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THEORY: Case stacking; was: Re: THEORY: genitive vs. construct case/izafe

From:Julia "Schnecki" Simon <helicula@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 26, 2005, 11:49
Hello!

On 7/23/05, tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
> Hello, Joerg, Henrik, Julia, and others. > --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@W...> > wrote: > > Hallo! > > > > Henrik Theiling wrote: > > > > > [snip] > > > Assume the whole phrase is in case X, then you get: > > > > > > Modifier-GEN Modified-X == Modifier-X Modified-CONSTR > > > > > > [snip] > > > > Exactly. But more precisely, it is the construct _state_, because > > the modified noun can be, in languages with case systems such as > > Classical Arabic, of any case. > > It seems to me that "This is a Job for Case-Stacking!" > Are "genitive phrases" the most typical place to find case-stacking > in languages that allow case-stacking?
Quite possibly. The only natlang I know that has anything that could be called "case stacking" is Sumerian, and all the case-stacking examples I have (um, all the both of them; see below) involve at least one genitive. (Also, it seems logical; genitives [possessives, whatever they're called in a particular language] can be combined with each other -- and with non-genitive NPs -- much more easily than other cases. ;) Some Sumerian examples: é lugal-ak "the king's house" ("house king-of"); SeS lugal-ak "the king's brother ("brother king-of") -> é lugal-ak-a "in the king's house" ("house king-of-in") -> é SeS lugal-ak-ak-a "in the king's brother's house" ("house brother king-of-of-in") ... and presumably, even longer constructions of this type are possible. (Some vocabulary: _é_ "house", _lugal_ "king", _SeS_ "brother"; _-ak_ is the genitive, _-a_ the locative suffix. <S> is supposed to be s-with-hacek, which I can't type here.) (And I hope I haven't made any really silly mistakes in my Sumerian. It's been a long time... *sigh* So many languages, so little time.) Regards, Julia -- Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst _@" schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com "@_ si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil (M. Tullius Cicero)

Replies

Markus Miekk-oja <m13kk0@...>
Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>