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Re: Antigenetive case?

From:Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...>
Date:Monday, August 12, 2002, 15:56
At 9:37 AM +0200 8/12/02, julien eychenne wrote:
>On Fri, 9 Aug 2002 09:55:14 -0600 >Dirk Elzinga <Dirk_Elzinga@...> wrote: > >> >Yes, nawatl has this feature, even if it's not a genetive case but >> >rather a posessor prefix. For example, /kal-li/ is "house(s)" (root >> >-kal-), and if you want to say "my house", the form is /no-kal/. >> >Then, "the woman's house", it is /i:-kal siwa:t^l/ 'her house the >> >woman', where /i:/ is the 3rd person possessor suffix (and >> >/siwa:t^l/ is "the woman"). >> >> This really isn't the same thing at all. The possessive prefixes in >> Nahuatl are just that -- possessive prefixes. Pronouns of all >> varieties in Nahuatl are proclitic (there are independent pronouns, >> but they are transparently built on the stem -huatl/-huantin). >> >> The change in the shape of the possessed word is not due to case >> inflection, but to the presence of the absolutive suffix in the >> unpossessed form... > >But I didn't say it was a case. I just thought that nahuatl was a >good example of a language marking possession on the possessed and >not the possessor, but not especially by case inflection. I'm sorry >if my answer leads to such a misunderstanding, but I never meant >that absolutive suffix and or possessive prefix were cases. Anyway, >you're right to clarify something which is not.
Okay. The subject line says "Antigenetive [sic] case?" so I assumed you were showing Nahuatl as an example of such.
> >for cal- 'house', the suffix is -li; for cihua- >> 'woman' the suffix is -tl. > >I read that the underlying form was in both cases //tl// : */ltl/ >--> [ll] and the final [i] is an epenthetic vowel breaking an >unlegal *CC coda. So <calli> //kal+li// would morphologically be >//kal+tl//, just like //siwa:+tl//. Is it a correct analysis?
Exactly. There are other consonant-final stems which take -tli: tzontli 'head', teuctli 'lord', telpochtli 'young man', cuauhtli 'eagle', and octli 'pulque'. The /i/ is appended for precisely the reason you mention. Dirk -- Dirk Elzinga Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile. 'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.' - Old English Proverb