Object genitive, or Re: A bit on Sturnan

Y. Pensev wrote:


>----- Original Message -----
>From: Christopher B Wright <faceloran@...>
>Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 4:34 PM
>
>> Jesse Stephen Bangs sekalge
>> <I would find this more enlightening if you would elucidate the
>> difference
>> between possessive and genitive in your conlang.  Perhaps one of them is
>> also partitive?  What defines the difference?>
>>
>> Possessive: I currently own a certain item.
>> Genitive: It belongs to me in a more tenuous manner.
>>
>> For instance, "you have Magian's own luck" would use the genitive form of
>> Magian (whoever that is). However, "Magian's luck never failed" would use
>> the possessive.
>
>Sound much similar to the idea of alienable and inalienable possession in
>some natlangs (like Polynesian etc.) In fact, genetive is just an
indefinite
>marker of interrelationship between two nouns without specifying the kind
of
>relationship. That's why one can find e.g. in Latin such types of genetive
>as subjective G., objective G., possessive G., partitive G., G. of source &
>origin etc.
>
Yes it does sound like alienable/inalien. possession-- it's interesting and
sometimes amusing to see how such languages classify things.

Uses of the genitive case in Kash turned out to be a knotty part of the
syntax, mainly because I hadn't really though about it until I sat down to
write.......

--There is possessive G. of course (mainly restricted to human nouns)
OTOH...
ereke yale ñaki (lit. to-erek(dat.) there-is car) "Erek has a car" would
generally be taken to mean "he owns it", whereas yale ñaki ereki (lit.
there-is car of-erek(gen.) "Erek has a car" generally means "he has one at
the moment (and we can use it)", but it may not belong to him.
--There is subjective genitive (as Andreas Johansson brought up in his 4/17
post), such that "love of God" (if you could say it) refers only to God's
love of us. Or, "John's eating (was interrupted by the phone)" is possible,
but "eating of human flesh is disgusting" requires rephrasing ("it is
disgusting that (person) eats human flesh"). So, no objective genitive.

--No partitive G. or G. of source etc. Simple collocation.  yala poren
(glass wine) 'a glass of wine' (usually not ambigous for 'wineglass', that's
properly eyala poren-- but other expressions are ambig.-- ango tuwi 'bowl of
soup ~soup-bowl') ;  mepu hece (make iron) 'made of iron', mepu holunda
'made in Holunda'-- there are limits on these.

--"Ablative/genitive"--- the prep. alo 'from' (also used for 'than') takes
genitive, of course.
yarata alo añangeyi (he-come from forest(gen)) 'he came from/out of the
forest'
erek lavi yavital alo minayi (erek more he-is-tall than Mina(gen.)) 'Erek is
taller than Mina'
alo ondeyini puna (from inside(gen)-its house(nom)) 'from inside the house'

Then there's the peculiar verb apeña 'to own; to belong to' that takes a
Gen. object; the meaning depends on the animacy (actually human-ness) of the
subject/object:
erek yapeña ñakiyi yu 'Erek(nom.) he-owns car(gen.) that'
ñaki yu yapeña ereki 'car(nom.) that it-belongs-to Erek(gen.)'

In olden days, when slavery was practiced, a sentence like _erek yapeña
minayi_
was ambiguous out of context:  'Erek owns ~ belongs to Mina'-- hence the
need for a clarifying word:  kinji erek yapeña minayi 'slave erek belongs
to...' or erek yapeña kinjiyi minayi 'erek owns the slave Mina'.