Re: Unattested... but possible?

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:49:35 -0800, Joseph a.k.a Buck <zhosh@...> wrote:

> I'm not sure how rare this is. Tsalagi (Cherokee) has it if the body-part is
> in place:
> tsikto'li (my eye), hikto'li (your eye), akto'li (his eye)
It's found all over the Mesoamerican sprachbund, I know, even in
non-Mayan languages.

In Smith's Manual of Spoken Tzeltal (Ch'ol-Tzeltalan, Mayan), he notes
that he had trouble getting the absolutive for body parts and other
inalienably possessed things.  Instead of "head" (jolol?) it would be
"our head(s)" (jjoltik?).  I think he used "hand" as the example but I
can't remember the root for "hand".

> Perhaps the Ch'ol fixation on possession reflects a world view that things
> possessable should be?
I've always worked on the assumption that it was just random...
"drift" might be the word.  Unlike, say, the grammaticalization of
respect in East Asian languages, where there's clearly a cultural
cause.  I've thought about it, but I can't seem to puzzle out what'd
be special about Mesoamerican culture that would lead to it.

> My Bez Dis's places emphasis on possession - acquired, habitual, intrinsic -
> whether the possession is a noun or a verb:
> sifil (my acquaintance), tifil (my friend), tsifil (my brother)
> sipáy (I farm/till <something>), tipáy (I often farm <st>), tsipáy (I always
> farm <st>)
I like this a lot.  Is the tsi- a fusion of ti- and si-, or is it
fricative = aquired, stop = habitual, affricate = intrinsic?  Is it
like this in the other persons (ci-, xi-, cxi-, maybe?)
--
Patrick Littell
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