Re: Possessive Suffixes

Hello!

On 5/19/05, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 May 2005 16:00:37 +0300, Julia "Schnecki" Simon
> <helicula@...> wrote:
[snip snip]

> >First of all, I should probably introduce myself... My name
> >is Julia Simon, I've been lurking on the list for a while,
> >and now I'm finally writing something. :-)
>
> Welcome! :)
Thank you. :-)

> >I'm a linguist by training -- mostly computational
> >linguistics and comparative Indo-European linguistics, but
> >I'm interested in pretty much anything that looks even
> >vaguely linguistic. ;-) I work as a technical writer,
> >though (in telecommunications, if anyone's interested).
>
> Nice!  My training is in computer science, but linguistics is something of
> a hobby of mine.
I started out as a computer science student, with CL as my minor, and
then switched after a few months because I wanted more linguistics.

> >My native language is German, but I've spent so many years
> >in a mostly English-speaking environment that I'm well on
> >my way to bilingualism. And I've been living in Finland for
> ><mumblemumble> years, so I'm trying to do my best with
> >Finnish and (the local variant of) Swedish as well. But
> >like any good linguist, I strive to know fascinating bits
> >and pieces of as many other languages as possible. ;-)
>
> Tervetuloa! :)
No kiitos kiitos. :-)

> >Unfortunately I haven't managed to create an entire
> >language of my own yet... I have snippets lying around (a
> >phoneme system here, a morphology there, some ideas on
> >syntax, diachronic changes, ... well, you get the idea).
> >Well, maybe some day. Until then, I'll just keep having fun
> >playing around with phoneme systems, inflectional and
> >syntax patterns, and so on.
>
> There's plenty of time, don't worry!
That's what I'd like to believe. Unfortunately I seem to have more and
more project fragments as time passes, but not necessarily more
finished projects... But I can still hope that some day, my fragments
will reach critical mass and sort of implode into a number of
almost-complete projects, hopefully with some mature conlangs among
them. ;-)

[more snippage]

> Yes, Finnish is quite an interesting language.
That's the main reason why I moved to Finland... :-)

(And then I found that Finnish isn't all that exotic and that much of
its vocabulary is Indo-European with some "funny" sound changes, or
lack thereof, and now I'm getting on everybody's nerves with my claims
that *obviously* Finnish _kaura_ is the same as German _Hafer_, are
you *blind* or what?)

[3sg possessive suffix -nsA/-Vn]
>
> >Sometimes I wonder if maybe the -Vn variant is the original
> >one, perhaps with an allomorph -nV or -in or whatever that
> >could be attached to forms ending in a consonsant, and the
> >-nsA variant developed because it's too easy to confuse
> >possessive -Vn with the illative suffix -Vn (as in taloon
> >"into the/a house"). No idea where the -sA comes from,
> >though. -- But I digress.
>
> It seems like the -sA part is from the original 3sg pronoun *sä ~ *s'ä, and
> the -n element is from the genitive and/or the accusative plus the 3sg
> affix.
Ah. So the -Vn variant would be that -n element *without* the *sä; or
the vowel lengthening could be a reflex of a dropped-off *sä. (I
prefer the latter, but that may just be a late result of being
bombarded with "Ersatzdehnung, Ersatzdehnung, Ersatzdehnung" in those
IE linguistics classes... ;)

[snip]

> >The impression is of course spoiled a little by those
> >suffixes that don't quite match, namely
> >
> >  (hänen) talo+nsa "his/her/its house" : luke+e "he/she/it
> >                                                     reads"
> >  (heidän) talo+nsa "their house" : luke+vat "they read"
> >  talo+nne "your(pl) house" : lue+tte "you(pl) read"
> >
> >The underlying forms of the verb suffixes are -V for 3sg,
> >-vAt for 3pl, and -tte for 2pl. So we end up with
>
> From what I know, the 3pl verb ending is the same as the plural active
> participle ending.  I've also read that the Old Finnish 3sg verb ending was
> commonly -p(i).
Yes, I've seen 3sg verb forms ending in -pi in 16th century texts
(_ombi_ "is", modern form _on_; _sanopi_ "says", modern form _sanoo_;
and so on). And as far as I know, the Estonian suffix -b is indeed
related to that Finnish suffix. (Apparently the 3du in Saami has a
similar suffix, but I don't want to speculate about how that fits in.)

> >    possessive    person/agent  independent pronoun (nom.)
> >1sg  -ni (< *-mi)  -n (< *-m?)   minä
> >2sg  -si (< *-ti)  -t            sinä (< *tinä or some such)
> >3sg  -nsA/-Vn      -V            hän
> >1pl  -mme          -mme          me
> >2pl  -nne          -tte          te
> >3pl  -nsA/-Vn      -vAt          he
> >
> ><insert wacky theory about double-consonant correspondences
> >and how -nne is really -tte in disguise, or maybe vice
> >versa; and another, even wackier, theory about how
> >possessive -Vn and inflectional -V both lengthen the
> >preceding vowel and therefore *must* be related>
>
> Given Finnish consonant gradation, it seems logical that the 2pl possessive
> ending developed from *-n-te / *-m-te, giving *-nte whence regularly *-nne.
But why is the 2pl verb suffix -tte and not *-te? Maybe -nne comes not
from *-n-te but from *-n-tte; or there was some interference from the
1pl suffix with its long consonant...?

> >(The 3pl suffix doesn't quite "fit"; the form seems to be
> >related to the active present participle. In different
> >contexts, the form "lukevat" can be analyzed as luke+vat
> >(read+3PL) "they read" or as luke+va+t
> >(read+PRES.PCPL.ACT+PL) "reading" (or "the reading ones",
> >or whatever translation goes best with the context):
> >
> >  pojat lukevat "the boys are reading"
> >  lukevat pojat "the reading boys"
>
> Yes, that is probably where it came from -- a predicate adjective
> formation.  The same sort of thing happened with the English "present
> progressive" and probably also with the "preterite".
And in Slavic languages too -- I remember everybody's confusion in
Russian class when we learned that in the past tense, verbs show
gender instead of person agreement...

> If you look at Estonian, the 3sg verb ending there is -b, which must be
> cognate with the Old Finnish ending -p(i).
Yes, I think so too (see above).

[rest snipped]

Regards,
			Julia 8-)

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)