Dative/genitive/partitive? (WAS: Genitive Relationships)

Speaking about genitive and possession, we
discussed the presence of a dat/gen + be construction
for "have" in many languages. Last night, to my
surprise, I discovered I had been using a similar
pattern in Drasele'q!

There's a particle _i_ which I usually define as
"partitive", but for some reason I've been using it
for several functions in many places, just because it
"sounded right". As I'm an ordermaniac, I decided to
gather samples from my own writings and catalogue
the attested examples of _i_. Here's what I found:


Uses of _i_

Genitive: _Pa'lmadhel i themar_  "the story of Pa'lmadhel"
There's a proper genitive case, but this usage I found it
more expressive and perhaps with another flavour of possession.
It's not the same as _Pa'lmadheles idan_ "the hand of Pa'lmadhel"
because the story is not "hers", but "about her".

Genitive: _elveft fu"nsauthes afko'ns i staudigesst_
"the weak arrows of Elvish bows", literally
"Elvish bows' weak (_i_) arrows"

Partitive/genitive: _A'rruenes mi A'rragorrnes themar i vion_
"part of the story of Arwen and Aragorn", lit.
"Arwen's and Aragorn's story (_i_) part" (almost an undefinite
article).

Partitive/genitive: _dha`nk i padhanth_ "smoke (_i_) clouds"
This use is standard for composition (maybe I should this
"compositive", tho there are other ways to show it.)


Dativo: _anqe's qgedas ... i bu"d akth Mu"nis Renhandh_
"this-is (the) gift ... (_i_) it-which gives the-One to-Men"

This is plain dative. The strange thing here is that the
actual dative object is _Renhadh_ "men", but here it's
marked as accusative with -n-. So in fact the accusative case
should be called "objective case" or something of the sort.
Any ideas? The actual direct object, which should be marked
as accusative and placed before the subject (VSO) is instead
uninflected, preceded by _i_, and before the verb, like a
modifier.


Dative: _On dhidhanth i qlonval nertain_
"all children (_i_) (a) great freedom"
Same here -- only the verb is missing.=20
_dhidhanth_ "children" is nominative, so this could
be a mixture of "(give) children a great freedom"
and "the children's great freedom" (genitive, as
above).


Dative: _emb=E4ld=E1vaqai porrn i durgur_
"he-will-make-to-remember to-him (_i_) (the, his) oath"
See how the same structure repeats in double object verbs?
_porrn_ is "to him", gramatically accusative, not dative.

Partitive: _Frabu'rasat farenavdru"nsien i bu`rthn_
"I-won't-say in-order-to-console (_i_) words."
This is, IIR my French, similar to the _de, des_
partitives.


With _ladhden_ "to have":  _I ki`rrag frala'dhdenaser_
"(_i_) wife you-won't-be-having" =3D "you won't take a wife"

_i donth b=F9r fraladhdat_ "(_i_) that word we-don't-have"

Here, though there's proper verb "to have", there's a
tendency towards the common form: take the direct object,
place it before the verb preceded with _i_, and do not
inflect it as accusative. I *swear* I didn't do this on
purpose -- it popped out naturally! What do you think?


--Pablo Flores

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 And the Lord said unto Job, "There's no
 reason for it.  It's just policy."
                                       Kelvin Throop