Re: Questions on Inalienable Possession Prefixes

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?

> 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.

Anyway, hope this helps regardless. :-)


T

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