Re: congrammar update

Lassailly wrote:
>tunu's -n is like -nya in the
>way that it's a possessive pronoun when
>suffixed to a noun but it only refers to a noun
>precedent ....
>....but -n is also an accusative pronoun referring
>to a head noun precedent .....
>....and it's also a nominative pronoun ....
>it is not itself the tag of substantive although it is
>part of construct nouns:
>
Lots of duties for {-n}.  Out of curiosity, is it considered the "same"
morpheme in all cases, or several?  The latter wouldn't be unusual...

>-------------
>>i also use topical construction to avoid the verbal
>>passive form like in colloquial french "l'anglais on l'apprend à l'école"
>>instead of formal "l'anglais est appris/enseigné à l'école".>
>        Likewise in Kash, which has no formal passive at all.
>
>--------------
>i have a question about Kash regarding that matter.
>tunu avoids passive by using topical construction :
>mouse TOP cat eat-IT
>tinu a kati tumu-n
Kash parts company with Indo. here, by having a marked accusative for
animates (tho not for inanimate/neuter).  So as a stylistic variant, it's
possible to front the Object, SVO > OSV or even OVS, and that would
typically/probably be "translated" as a passive in context.  (There's also
subject agreement on the verb, another way of avoiding ambiguity).  So:
luma ya/tikas lopa/n 'the woman saw a lopa (animal) > "passive"  lopan luma
yatikas or (I think preferred) lopan yatikas luma. ("The lopa saw the
woman"of course would be:  lopa yatikas luman).  With a neut. noun:  luma
yatraka nimu 'the woman bought a pot' > nimu luma yatraka, definitly
unambiguous, or nimu yatraka luma, unambiguous also.    If there were any
possibility of ambiguity in such cases, the OSV order would be used.
>
>does Kash use also a topical tag to do so?
>or is it more like the reverse indonesian construction :
>Yono (harus) menulis alamat > alamat (harus) Yono tulis
    I'm vague on the use of -lah, but it strikes me it would be used here:
alamatlah, (yang) Yono tulis, or even the passive, alamatlah yang ditulis
Yono.
    A month or more back, I posted on Kash cleft sentences-- of the sort "it
was X that Y did", e.g. keso, ta yu mapole nahan (colloq. keso, na, ta
(ma)pole nahan) 'it's cheese that I can't eat'.  Matt Pearson informed me
these weren't true clefts, but merely topicalization.  But that's as close
as I can get.

>i'm interested in how kash manages this because i wanted
>an indonesian-like construction , i.e., reversing to OSV,
>but i had a problem with this because now "X Y" in tunu
>already means "X is Y" (like in indonesian but without
>the disambiguating "adalah" stuff : "X adalah Y").
>i wanted to make a clear distinction between identitive
>(X is Y), genitive (X of Y) and topic (X : Y ...), which 3 are easily--but
>only guessed from each other through "context" in indonesian.
>
>i mean: the context shows that "alamat Yono" above isn't "address is Yono"
>nor "address of Yono", but i wanted to make things even clearer.
    Seems to me Indo. uses intonation to disambiguate things like this:
dokter áli can be either Dr. Ali or Ali's doctor, but dókter, áli would only
be the emphatic of áli dókter 'Ali is a doctor'  (Kash has a verb 'to be',
but like adalah, it's not often used except in writing where precision might
be necessary.)

>apparently Kash identitive and topic are expressed with the same 0-copula
>construction while genitive is different : "house man-i" or "leaf-ni tree".
>
>apparently also the Kash subclause "kash ri..." is subject
     I should have translated the whole sentence:  The man lives in a house
with a long roof:  Kash ya/eshen ri(LOC) puna re(REL) fundoñi (its roof)
liwek. (...liwek fundoñi would be OK too, as I see I wrote before)
>so i'm interested again to know whether Kash features a
>pronoun like -n referring to the head noun.
        Mmm, no I don't think so.  /re/ is the invariant relative clause
marker and technically plays no role in the rel.clause; so:  ... the man who
saw me ...kash re mam (me) ya/tikas (he-saw);  ...the man (whom) I saw
...kash re yan (him) ma/tikas (I-saw)....  the man to whom I gave the money
...kash re ne (to him) ma/wele toye.  The closest equivalent is sort of
tangled-up English, when we say "...the man which I gave him the money".


>let me try : "roof-ni puna
>kash-i" (roof of house of man)
>no problem; it looks good.
    Yes, that would be it.

>ok, so kash uses genitive as an attributive too (-ni=of=with).
>but how do you say "the man whose house has a long roof"?
>"kash ri/re puna ?-i roof long-ni"?
Similar to the one below.  It's awkward.  kash re punaye/ni fundoñi liwek,
literally, "the man...which....to his house....its roof....(is) long.  Kash
uses the dative to express 'have' in most cases (outright ownership
excepted).
>-----------
>>suba i neju jika-n ia-n nali lono-n
>>house SUB man inhabit-O RES-S long roof-POS
>>"house it man inhabit-it it long roof-its"
>>the house where the man lives has a long roof
>        Kash:  puna(y)e [DAT] re man lives there roof long.
     i.e. punaye re kash ya/eshen riyun, fundoñi liwek  The basic sentence
is "punaye fundoñi liwek" the house has a long roof.  You're pushing me into
areas that aren't too well developed, but I _suspect_  "punaye fundoñ [no
poss.] liwek" would mean "a house has a long roof/ houses have long roofs"
(generic statement) while "punaye fundoñi (+poss) liwek" would mean "the
(definite, in context) house has a long roof".   (hmmm, thanks, you've just
taught me something about my own language! :-0  )