Re: head-marking

Ian Spackman <ianspackman@...> writes:

> head-marking is the more common.  But more interesting is the comment that
> the patterns tend to apply across different sort of phrases in the language
> (nominal, adpositional, verbal).
>
> How does this work?  Does anyone have any examples?  I cannot recall having
> met, for instance, an inflected adposition, myself.
Doesn't Hebrew have those, besides the already mentioned Celtic langs?

My conlang Stálág has postpositions that inflect like nouns. The
normal form of the postposition (core case) is used as expected;
the postpositional phrase modifies the verb or the whole clause.
The oblique form turns the whole PP into a noun modifier.

O = oblique case; DAT = dative ('to me it was seen' = 'I saw').

    Ú tta wán kuzló uts ukjsot.
    1s-O DAT horse door-O from be_seen-3s-PRF
    "I saw a horse from [my place at] the door."

    Ú tta kuzló utso wán ukjsot.
    1s-O DAT door-O from-O horse be_seen-3s-PRF
    "I saw a horse [that was coming] from the door."


--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"