Re: Construct States

At 04:17 PM 3/2/99 -0800, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
>Malagasy has something similar to the construct state.  To form
>a possessive construction, you add the suffix "-n" to the possessed
>noun.  The noun phrase denoting the possessor follows the possessed
>noun, and forms a phonological word with the possessed noun (usually
>indicated in the orthography by writing the possessed noun and the
>first word of the possessor as a single word, in some cases separated
>by an apostrophe or a hyphen):
>
>        ny boki-n  +  sika         >    ny bokintsika
>        the book-N    1pExcl            "our book"
>
>        ny boki-n  +  ny vehivavy  >    ny bokin'ny vehivavy
>        the book-N    the woman         "the woman's book"
>
>        ny boki-n  +  Rakoto       >    ny bokin-dRakoto
>        the book-N    Rakoto            "Rakoto's book"
>
>Whether the "-n" suffix should be analysed as a construct state
>suffix or something else is a matter of debate...
>
>Matt.
This construction is formed by adding a morpheme to the head noun, whereas
the Semitic construct state is formed (or was originally) by _subtracting_ a
morpheme.  Or so it would appear from the following:

At 04:22 PM 3/2/99 -0500, Brian Betty wrote:
>[snip]
>It's easy. All the Hamito-Semitic languages I'm familiar with - Egyptian
>and the Semitic languages - use the construct state to mark genitives and
>compound nouns. Basically, because of an old genitive marker in /-i/ and
>rules of accent ('Zweisilbengesetz' - making a three-syllable word into 2
>syllables), when the case-markings are stripped from a word it appears in
>its 'construct' (theoretically, its 'abstract') form.
>
>For example, Tuppu^m 'tablet' (T = t with a dot under it, indicating it is
>'emphatic' [glottalised or pharygealised], and the [u^] is a /u:/ formed
>from the nominal case-ending -um combined with another preceding vowel;
>accent is on the last syllable in this word because of this) is borrowed
>from Sumerian (not surprising!) DUB-BI 'tablet. The construct of this word
>is Tuppi; Tuppu^m < Tuppi + um. So when you say, My tablet, the 'object' of
>the genitive is placed first in construct form, followed by the genitive of
>the posessor. Tuppi:ya 'my tablet' < Tuppi + ya (length is a separate issue
>here!)
This seems to me to imply that, although the Malagasy and Semitic
constructions have the same function synchronically, they must have
originated by different processes.

-------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith
timsmith@global2000.net

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