> Van: Christophe Grandsire <grandsir@...>
> Aan: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
> Onderwerp: Mandatory possession
> Datum: donderdag 7 oktober 1999 9:27
>
> Hi all,
>
> I want to add in Chasma"o"cho the feature of mandatory
possession, and
> I need some information about it.
>
> I know that in languages having this feature, words needing
mandatory
> possessives refer generally to the family. Are there other kinds of
> words that need this (I'm thinking of parts of body maybe, but are there
> others?).
>
> Also, in the case of mandatory possession, how regular are the
words
> that use it?
I known Lokono Arawak has that feature. Some forms are irregular like the
word for 'house':
da-Sikwa my house
bahi- house (in general) [i-= barred i]
> That's to say, do those words behave just like any other
> word, just having always a possessive marking that is the same that for
> the ones that don't need it, or do those words have different roots
> depending on the possessor, or is the root and the possessive so blended
> that you can't recognize really a common root for all forms of the same
> word?
>
In Lokono there is no morphological difference between alienable and
inalienable forms.
> And finally, how languages that have mandatory possession manage
to use
> the words having this feature when possession is completely irrelevant
> (for instance, when speaking of "a mother" in general)? Do they use a
> different word than the one with mandatory possessives? And when the
> possessor appears (like in "Peter's mother"), do they use a different
> word or just use a construction like: "Peter's his mother"?
Some words are completely different (see the example of 'house'), but there
is a regular way to form inalienable words without the mandatory
possessives. -ho is added:
da-khabo my hand
khabo-ho hand
I think it is -ho, but could be -hV too.