Re: A prioi vs. A posteriori ?

On Sunday 09 February 2003 02:58 pm, Nik Taylor wrote:
> James Landau wrote:
> > For example, one thing I was intent on changing
> > when creating Kankonian was that genealogical relations could only
use
> > "ad" (to) rather than "na" (of), so "my sister" became "surten ad
is"
> > (sister to me), not "surten na is" (sister of me, with "na is" being
> > the usual construction for "my")
>
> Classical Uatakassi used genitive for things like that.  However,
later
> dialects used the dative when the "possessed" person was of higher
> status than the "possessor", so, "daughter-my" but "mother to-me".  By
> the time you get to Tivets, however, the genitive was completely
> supplanted by the dative, the dative having expanded gradually via
> "honored person" -> "non-slave" -> "person" -> "animate" -> all
>
> > Mulling over the way people always
> > explain "my", "your", etc. as denoting possession/ownership, it
seemed
> > so offensive when thinking about people being spoken of thus
> > (especially in reference to one's children) -- PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BE
> > PROPERTY!
>
> I tend to think of the so-called possessive in English as actually
being
> something more like "associative", that is, indicating that there's
some
> association between the two nouns.  This also holds in phrases like
"the
> man's death" or "the woman's beauty" or "the child's illness" and so
> on.  There's no literal possession there.
>
> One of my early conlangs, in fact, did make a distinction between
> "possessive" and "associative" where possessive was used for tangible
> objects owned by a person (my house, my car, my clothes), whereas
> "associative" was used for abstracts, people, and the like (my
brother,
> my intelligence, my country)
>
> Do the Kankonians use this "ad" form with things like "servant" or
> "employee" or "slave" (if they have slavery that is).  What about "my
> infant" or "my unborn child"?  If they're similar in social outlook to
> contemporary Americans, perhaps anti-abortionists would use "ad is"
for
> "my unborn child" while pro-abortionists would use "na is" for "my
> fetus".
>
> Is it only with people?  Do they use "na is" for "my body" or "my
> intelligence" or "my illness"?  What about "my country"?
>
> --
> "There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
> you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
> overheard
> ICQ: 18656696
> AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42
>
>
Cherani Trade speech has a two level associative, plus a possessive (or
maybe it's 2 levels of possessive and one level of associative). In any
case, there's a difference between 'my fish' (in my aquarium, "fish of
me"), 'my fish' (on my plate, "fish me") and 'my fish' (in my warehouse
waiting to be sold "fish mine").

Talking about a relative you'd be more likely to use 'my sibling' =
"sibling we", or "sibling of we" and the "we" could be marked as dual,
inclusive or exclusive depending on the situation and the point you are
trying to make.



--
Elyse Grasso