Re: MNCL5

On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:26 AM, Jeffrey Jones wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:52:33 -0500, Eric Christopherson
> <rakko@...> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 21, 2007, at 10:34 PM, Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> 5. relational noun stems: the patientive is used for the possessum
>>> and the thematic is used for the possessor; the verb af- "belong to"
>>> also follows this pattern.
>>>
>>> Jona Tomok atune. - "John isn't Tom's father."
>>> Zo hunda Jonok afe. - "The dog belongs to John."
>>
>> Cool! I'm working on a conlang that does at least some possessive
>> expressions (e.g. relatives, body parts, maybe houses and other
>> things) exactly like that, except that it uses ergative and
>> absolutive. I've been a little concerned though about using the
>> ergative for the possessum, because it doesn't seem active/agentive
>> enough to warrant it. I might introduce another case (like your
>> thematic), but I don't want to complicate the case system that much.
>
> What about ergative for the possessor and absolutive for the
> possessum?
I've thought of that, but I prefer using the absolutive for the
possessor. Part of it is that I want to have absolutive argument
affixes on the words, but not ergative; if possessors were ergative,
I'd have to use a separate word (which I don't want to do).

>
>> [snip]
>>> Non-verb Forms
>>>
>>> Non-verb forms have a "subject", which is not expressed, and, if not
>>> monovalent, an "object" (or possessor), which takes the genitive
>>> case.
>>
>> I'm confused by this section. The heading is "non-verb forms" but it
>> talks mostly about verb stems. Are you talking about nominalizations
>> or other non-verbal derivatives of verb stems?
>
> You could say so. Verb stems (such as ponc- "hit", dorm- "sleep",
> and ruy-
>  "red") and noun stems (such as am- "mother" and hund- "dog") take
> the same
> set of final suffixes (more or less) without intervening morphemes.
> Verb stems
> taking non-verb finals correspond to participles (roughly).
>
> Videk dormo hundok. - "I saw a sleeping dog."
>
>> Also, are the "subject" and "object" in these forms shown by the
>> agentive, patientive, and thematic cases? Or do they belong to some
>> other system?
>
> Other. Probably "subject" and "object" are the wrong terms.
>
> Kice zo Tomo poncvo cika? - "Where is the child Tom hit?"
>
> The -o on Tom- is the genitive singular final (the other -o's are
> adjectival
> finals).
>
> Does that help?
I think so.