Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Irina Rempt wrote:

> In Latin: _mihi domus est_ "to me house is" > "I have a house".
> Nepali and (I think) Sanskrit also has it, and one phrase from Nepali
> has found its way into our home idiolect, in Dutch but with the same
> construction: "aan mij is geen kennis" ("to me there is no knowledge"),
> meaning "I don't know", or more specifically "I don't know at all, I
> don't know anything about it".
The "to-me is a house" construction, using "be" plus a preposition in
place of "have", is extremely common among the world's languages - perhaps
*more* common than having a separate verb "have".  I've seen this
construction in Latin, Russian, Hindi, French, Celtic, Hungarian, Turkish,
and numerous African and Amerindian languages.  My conlang Tokana
has this construction as well:

        Imai  he halma
        to-me is book
        "I have a book"

Matt.