Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

Matt Pearson wrote:
>
>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.
>
Same in Boreanesian. Well, almost. Boreanesian uses the oblique
case, thus "at-me" rather than "to-me" would be a better
translation. Eg.,:

        /p@kijh s@taGh/
        at-me   writing
        "I have a writing (book)"

(/G/ is a velar approximant, and the syllable final /h/ marks a
slack phonation of heavy syllables)

-kristian- 8-)