Re: Antigenetive case?

Shouldn't this go to the entire list? It was sent only to me... Anyway, I send
the reply to the whole list.

En réponse à baelrogue <snoopa@...>:

> --- In conlang@y..., Christophe Grandsire
>
> 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.
>
I know that, and I never pretended otherwise (indeed, I even said that many
languages with a construct state don't have cases). When I was talking of a
language with both case and construct state, I was talking about Classical
Arabic.

> Example:
>
> Sûs = Horse, nominative paradigm. Mélekh = King, nominative paradigm.
>
> Sûs haMélekh = the King's horse OR horse of the king.
>
But you forget that lots of nouns are modified (shortened) when completed by
another noun, or get a different ending (for instance, the plural -im is
replaced by -ei in the construct state, or so I've seen it written in a online
grammar of Hebbrew). This modification is what is called the "construct state".
Also, the possessor needn't have the article. You can have absolute
constructions (the name of the whole construction possessed+possessor) with an
indefinite possessor (at least the same online grammar said so, and it's true
also in Arabic).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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