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Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Friday, March 5, 1999, 0:21
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) ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]