Re: Unattested... but possible?

> 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.
I suppose the seemingly spurious possessives in Ch'ol - " te jts'I'e " -
could be similar to "She cooked dinner from John and me" becoming "She
cooked dinner for John and I" from the over emphasis of " and-I " from
classes in English.

Ch'ol is/was lowland Maya, and Maya has similar structures. "te" can mean
"here/there" in Maya. I wonder if the ethnographer had pointed to a feral
cur, would the uttered phrase have been " laj jman te ts'i'e " or " laj jman
ts'i'e ". Assumed context can blur both response and interpretation.

Does anyone here know if this structure exists in non-Mayan American
languages?

As for intrinsic possession of something like "eye", "head", "hand", perhaps
it came over with a wave on those who became the indigenous peoples of the
Western Hemisphere, and is more a remnant than a case of drift? My in-depth
knowledge of such languages doesn't stray far beyond Tsalagi.

> I like this a lot.  Is the tsi- a fusion of ti- and si-, or
> is it fricative = acquired, stop = habitual, affricate =
The tsi- did indeed come from a fusion of si- and ti-

> intrinsic?  Is it like this in the other persons (ci-, xi-,
> cxi-, maybe?)
Alas, nothing no elegant. Skipping the evolution of Bez Dis's, the persons
are
1s = -i-
2s = -e-
3s = -a-
3s = -o-
3s = -u-

There's no gender in Dis, but one can say
satín sopib suk = he gives his book to him
and know that these are three different people.

Amongst the suffices are
s- = acquired
t- = habitual
ts- = intrinsic

I elected early in Dis's evolution to indicate plurals by changing initial
consonants from unvoiced to voiced (more or less). Thus
si- = I
zi- = we
etc.

Dis also has
si- + se- --> sye
ti- + te- --> tye
tsi- + tse- --> che

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