Re: New Boreanesian Possession Types

On Sun, 31 Jan 1999 09:52:42 +0100 Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
writes:
>Maybe its just me, but I fail to see the difference between
>potential 'problems' in the possessive constructions of English and
>the possessive constructions in Rokbeigalmki. The "of" construction
>(or genitive) requires just as much pragmatic determination. So if
>_tze_ means "of-you > your", then Rokbeigalmki's _tze_ merely
>denotes that a relationship exists between you and some other noun -
>the relationship does not have to be *true* possession. The exact
>nature of the relationship is just as pragmatically determined as
>English. For instance, when you use _tze_ in a phrase like "your
>house", the phrase could refer to (depending on context) the house
>that you possess, the house that you built, the house that you are
>suppose to build, the house that you live in or lived in, the house
>that you just mentioned through our discourse, etc.
That's what i'm saying, that it's *not* different....the "of" is totally
defined by the context, etc, of the sentence.

>>Just as another i guess interesting use of "of"....in a
>>Rokbeigalmki full name, including relations, _of_ always refers to
>>the place you are a citizen of *now*, while _from_ refers to
>>homeland. For instance, Stiigiyus (Stygius), my ElendorMUSH
>>character, 's full name ends with:
>>tza'^tzraap^anduwin-a
>>nga'tolosed
>>of the Anduin Village
>>from Tolosed
>The paragraph above seems to indicate that there are indeed several
>interpretations for the genitive in Rokbeigalmki. In fact, in the
>example you give after the paragraph, the type of relation appears
>(to me at least) to be pragmatically determined. If I'm wrong with
>all this, then are you perhaps saying that there are grammatical
>rules that explicitely state what kind of relationship the genitive
>constructions in Rokbeigalmki's refer to? If so, what are these
>rules? It'd be interesting to see them!
Exactly...maybe i was vague in the last message, but i was saying that
it's just as vague in Rokbeigalmki as it is in English.  There aren't
grammatical rules for what kind of relationship it can refer to, except
in the case above, where it's differentiated between "from" and "of" a
place, unlike in English and other languages.  A Rokbeigalmki-speaker
could get confused as to the meaning if someone asked them in English
"where're you from?", because that usually signifies in Rokbeigalmki
_tza'pawa ez?_ (of) and not _nga'pawa ez?_ (from), what they might think.

>-Kristian- 8-)
>

-Stephen (Steg)
 "hhalomot zeh b'emet"

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