Re: Alienable/inalienable possession

Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:

> On 2/4/06, Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> wrote:
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I recently started a new project, Ukele [1], which is
> > supposed to have alienable/inalienable posession. I wonder
> > how would one express to have something or to give
> > something away that is inalienable? E.g. a heart transplant
> > or something? Body parts are usually inalienable, after all.
>
> Kēlen has inalienable possession of body parts. The standard, unmarked
> way to say 'heart' is 'samālle', which means 3p-'heart' or
> 'his/her/someone's heart'. However, it is also possible to inflect
> -māll- as an inanimate noun. This would be marked, people would look
> at you funny, but in the context of a transplant, or the scientist's
> jars of preserved body parts, it would make perfect sense. (snip exs.)
Something like that IMO is probably the way to go...

Timorese (aka Atoni, Dawan) has something similar-- inalienable poss. is
marked with the suffixes -k, -m, -n (1,2,3 (sing.) resp.), generic
with -f--thus atèn 'his/her heart/liver', atef 'heart/liver, in general'. I
suppose as in, "We're having liver for dinner", perhaps "The dr. gave me a
new heart", maybe "...shaped like a heart", but the available grammar is
silent on the exact usage.

Fijian of course has its lovely 4-way possession: 1. inalienable 2. edible
3. drinkable 4. generic, alienable.