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

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)

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