Re: Adunaic case system

Patrick Littell ikri':

> Off the top of my
> head, Russian distinguishes between the possessive and the genitive in
> pronouns -- the genitive series is only rarely used.
That's only partially true. Russian (and Ukrainian) genetive in general may
denote possession: _kniga uchenika_ 'a pupil's book' (lit. book pupil-GEN).
Personal pronouns in genetive almost never denote possession. For this
purpose one should use possessive pronouns, that behave like adjectives,
agreeing in number, gender and cases with the noun they modify:
_moj dom_ (POSS.1SN-M.SN.NOM house.[M]) 'my house'
_mojemu domu_ (POSS.1SN-M.SN.DAT house-DAT) 'to my house'
_moja mashina_ (POSS.1SN-F.SN.NOM car.[F]) 'my car'
_mojo pole_ (POSS.1SN-N.SN.NOM field.[N]) 'my field'
_moimi rukami_ (POSS.1SN-PL.INSTR hand-PL.INSTR) 'with my hands' (no gender
distinction in pl).

But genetive has other usages too. For example it is demanded after certain
prepositions. In this case we would use genetive even with a personal
pronoun:
_u otca_ (at father-GEN) : _u men;a_ (at 1SN.GEN)
_dl;a druga_ (for friend-GEN) : _dl;a teb;a_ (for 2SN.GEN).

And Russian genetive is also ambiguous wrt subjective/objective distinction,
but subj. function is dominant (in contrast to Latin, according to Ray
Brown): _l;ubov; otca_ (love father-GEN) may mean both 'father's love' and
'love of father', but we would expect the latter to be more often expressed
periphrasticly as _l;ubov; k otcu_ (love to father-DAT).

-- Yitzik

P.S. If you are using Gmail, as I see from <puchitao@...>, don't
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