qu'est-ce qu'il dit ?
[me:'kEkidi:]

--
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Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
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