> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...>
> Date: 22-Feb-2007 16:42
> Subject: Re: Gender as suffixaufnahme?
> To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>
> Hi Eugene
>
> On 22/02/07, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > For example, "la vie" (the life, f.) doesn't become "le vie du garçon"
> > (the life of the boy, m.).
> >
> > Eugene
>
>
> I knew I had read about something similar and here it is:
>
> Corbett (2006) points out:
>
> "In familiar European languages body parts have a gender unaffected by the
> 'possessor'. Thus Russian /nos/ 'nose' takes masculine agreements,
> irrespective of whose nose is intended... However, in Nungali (an Australian
> language of the upper Daly River area, related to Jaminung) there is an
> interesting construction restricted to possessed body parts, in which a noun
> denoting the body part agrees in gender with the noun denoting the
> possessor:
>
> "Nungali (Bolt, Hoddinott & Kofod 1970, analysed in Evans 1994)
>
> (52)* ni-ya-manga d-uNunin 1
> IV-I-ear I-man
> (the man's ear)
>
> "Here the gender IV noun for 'ear' has a gender I marker to show agreement
> with d-uNunin 'man'. Note [further] that the overt marker of the noun's
> lexical gender (IV) appears outside the agreement gender, a curious pattern
> found because the marking of the agreement gender appears to have arisen
> earlier."
>
> Corbett goes on to state that adjectives take the inherent gender of the
> noun denoting the body part, but notes that in addition to the "inherent"
> gender of the body-part noun (BPN) itself, the body part noun takes an
> additional prefix in concord with the possessor (whether implicit or
> explicit):
>
> "(54)* mi-nad mi-ya-Nargin 1
> III-big III-I-eye
> 'big eye (of a man)'
>
> "(55)* mi-nad mi-na-Nargin 1
> III-big III-II-eye
> 'big eye (of a woman)'"
>
> Furthermore, Corbett states that in Lak, the allative marker is added to the
> lative marker, and also brings an "agreement slot":
>
> "Lak (Kibrik 1979: 76)
>
> (56) Qat-lu-wu-m-aj 2
>
> house-OBL-IN-LAT-III-ALL
>
> 'into the house'
>
> "In this example, the -m- is a gender III singular marker for agreement; the
> controller will be a noun phrase in the absolutive."
>
> * These numbers are used for reference by Corbett and are reproduced here
> only as part of the quotation
>
> 1 The phoneme represented here by N is the velar nasal, represented by the
> symbol conventionally called "eng" in the IPA. Corbett uses the eng itself.
>
> 2 The phoneme represented here by Q is an intensive uvular consonant,
> represented by 'q' with a macron in the quoted material.
>
> Corbett, Greville G. 2006. Agreement. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics),
> Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
>
> Bolt, Janet E.; Hoddinott, William C. & Kofod, Frances M. 1970. An
> elementary grammar of the Nungali language. Unpublished manuscript, held at
> AIATSIS, Canberra, quoted in Corbett (2006)
>
> Kibrik, Aleksandr E. 1972. O formal'nom vydelenii soglasovatel'nyx klassov v
> archinskom jazyke. 'Voprosy jazykoznanuja 1.124-31. Quoted in Corbett (2006)
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
> --
> Now, did you hear the news today?
> They say the danger's gone away
> But I can hear the marching feet
> Moving into the street
>
> Adapted from Genesis, "Land of Confusion"
>
>
http://latedeveloper.org.uk
>