Re: Antigenetive case?

In a message dated 8/9/02 10:02:12 AM, eychenne.j@WANADOO.FR writes:

>> En réponse à baelrogue <snoopa@...>:
>> I am a native Hebrew speaker, so I am naturally not supposed to know
>> this, but lesson one in Philology is that the alleged "contrust
>> case" in Hebrew is performed by simply placing the "owned" before
>> the "owner" and the "owner" is definite-articled.
>> There is no genitive case in Hebrew.
>
>> Sûs = Horse, nominative paradigm. Mélekh = King, nominative paradigm.
>>
>> Sûs haMélekh = the King's horse OR horse of the king.
>
>But is this really what Joe was meaning? Here the ownee isn't marked while
>the owner is : it's just another form of indicating possession on the owner
>(compair hebrew <sûs *ha*Mélekh> vs latin <equus reg*is*>), but it seems
>to me that Joe was looking for examples where the ownee is marked. And
>in this example <sûs> has no morphological marking.
The possession isn't really indicated on the owner here. ha- is simply the
definite article, which could also be left off, to get the meaning "a king's
horse." What indicates the possession is the juxtaposition of the two items.
As Steg explained in another post, sometimes the first noun is marked an
sometimes it is not. In Modern Standard Arabic, things work about the same
way, except that the second item takes the genitive/oblique case marker -i,
and the first item takes whichever of the three case markers is appropriate
to the phrase's role in the sentence. As in Hebrew, only the second item can
take the definite article, and final -a changes to -at, but I think that is
the only phonological change.

In Kar Marinam, there is a similar construction:
wesa-r kelik
branch-CONS tree
"the tree('s) branch"

This is about the only right branching that occurs in the language, I think,
and if the phrase on the right were extremely long, it would move over to the
left. As in Hebrew, there are sometimes phonological reductions on the
possessed noun. In addition, the beginning of the possessor noun often
mutates.

Both of the nouns above are inanimate. Animate nouns are a bit too
free-spirited to be subjected to something like a construct case, so if they
are possessed, they are left untouched, and the possessor precedes them and
takes the "focus" case, otherwise used for certain objects. That's how it
used to be anyway - the focus case marker soon came to take on a different
form (usually) in this position, and became a separate case, which I call the
Genitive.

gër-el (m)ifah (the m- is the result of a nasal "mutation" - actually a
remnant of the focus case)
(without accents: ger-el (m)ifah)
guest-GEN sister
"the guest's sister"

Actually, animate nouns can take the construct case. When an animate noun is
an agent of a verb, but is really being controlled by someone or something
else, the construct is quite appropriate.

àli-dhrek wàsgemp gër-el (m)o-(h)ifah (h- is because each syllable must have
an onset)
(ali-dhrek wasgemp ger-el (m)o-(h)ifah
drink-FOC ordered guest-GEN AG-sister
"the guest's sister asked for a drink"

but
àli-dhrek wàsgemp o-(h)ifah-er gër
(ali-dhrek wasgemp o-(h)ifah-er ger)
drink-FOC ordered AG-sister-CONS guest
"the guest caused/made the sister order a drink"

Theoretically, if an inanimate noun were in the positition of "sister", it
would have to take the construct case in both sentences, and the meaning
would be ambiguous. But inanimate nouns can't be agents anyway, so the
problem never arises.

The genitive can also be used next to an inanimate noun in certain instances.
For example, I was trying to figure out how to say "phonology and writing
system of Kar Marinam". Basically, it would end up something like
"system(s)-of sound ('and' is implied) writing ? Kar Marinam". I used the
question mark because it is unclear how to mark the second possession.
([writing] of KM) is not appropriate, and neither is ([sound and writing] of
KM), because the real intended meaning is ([system (of sound and writing)] of
KM). So what happens is that even though "system" is inanimate, "sound and
writing" precedes it and takes the genitive marker. Then "system" is free to
form a construct noun phrase with "Kar Marinam".

gëmèsh le-(h)lúmi sany-r kär màrinam
(gemesh le-(h)lumi sany-r kar marinam)
sound GEN-writing system-CONS k.m.


Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian/home.html

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