Re: Basque genitives

En réponse à Rob Nierse :


>While I studied Basque I was given an example by Rudolf de Rijk (who 
>regrettably died this summer) that helped me very much understanding the 
>difference between -(r)en 'possessive genitive' and -ko 'locative genitive'.
>
>exte-ko kea 'the smoke of the house'
>etxe-aren kea 'the smoke of the house'
>
>etxe 'house'
>ke 'smoke'
>-a article
>
>In the first example the smoke is coming out of the chimney. The smoke is 
>not a part of the house, but of the fire in the stove or something like that.
>In the second example the smoke is coming from the house because it is on 
>fire and here the smoke is part of the house.
That's indeed a very good example.

>He also said that -ko resembled Japanese 'no' in thsi respect. I don't 
>know enough about Japanese, but maybe someone else does?
I'd rather say that Japanese 'no' is like a merge between Basque "-en" and 
"-ko". The point is that like French 'de', Japanese 'no' can be used for 
pure possession, but also for noun-to-noun relationships that have nothing 
to do with possession. Temporal and spatial relationships for instance can 
be given with it. English can do that to I think. For instance, I think an 
expression like "yesterday's dinner" where the genitive indicates a 
temporal rather than possessive relationship, is perfectly valid in 
English. Am I wrong? At least, in French "le dîner d'hier" is perfectly 
valid, as is Japanese "kinou no bangohan" (well, not sure about the 
translation of "dinner", but sure about the construction :)) ).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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