Re: Construct case and genitive pronouns

Hello,

On Fri 26 August 2005 11:45 CEST, Patrick Littell wrote:

 > Let me see if I understand your question.  You have
 > possessive phrases marked by a sort of construct-state
 > construction, like
 >
 > face-CONST mountain
 > "face of the mountain"
 >
 > And you're wondering if you have any need of a form like
 > me-CONST or me-CONST-GEN?

That was actually my question, yes. I wasn't sure if
me-CONST was really necessary to have. Sorry that I confused
you!

 > Come to think of it, that's a great way to form
 > reflexives. "me of me", "you of you", "him of him", etc.
 > Or "me of me", "me of you", "me of him", etc.

That's an idea. I like that.

 > [...] Or is your question "Do I need to have possessive
 > pronouns when state is already marked on the head?"  As in
 > "face-CONST me-GEN"?  Well, you don't *need* to have
 > possessive pronouns here, but you *may*. Nothing wrong
 > with simultaneous head- and dependent-marking.

Arabic does that, IIRC, someone else asked about that some
weeks ago.

 > I'm not sure how to answer your question about a
 > possessive pronoun being a non-head.

No worries, I meant "complement" I think, and referred to
the part of a possessive NP that is not marked for construct
case (the one that'd take genitive case in English)

 > As for your other question: can we have possession by
 > pronouns dependent-marked (genitive case) and possession
 > by nouns head-marked (construct state)?  Sure we can.
 > Does ANADEW?  I can't think of one.  But there's probably
 > no rule in the human language faculty that rules out:
 > [...]
 >
 > How might this happen?  Hmm, okay, here's a story.  In the
 > protolanguage there was a particle "u" that linked
 > possessed and possessor. [...]
 >
 > Over time, the very common combinations "u mi", "u yu",
 > "u hi", etc. merged into the single lexical items "umi",
 > "uy", "hui", etc.   Giving us: [...]
 >
 > At some other point in time, over perhaps to a shift
 > towards head-marking in the rest of the language, the
 > remaining "u" got reanalyzed as a construct state suffix.
 > Perhaps, with later changes.. [...]
 >
 > There we go.  Construct state, except in the case of
 > possession by pronouns.

Heh, yeah. Maybe I'll do that. I just had to figure out why
Ayeri has -ena as genitive suffix all over the place that
can also be tucked to pronouns while Tarsyanian has -eng as
construct state ending and
ajen/vahen/jahen/rajen/ainen/pahen/jaten/raten as pronouns.
In fact, I cheated in that I derive T. from Ayeri by sound
changes but said it'd already have begun to diverge from A.
thousand years ago. Actually, -eng < -ena and ajen <
ayena, vahen < evaena, jahen < iyàena, etc. (h being [C]
here)

Thanks for those nice ideas to ste^H^H^H borrow ;)    [1]
I'm so uncreative when it comes to con-history :(

Yours,
Carsten

--
"Miranayam cepauarà naranoaris."
(Calvin nay Hobbes)

[1] I tried that out once, and Linux still supports Strg+H,
which has the same effect as the backspace key.