Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

Padraic Brown <pbrown@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, FFlores wrote:
>
> > in your conlangs? Myself, I tend to use the good ol'
> > genitive case, but in Ciravesu I simply resorted
> > to juxtaposition (head-final).
>
> Coincidentally, it's also one of the ways Brithenig does it.  It has the
> standard Romance 'X de Y' form: la gas di'll of (the man's house); but
> also cas ill of, which I think answers to the Welsh form.
Sorry, I think one of us is wrong here. In "man's house",
as I see it, "house" is the head, so _la gas di'll of_ is
head-first. Ciravesu is head-final: _cava enta_ "man house"
= "man's house".

[snip]
> The second kind of
> possession in Kernu uses the rather complicated construction with the
> preposition 'do', which means to or at: "dol omen la domu" litterally
> means 'at the man the house'; and is used with 'aver' (there is) and
> certain other constructions.  So "the man owns a house" is "dol omen ay
yn
> domu" (at the man there is a house).
That's a nice construction. I think I've seen a similar
one somewhere. Not exactly the same, but Ciravesu uses
dative case for possessive pronouns: _ce_ "he", _ceo enta_
"his house" (common nouns use juxtaposition only, as I said
above).


--Pablo Flores

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