Re: Mandarin demonstratives (Re: Charyan novel! (was: Re: [CONLANG] I'm back!))

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 10:54:30AM -0500, Adam Walker wrote:
[snip]
> BTW, what does Hokkien do with this??
Hokkien does it similarly (although perhaps even more weirdly :-P)

1) tua3 gua4 chi1 peng2 (in my idiolect; probably "chi1 tau1"
                         elsewhere)
   at   me   this side

2) tua3 lu4 hi1  peng2 (or "hi1 tau1")
   at   you that side

It's definitely not possessive, as Hokkien would always stick the
*genitive marker (-e) on all possessive constructs. It would sound
extremely weird if you said
        tua3 gua4-e chi1 peng2

Acceptable usage of the possessive is when you say things like
        tua3 gua4-e chu3
        at   my     house.
But definitely not in the former case.

[Note: _hi1_ in my idiolect might be a contraction of _hia1_ or _hia4_??
Anyway, it's a clipped tone, sorry I just can't sort out those tone
numbers :-P  I think I really need to dig through those old emails where
Douglas Koller & I sorted out those tone numbers, and get it firmly down
in my memory.]

[*Note: I'm not sure what's the right orthographic representation of the
-e genitive marker; but it's pronounced [E:], tone 3 (or was it a clipped
tone? I can't get those clipped tone numbers straight).]


T

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In a world without fences, who needs Windows and Gates? -- Christian Surchi

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