Re: Help with case names

Irina Rempt wrote:
>> >"The man who lives in the apartment over there*'s* dog."
>> Nor of course Kash (no dogs):  lopa kaçuti ya re yayeçen ri puna
>> riyan 'the _lopa_  man(gen.) who he-lives in the house over-there'
>
>Ah. In Ilaini (no apartments) _dost ensei lea astien jat amrat_ "(the)
>dog (the) man-gen who house-loc there lives"
>
>This can also mean that the *dog* lives in the house, and it belongs to
>the man we've been talking about, but that's much less likely than that
>the man is specified with "who lives in that house".
That's a potential ambiguity in the Kash sentence as well; I chose not to
get into that detail in my post.  Though in the situation, as you say, it's
pretty clear we're talking about the man's house, not the lopa's (they live
in sheds, pumbik; and Kash people don't generally have animals in their
houses-- alas, no pets as we know them).   With an inanimate noun, there
would of course be no problem.

With another human noun, say "wife" or "friend", you'd have to re-phrase:

kaçinde kaçuti ya, (i) iye eçen....etc.  "The wife of that man, (and) _she_
(marked for gender and emphatic) lives in....etc."  is clear.  But:

kambra kacuti ya, (i) iya eçen... "The friend (assumed masc.) of the man,
(and) _he_ lives...." would still be potentially ambig. since masc. _iya_
could refer to either the friend or the man....so--

kambra kaçuti ya, (i) kambra ya yayeçen..... "The friend of the man, (and)
_that friend_ lives......"

Considerations of this sort, and the need I felt to cover all bases,  are
the reason why my Kash Syntax ended up being so long... aside from general
discomfort with syntax, plus wordiness :-(   Oh what a tangled web.....

I considered using iya 'that' and tayu 'this' for 'the former' vs. 'the
latter', like Span.
aquel vs. este, but that construction has always struck me as rather
strange.