Re: head-marking

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:28:24 -0300 Pablo David Flores
<pablo-flores@...> writes:
> Doesn't Hebrew have those, besides the already mentioned Celtic
> langs?
> --Pablo Flores
>   http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/nyh/index.html
>   "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments
>    of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
>    No one knows the shape of that future or where it
>    will take us. We know only that it is always born
>    in pain."  -- G'Kar quoting G'Quon, in "Babylon 5"
-

(Yay good B5 quote!)

But anyway, yes, Semitic languages like Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic have
those kinds of prepositions too.

examples:

Hebrew /?Et/, direct object
basic independent form: et
me: oti
you.m: otkha
you.f: otakh
him: oto
her: otah
us: otanu
yall.m: otkhem
yall.f: otkhen
them.m: otam
them.f: otan

Actually, in Biblical Hebrew "et" could mean the direct object or it
could mean "with", but the personal forms were different.  The "with"
|et| declined as follows: iti, itkha, itakh, ito, itah, itanu, itkhem,
itkhen, itam, itan.

Some of the forms come out unexpectedly:

|`im| "with" can be |`imi, `imkha...| or it can be |`imadi,
`imadkha(?)...|, with the /-ad-/ coming from /jad/ 'hand'
|el| "to" and |`al| "on" decline according to their original longer forms
|eley| and |`aley|: |elay, elekha, elayikh...| and |`alay, `alekha,
`alayikh...|.
|bli| "without" uses the extended stem |bil`adey|, but i'm not sure why.

Ob*Con*lang:
Colloquial Rokbeigalmki is going in this direction too.  Formally, when
you attach a case-prefix to an object pronoun, they should remain
distinct:
NGA' (from) + ASH (me) = NGA'ASH /n"a?aS/
NGA' (from) + ISH (her) = NGA'ISH /n"a?iS/
NGA' (from) + UHMSH (them) = NGA'UHMSH /n"a?VmS/

However, they can get merged, to come out as:
NG''ASH /n"aS/
NG''ISH /n"iS/
NG''UHMSH /n"VmS/

And similarly with the other prefixes/prepositions: BA', TA', LA', FA',
JA', etc.


-Stephen (Steg)
"...living in captivity / it's hard to know what's real
  you can't take what they give you / but you get what you can steal
  and half the world is cold and hard / but all the world's a stage
  and this is my performance / growing up inside a cage..."
     ~ 'growing up inside a cage' by jason spitz