Re: THEORY: two questions

At 18:45 27/03/00 -0700, you wrote:
>
>It was my impression that the terms also applied to grammatical
>categories besides just verbs -- that is, prepositional phrases,
>possessive constructions, and noun phrases can be classified as
>head-marking or dependent-marking as well.  Welsh's inflecting
>prepositions would be a good example of head-marking in a prepositional
>phrase:
>
>        arna  i;  arno   fo;   arni   hi
>        on-1s me  on-3sm him;  on-3sf her
>
That doesn't surprise me. Prepositions in Welsh are of verbal origin aren't
they? In this case, and because the language is mostly VSO (IIRC), it's not
surprising to have inflecting prepositions. My personal language Chasmäöcho
works the same, with nearly every verb that can be used as a preposition,
retaining part of the conjugation.

>
>I'd also probably have it for nouns with relative clauses:
>
>        dae enin geda-i     sao      sen te fes
>        I   like cheese-DEP that-nom be  on table
>        I like the cheese that's on the table.
>
>Or something like that.  (Comments on this?  Can anyone off-hand think
>of other natlangs/conlangs that work this way?)
>
Chasmäöcho again :) . It uses a construct state for possessives, but this
construct state is also used with nouns completed by a relative subclause,
and even verbs have a so-called "construct stem" used by the verb of a
clause completed by a subclause.

On the other hand, adjectives (at least two of the three classes of
adjectives) agree with the noun they complete (in gender or construction,
depending on the class). So even Chasmäöcho isn't "pure" in this respect
:))) .

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)