Re: Genitives NPs as Relative Clauses

En réponse à Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>:

>
> Ok, here's my question. I've been thinking of adapting this idiom for
> use in
> Erëtas but I have doubts as to its scalability. Are there any other
> languages
> that use similar constructions. Just for reference's sake, here's how I
> intend
> on representing direct and indirect relative clauses:
>
>      Direct relative clause (`that I see'):
>          ...of my seeing...
>
>      Indirect relative clauses (`that sees me'):
>          ...with my seeing...
>
> Thoughts? Could it work well?
>
Well, there are languages that use nominalisation of verbs to make relative
subclauses (Finnish - though it also has relative subclauses with finite verb
forms and relative pronouns -, Quetchua and Turkish are examples of that).
Finish can even use nominalisation for completive subclauses. So it's
absolutely not unnatural. The only problem you could have if using a genitive
structure is the orientation (subjective or objective) of the genitive. English
(like Modern French) has only subjective genitive: "my fear" is equivalent
to "I am afraid", "I fear" or "the fear that I experience", never to "somebody
is afraid of me", "the fear that somebody feels towards me". In Middle French,
possessives could also have an objective meaning (the second one I showed you),
but it was mostly restricted in poetry (I know a few examples in theater plays
in verse). I don't know if English ever allowed such a construction. The
problem is the ambiguity that it creates: will "my seeing" mean "I see",
or "(someone) sees me"? Your idea seems to make sense (at least as for the use
of the preposition "of" or "with". E.g. in Latin, the ablative - instrumental
in languages that have it - is used for such construction: vir magno animo: the
man WHO HAS a great soul - more often transformed into an adjective: vir
magnanimus -), but I'm a little concerned about the use of the possessive
adjectives to mark subject or object of the verb of the relative clause. How
will you translate a sentence like "to whom I give it", where both subject and
object are present as pronouns?

In my Azak, I solved this problem by having two different genitive cases: a
genitive subjective and a genitive objective (in fact, they are genitive
ergative and genitive absolutive, since Azak is an ergative language), and thus
two different sets of possessive adjectives.

But it's only an idea. Maybe you want to keep the ambiguity, or use other
constructions.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies