Re: Antigenetive case?

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.

>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?


Julien.

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