possessors (was: Re: More about the morphology...)

On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Fabian wrote:

> >                    long form               short form
> >
> > my (inanimate)     -(u)darc /(@)d@Rk/
> >                                            -(a)c /(@)k/
> > my (animate)       -(u)tarc /(@)t@Rk/
>
> This morphology looks decidedly Arabic. Here is the Maltese version:
>
> ktiebi - my book
> ktiebek - thy book
> ktiebhu - his/its book
> ktiebha - her/its book
> ktiebna - our book
> ktiebkom - your book
> ktiebhom - their book
Indicating the person/number of the possessor by adding a suffix
to the possessed noun is actually extremely common.  There's nothing
peculiarly Arabic about it.  Malagasy does it too, as does my conlang
Tokana:

Malagasy:    ny tranoko      "my house"
             ny tranonao     "your house"
             ny tranony      "his/her/their house"
             ny tranonay     "our (Excl) house"
             ny tranontsika  "our (Incl) house"
             ny tranonareo   "your (Pl) house"

Tokana:      te katiama      "my house"
             te katiako      "your house"
             te katiana      "his/her house"
             te katiakma     "our house"
             te katiakia     "your (Pl) house"
             te katiasa      "their house"

(Note that "ny" is the Malagasy definite article "the", while
"te" is the Tokana singular inanimate determiner.)

This strategy for indicating the possessor seems to be
particularly common among verb-initial languages like Malagasy,
as well as languages which were once verb-initial and preserve
a lot of verb-initial characteristics, like Arabic and Tokana.
But it's also widespread among languages of other types.  I would
even venture to say that it's just as common as having a separate
set of possessor pronouns, like English "my", "your", etc.

Matt.