Re: Questions on Inalienable Possession Prefixes

On Monday 04 November 2002 18:09, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 05:39:49PM -0800, Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:
> > I'm having some trouble with inalienable possession...
>
> [snip]
>
> > Now take the root -kú: which is usually  ja-kú 'hand'. With an
> > animate prefix, this would be ma-kú, 'worker, manual laborer'.
> > Or, -Né, 'face', which when animate becomes ma-Né 'person,
> > aquaintance' (as opposed to the more generic m-éla 'person').
> >
> > I've already decided to do alienable possession or association as
> > a suffix, and I would like inalienable possession to be a prefix
> > of some sort. I've tried it as a suffix and it hasn't worked for
> > me.
>
> Why hasn't it worked? What are the phonological/grammatical
> constraints in the language that prevents you from simply tacking
> it on to the end of the word?
No phonological constraints, really. It just hasn't *felt* right.
Also, the suffixes, being phonologically simple (-alae, -irie, -amae
among others) kinda disappeared when sounding them out in my head.

> > So, reading up on the subject, I've come up with two schemes,
> > neither of which is entirely satisfactory...
> >
> > Scheme A: Use the current reduced personal pronouns as prefixes
> > replacing ja-:
> > So instead of ja-kú 'hand', we could have le-kú, ri-kú, and a
> > small problem. It should be ma-kú for 3p. However, that would
> > conflict with the animate prefix. So, it could instead be ja-kú
> > or from a more obscure 3p pronoun sa-kú.
>
> Is there any reason you cannot have both prefixes present at the
> same time? E.g., le-ja-kú ?
>
> Another idea is to come up with different sets of prefixes
> indicating combinations of animate/inanimate and the various
> pronouns. E.g. (I'm just making this up, I don't know what's the
> phonology of your lang): animate   + 1p -> va-kú
>         inanimate + 2p -> ta-kú
> etc..
>
> So effectively, ja- becomes inanimate + unpossessed, ma- becomes
> animate + unpossessed, and then you can have a set of other
> prefixes for other combinations.
>
> > Scheme B: Use 1st & 2nd person prefixes cognate with the
> > demonstratives Tó (here by me) and xó (there by you):
> > Ta-kú, xa-kú, and ???, probably ja-kú, which would fit in with
> > the fact that the generic demonstrative is jáo, and is obviously
> > related to the inanimate prefix ja- and the 3rd person inanimate
> > pronoun ja. There is a third deictic demonstrative áke (there by
> > him/her/them), which could become a'-, as in ak-kú, but that
> > doesn't seem right to me, though the reduplicated consonant bit
> > shows up in other places in Kélen.
> >
> > I'm leaning towards Scheme B, though A with ja-kú is also
> > workable.
>
> [snip]
>
> I'm not sure I understand the constraints, phonological/grammatical
> or otherwise, that you are working under. Does this prefix have to
> be monosyllabic? If not, you could just accumulate prefixes as I
> suggested. Otherwise, you could coin new prefixes for
> animate/inanimate combinations. Or you could vary the vowel, etc..
> Without knowing about the rules and constraints of your lang, it is
> difficult to come up with concrete suggestions.
Actually, that could be scheme A2, using the syllable pa- which
denotes a whole/part relationship before the possessive:
pale-kú, pari-kú, etc.

Most of the noun roots are 1-2 syllables, with various agentive,
diminutive, augmentative, etc suffixes adding a syllable, sometimes
2. The prefixes are generally all monosyllabic, regardless of what
they are.

Since inalienable possession affixes are generally closer to the noun
root and generally phonologically simple, it seems to me that in
Kélen this means they should be monosyllabic prefixes with short
vowels.

Other constraints:
the form should probably be CV- where C can be:
p, t, s, c, k, w, T, x, j, h, m, n, ñ, N, l, r, lj, rj
and V can be:
i, e, a, o, u, ie, ae, ao

Also, generally, inalienable possession affixes are related personal
pronouns and/or demonstratives, which in Kélen are le (1p), ri (2p),
ma (3p-anim), sa (other 3p-anim), ja (3p-inan), and Tó (here-1p), xó
(there-2p), áke (there-3p), and jáo (this, that). So it makes sense
to me that they should be similar or identical to these forms.

> Anyway, hope this helps regardless. :-)
Yes. Thanks.

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com

The Kélen language can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

This post may contain the following characters:
á (a-acute); é (e-acute); í (i-acute); ó (o-acute); ú (u-acute);
ñ (n-tilde);