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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