Re: LC-01 genitive noun phrases

Butsuri wrote:

<<This is very interesting, and makes me feel slightly better about
"ngakang skalat".  It's not, of course, quite the same
situation... How do Arabic adjectives work?  I don't think LC-01
allows purely nominal sentences of this kind, which is fortunate with
regard to avoiding this kind of ambiguity.>>

Adjectives follow nouns, and agree in definiteness:

walad = boy
saGir = small
walad saGir = small boy
al-walad as-saGir = the small boy

So, for a sentence:

walad saGir = "a small boy" or "a boy is small", but...
al-walad saGir = "the boy is small", and only this (to make it a modifier, 
it'd have to agree in definiteness)

Now, with genitives...   Hmm...

waalid al-walad as-saGir = the father of the small boy
walad saGir al-waalid = the father's small boy

Yeah, I think that does it.

<<What I find mildly troubling about "ngakang skalat" is really that it
means marking the possessed phrase not on its head but on the
adjective most distant from the head.>>

However, if these things are *really* stative verbs and not adjectives, then 
(guess what?) the adjective *is* the head, since it's the verb.

<<I'm not sure whether the Arabic
example should make me more sanguine about this or not.>>

In Arabic, I'd say it's head-marking, and that the dependents just have to 
agree.

-David