Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

At 11:17 PM 3/2/99 -0300, FFlores wrote:
>Edward Heil <edheil@...> wrote:
>Also, how do you indicate genitival relationships
>in your conlangs? Myself, I tend to use the good ol'
>genitive case, but in Ciravesu I simply resorted
>to juxtaposition (head-final).
Somewhat belatedly putting in my 2 cents' worth:

Hwendaaru has a possessive construction modeled after that of Hindi/Urdu:
the possessor noun appears with the oblique case suffix, followed by a
possessive particle which agrees in definiteness, number, gender and case
with the possessed NP.  The default order is possessor-possessum
(head-final), but this order can be reversed if the possessor is contrastive
or otherwise emphatic.

hantan tu klaathu =3D "the man's house" (def. nom. sg.)

hant-a-          n   t-   u-           0   klaath-u-          0
man- Def:Sg:Anim-Obl Poss-Def:Sg:Inan- Nom house- Def:Sg:Inan-Nom

(The oblique is a generalized non-core case suffix which, besides its use in
the possessive construction, is used in lieu of any non-core case suffix
[the core cases being nominative, ergative, accusative and dative] under
conditions which I won't bother to explain here.)

Hwendaaru also has a genitive case which was once used in possessive
constructions, but is now used productively only to mark the trigger NP in
nominalized subordinate clauses.  This archaic genitive also serves as the
stem to which the locative, allative, ablative and perlative cases of
various morphemes that were originally nouns are added to form the more
specific local cases such as inessive, illative, elative, etc.  For example,
the inessive of _klaathu_ ("house") is formed by adding the locative of _el_
("interior") to the genitive form _klaathure_, giving _klaathurelme_
(literally "at the inside of the house").

klaath-u-          re- el-      me
house- Def:Sg:Inan-Gen-interior-Loc

In Meitzanathein, possession is marked by a plain, Indo-European-like
genitive case.  The usual order is head-final (possessor-possessum):

tainathza karz =3D "the man's house"

tai- nath-  z-  a   kar-  z
male-person-Def-Gen house-Def

In Naya Vandi, which is distantly related to Meitzanathein but typologically
very different, possession is shown by simple juxtaposition, in head-initial
(possessum-possessor) order, like Welsh except that the possessum, if
definite, has its own article:

ta kala ta nasataya =3D "the man's house"

ta     kala  ta     nasa-  taya
Def:Sg house Def:Sg person-male

In the new (as of today, but it may change again tomorrow) version of
Neo-Anglic, there are two possessive constructions.  Alienable possession is
marked by the preposition _av_ (which, like all prepositions, takes a
pronominal suffix agreeing in person and number with the object if the
object is definite):

h=E0us avim m=E0n =3D "the man's house"

For inalienable possession, there is no preposition, and the pronominal
suffix is attached directly to the possessed noun:

h=E0nim m=E0n =3D "the man's hand"

[In this version of Neo-Anglic, the grammar and the orthography reflect
suggestions made by Matt Pearson and John Cowan, respectively.]

I could go on, but to avoid boring you and to make sure that I get some
sleep tonight I'm limiting myself to that small subset of my conlang
projects that have been developed to the point of having names,
orthographies, and rudimentary lexicons.  I'm also limiting myself to
constructions where the possessor is a noun, not a pronoun, and I'm talking
only about attributive possession, not predicative possession.  (But I will
mention that none of my conlangs has a verb equivalent to "have"; they all
use some variant of the "to X is Y" type of construction in lieu of "X has=
 Y".)

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

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.
- Mark Twain