Re: THEORY: genitive vs. construct case/izafe

Hello!

On 7/23/05, Thomas Wier <trwier@...> wrote:
> Julia wrote:
[snip snip]

> I would avoid use of the term "izafe" and "construct case" as they are
> too closely linked to the discussion in traditional grammars of particular
> constructions that may not be easily generalizable crosslinguistically.
Good point. As I wrote in my reply to Patrick above, I've decided to
stick to terms like "possessive construction" for the time being, at
least in the context of my conlang, until I've figured out the details
of my con-case system (or is it "case con-system"?).

> They can be, moreover, confusing in the other direction, since their
> properties can vary from language to language quite a lot.  Take the
> following discussion from a page I googled:
>
>  Izafe is the traditional term in Iranian philology for the vocalic
>  particle by which posthead nominal modifiers arc linked to their
>  head nouns. In Persian, the Izafe particle is invariant; in Kurmanji
>  Kurdish it inflects for gender and number of the head noun; but in
>  Zazaki, it inflects for
>    (i) gender and number of the head;
>    (ii) category of the modifier (adjective vs. noun);
>    (iii) syntactic function of the entire NP in the clause.
>
> It is my understanding that ezafe constructions by no means always
> single out possessa, and so I would say that there are no real reasons
> to use it here.  Rather, if you want to talk about head-marking possession,
> do so in those words.
Yes, I should probably do that... I don't want to add confusion about
izafe state vs. izafe particles to all the other confusion that got
there all by itself. ;-)

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)