Re: Possessive Suffixes

On Wednesday, May 18, 2005, at 09:08 , Rob Haden wrote:

> On Wed, 18 May 2005 19:27:24 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
> wrote:
>
>>> That's what I was wondering about.  How do languages develop possessive
>>> pronominal suffixes from independent pronouns?
>>
>> Presumably: independent pronoun --> clitic --> affix.
>
> Yes, but sometimes the picture isn't that clear.
I would not expect it always to be - such is the nature of natlangs   :)

Things like sound changes (which you mention) and phonetic attrition have
a habit of upsetting things - and both clitics and affixes, by their very
nature tend to be unstressed and subject to such attrition.

Both sound changes and phonetic attrition invariably lead to the
development of irregular forms and analogy then works to reduce the
irregularities. It is also likely that 'analogical interference' with verb
endings could take place. Also older pronouns, which were the source of
the clitics/ affixes may have become obsolete and been replaced by newer
ones - this is probably most likely with 3rd person forms where, for
example, demonstratives can easily take on the role of personal pronoun.

> Take Finnish, for example.
For specific languages, one simply has to have some idea of the history of
the language to be able to discuss the details. I was just suggesting the
broad outline.

> suffixes.  So, for example:
>
> Nom. jalka-mi 'my foot'
> Acc. jalkam-mi ' '
> Gen. jalkan-mi > jalkani 'of my foot'
>
Maybe - but I would expect /n/ + /m/ --> /mm/, and Finish does have
geminated consonants. We need someone with better knowledge of Finnish,
especially with knowledge of the history of the language. BJP?

I've just taken a brief look at similar data from Turkish & Hausa - yes,
it is not just a simple independent pronoun --> clitic --> affix, But I
think that in both cases, the apparent anomalies cannot be explained with
some knowledge of the past development of the languages in question. I don'
t think much more can be generalized than what I have written in the two
paragraphs above. The details will surely be specific to individual
languages or groups of related languages.

>> The possessives in modern Greek are written as encltics, but they are
>> pronounced as 'one word' with the word they are attached to, so they are
>> all but suffixes.
>>
>> Actually they go right back to ancient Greek. Possessive then could be
>> shown either with independent possessive adjectives or by postfixed
>> clitics (enclitics), thus:
>> ho  emos pate:r
>> the my   father [nominative]
>> _or_
>> ho  pate:r mou
>> the father of-me
>
> That would be pronounced /hO pa.'ti4.mu/, right?
Not quite. A modern Greek would pronounce it /o.pa.'tir.mu/ (/o/ is lower
than [o]). In ancient Greek there was no word stress accent, it was a
pitch accent and, as far as we can tell, in Athens in the 5th cent BCE it
was something like /ho.pa.tE:_Hr.mu:/ or possible still /ho.pa.tE:_Hr.mo:/
.

The modern Greek BTW is |o pateras mou| (where |e| really does represent
epsilon, _not_ eta) /o.pa.'te.ras.mu/ where /ras.mu/ is pronounced [razmu]
and /o/ and /e/ are rather lower than [o] and [e].

[snip]
> Makes sense.  As always, written language lags behind the spoken. :P
> Perhaps, if Greek survives into the future, one day the possessive
> suffixes
> will be written as they are spoken.
Conservatism, for fairly obvious reasons, plays a string role in Greek
orthography  :)


Ray
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