Re: Antigenetive case?

Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> writes:


> En réponse à Joe <joe@...>:
>
> > Has anyone thought of a case which marks a genetive, but marks it on
> > the posessed, not the posessor? I'll make up an example --
>
> What you describe is usually called the "construct case" or "construct state"
> Note that in Maggel, like in many languages having a construct case (it's the
> case of the Semitic languages at least), the construct noun is always defined
> by the complement and thus never takes the article

The construct state in Senu Yivokuchi works like that
(I'm sure I first learned about the CS here in Conlang,
and this was one of the things mentioned). It produces
some problems, but not many. SYV leaves the root as is
for construct state, marks definiteness with a suffix,
and oblique cases with preffixes (the core cases are
zero-inflected), so you can have CS and case at the
same time. SYV does have a genitive case, though; I'm
trying to figure out when to use a genitive and when CS,
but mere association and alienable possession call for
the genitive, usually.

As for the "belonging" case, I'm finding the commitative
case useful for that. Even in English you can translate
"vir magno animo" as "a man WITH a great soul".


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/index.html
  ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
  has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
  bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
  not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
  of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
                   Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_