Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999 15:51:14 -0600 dunn patrick w
<tb0pwd1@...> writes:
>> 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".
>>
>>    Irina
>Hebrew?  Doesn't even have a verb "to have."  Expressed ownership with
>the construction "yesh . . . al-"  (There is . . . to x) or "ain . . .
>al-" (there is not . . . to x)  So "the man has a horse" is "yesh sus
>al-ish."
>Of course, my normal caveat: my Hebrew sucks and should not be taken
>as
>the authoritative, and also, it's Biblical Hebrew.  Modern Hebrew
>might
>not do this anymore.
>
>--Patrick
It's _l-_, not _al-_.  So "the man has a horse" is _yeish la'ish sus_
(with the l+ha = la absorbtion).  Modern Israeli Hebrew still does it,
although for some reason people put in the object marker _et_ sometimes,
which makes no sense grammatically.  And it's not just second-language
students whose native languages have a real verb for "to have", Israelis
do it too.


-Stephen (Steg)

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