Re: Case?
From: | Roger Mills <romilly@...> |
Date: | Saturday, January 26, 2002, 22:49 |
Muke Tever wrote:
>Anyway:
>
> Status
> they Nominative 3rd person pronoun
> them Accusative 3rd person pronoun
> theirs Possessive 3rd person pronoun
> their Possessive 3rd person adjective
>
>"Possessive" is kind of peculiar to English--it's not exactly the same as
>"Genitive" in the familiar languages. Example, example, hmm... Apparently
in
>Latin you can say {acervus frumenti} [pile.NOM grain.GEN] "a pile of
grain",
>while saying "grain's pile" in English wouldn't make the same kind of
sense.
>The English 'case' generally only applies to possession, metaphorical or
>literal.
Not to mention "amor dei" "God's love", which is certainly two-ways
ambiguous in Engl. and probably in Latin too. (subjective vs. objective
genitive)
>As for needing it... If your language can use adjectives substantively, you
>should be able to use the 3rd person adjective in the same place.
>
>For example, (this is 'pseudocodelang'):
>
> dó a eius su gat
> give.I to 3P 3P-ADJ cat
> "I give them their cat"
>
> dó a eius el su
> give.I to 3P ART 3P-ADJ
> "I give them theirs"
Some sort of proto-conRomance? ;-) Reminiscent of Spanish: les di el suyo,
not (IIRC) *les di suyo. However, es mio/tuyo/suyo etc. 'it's mine...' is
OK (?). How about "este libro es el mio" 'this book [there are several ] is
mine' (?)-- not sure about that.
I recently had to figure this out for Kash. There are no possessive
pronouns; we use the genitive case of the personal pronouns (generally not
used otherwise, since simple possession is marked with suffixes):
- yale mami/hati/ini/mili/hili/nili 'it's
mine/yours/his,hers/our/yours-pl/theirs'
However, in cases like your exs. above, we need a demonstrative:
ne ma.vele lapis.ti
3s.dat I-give pencil-your
'I gave him your pencil' (lapis is a temporary loanword)
ne mavele yu hati
3s.dat I-give that(neut,acc) of-you
'I gave him yours' (lit., that [thing] of you)
Similarly:
ya.timbat aman.ti, i ya.n mami eme
he-knows father(acc)-your, and that(masc,acc) of-me also
'He knows your father, and [he knows] mine too.'
(I think this is possible, though it seems awkward:)
yatimbat amanti, i ya mami eme
he-knows yr,father(acc) and that(masc.nom.) of-me too.
'he knows your father, and mine [knows your father] does too.'
contrast (not at all awkward):
ama.ti (yale) kañulin, i ya mami eme
father(nom)-your (is) carpenter, and that(nom, masc) of-me also
'your father is a carpenter, and so is mine'
It works the same way with adjectives:
ma.lisam yu çisu
I-like that(neut,acc) red
'I like the red one'
QUESTION: Are these examples of _anaphora_, or do I have my technical terms
mixed up?
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