Re: Construct case and genitive pronouns

On 8/26/05, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Looking at the current state of my Tarsyanian grammar, I
> wondered if it would be necessary to have possessive
> pronouns in the construct state. I can't imagine a sentence
> where the possessive pronoun is the non-head (How do you 
> call this, BTW? Foot?) of the NP. I think if I strictly
> applied the construct state, the possessive pronouns would
> be of no use except in answers like "Mine". On the other
> hand, why can't I have construct case with nouns but 
> genitive case with pronouns? Is that an anadewism, by any
> chance?
> 
> Thanks,
> Carsten
> 
> --
> Menlaitanlei bahesanoena eimino ayyam! ;-)
> Happpy 19th birthday to me! ;-)

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?

I can't think of one, unless for some strange reason you needed forms like 
"my me", "your you", "my you", "the you of Bob", etc. I can only think of 
one (facetious) example:

"She's gone funny in the head," said Granny. 

"Now, come on, Esme," said Nanny Ogg. 

"Well, I call it funny," said Granny. "You can't tell me that saying all 
that stuff about relatives isn't going funny in the head." 

"She didn't say that," said Nanny. "She said she wanted to relate to 
herself."

"That's what I said," said Granny Weatherwax. "I told her: Simplicity 
Garlick was your mother, Araminta Garlick was your granny. Yolande Garlick 
is your aunt and you're your... you're your me."
 
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. 

Or you could use this construction to form logophoric pronouns, I think 
they're called. In the sentence, "He told me you're a idiot", you might have 
two different possible "yous": The you referring to the person I'm speaking 
to (that is, you), or the you referring to the person he's speaking to (that 
is, me). We could distinguish these as the "you of him" and the "you of me". 


------------

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. 


------------

I'm not sure how to answer your question about a possessive pronoun being a 
non-head. (The best term for a non-head is imo "dependent"; sometimes you 
see "adjunct" but I prefer not to use this because of possible confusion. 
Traditionally at least, a compliment ("of linguistics" in "professor of 
linguistics") is not an adjunct, but when I want to say "non-head" I 
certainly want something that covers compliments.) Which NP do you mean? In 
"my mother", "my car", "mother of me", or "car of me", the possessor is 
never the head. It's a specifier, a compliment, or an adjunct. Do you mean 
that it must be the head of its own NP... that is, the NP consisting 
entirely of the one word "me"? In that case, certainly it must be a head. 
Otherwise, I'm not sure what you're asking.

--------------

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:

face-CONST mountain
face me-GEN

How might this happen? Hmm, okay, here's a story. In the protolanguage there 
was a particle "u" that linked possessed and possessor.

fais u maunten
fais u yu

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:

fais u maunten
fais uy

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...

faiyuts maunten
fais ue.

There we go. Construct state, except in the case of possession by pronouns.

-- 
Patrick Littell
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