Re: New Boreanesian Possession Types

Steg Belsky wrote:


>Matt Pearson wrote:
>>I'll answer your question with another question, preceded by a
>>comment:  In English and other languages, possessive constructions
>>can be used to denote other kinds of relations besides 'true'
>>possession (whether alienable or inalienable).  Depending on
>>context, "John's book" could refer to the book that John
>>possesses, the book that John wrote, the book that was written
>>about John, the book that John was assigned to read, the book that
>>John just mentioned in our conversation, John's favourite book,
>>etc. etc.. As far as I can tell, the expression "John's book"
>>merely denotes that the book bears some relation to John, while
>>the exact nature of that relation is pragmatically determined.
>
>Rokbeigalmki doesn't have these kind of possessability problems,
>like English, since it's just a form of an "of" construction.
>Specifically, Rokbeigalmki pronoun-posession-adjectives are really
>just degenerate forms of the word "of" + pronoun.  _tza'esh_ (of
>you) >> _tze_ (your).
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.

>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!

-Kristian- 8-)