Re: Construct state and/or genitive case in Semitic langs

On 5/18/06, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:

> On Wed, 17 May 2006 19:18:46 -0400, Jim Henry wrote:
> > According to the Wikipedia article I cited, Arabic has a
> > genitive case as well as a construct state.  I'm not sure
> > about Hebrew, but surely one or more persons on this list
> In Arabic, a noun in the construct state can be in any case.  Hence, it is
> just plain wrong to call the construct state a "case" - it is indeed like a
> kind of definiteness marking.  A noun in the construct state doesn't take
> the definite article but is considered definite without it.  In Arabic,
Hebrew and Arabic aren't the only languages to mark the
possessed rather than the possessor.  Is the term
"construct state" used for possession marking in
other head-marking languages, as well?  If not, is there
a general term corresponding to "genitive" for such
head-marking of possession?  E.g., Eldin cited examples
from Hopi IIRC, and Payne in _Describing Morphosyntax_
gives an example from Farsi,

Zhon kitab-é
John book-POSS

Is this a construct state in Farsi, or a case, or what?
What about when possessed nouns in Finno-Ugric
languages get personal suffixes; is this related to
construct state, or is there another general term to cover
such personal suffixes and the Semitic construct state?

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm

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