Re: MNCL5

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?

>[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?

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