Re: congrammar update

At 22:32 27.7.2000 -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
> >BP Jonsson asked:
> >What is the basic meaning of this -nya morpheme?  I used to own TY
> >Indonesian, but it's gone AWOL.  I ask coz it is awfully similar to the
> >Quenya pronominal stems, which generally feature _Cye_, or _-Cya-_ as
> >possessive suffixes (which go between the stem and the case endings, as in
> >Hungarian.  I ask because I'm into the various natlang inspirations JRRT
> >may have had.  Is it possible that he had partially Javanese inspiration
>here?
> >
>Basically -nya is the Malay/Indo. marker of 3d pers. possessive (it also
>represents 3d pers. agent in the passive construction e.g. _di-dengar-nya_
>'heard by him/her', but that's a secondary use).  I don't know whether JRRT
>knew any Malay, or knew colleagues who would have known it.  It's possible,
>but it strikes me as rather far afield from his main linguistic
>interests????
Its use, as you describe it, coincides completely with that of the Quenya
pronominal suffixes, and its form coincides with the 1sg. pron.suff. of
Quenya, so frankly I feel it a bit hard to imagine a total lack of connexion!
    E.g.
        melinye (/ melin) "I love"
        melanya "my friend" (melanyan "to my friend" melan "to a friend")

There are numerous glimpses of JRRTs linguistic interests being
occasionally more far-reaching than one would have expected, so maybe he
just happened to pick up this bit of malay info in some place and digested it!



/BP 8^)>
--
  B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se mailto:melrochX@mail.com (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                    -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)