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Re: Unattested... but possible?

From:Joseph a.k.a Buck <zhosh@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 23, 2005, 16:49
> The interactions between aspect, ergativity/accusativity, and > noun/verb choices is complex in these languages, and I don't > claim to understand most of it.
Ditto re: any semblance of me really understanding it in Maya
> laj jman te jts'i'e. > finish my-buy the my-dog > "I bought the dog."
Maya: Tin manah le in pek a' complete my buy-it this my dog (le, le...a', le...o' are used to mark some noun phrases)
> la smil sti' te jmute te jjwane > finish his-kill his-eat the my-bird the Juan > "Juan killed my bird in order to eat it."
Tu kinsah le in ch'iich' u ti'al u hanik Completed he cause-to-die this/that my bird he for he eat-it hwan
> action in the perfect is expressed by a verb marked > ergatively, but one in the imperfect takes the nominalizing > suffix and is marked nominatively.
In Maya, transitivity/intransitivity interweaves with this, complicating it a bit more.
> Add that to the fact that body-part nouns are pretty much > always possessed ("eye" is very rare; it's always "my eye" or > "your eye" or "his eye") and you can probably see why Thenqol > and Nenshar remind me so much of them!
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) Perhaps the Ch'ol fixation on possession reflects a world view that things possessable should be? 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>)

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Patrick Littell <puchitao@...>