Re: Possessive Suffixes

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.  Take Finnish, for
example.  The modern possessive suffixes there are:

1sg -ni
2sg -si
3sg -nsA
1pl -mme
2pl -nne
3pl -nsA

The independent Finnish pronouns are:

1sg minä, stem minu-
2sg sinä, stem sinu-
3sg hän, stem häne-
1pl me, stem meidä- (dia. medä- or mejä-)
2pl te, stem teidä- (dia. tedä- or tejä-)
3pl he, stem heidä- (dia. hedä- or hejä-)

Things aren't quite so clear here, but some of the obscurity is from later
sound changes in Finnish, particularly /ti/ > /si/ and /sV-/ > /hV-/.  Even
so, however, there seems to be an element in /n/ that is present in the
formation of all the possessive suffixes except 2sg.  While it could be
some sort of derivational affix, I think it's more likely to be the result
of the accusative and genitive cases of nouns used with the possessive
suffixes.  So, for example:

Nom. jalka-mi 'my foot'
Acc. jalkam-mi ' '
Gen. jalkan-mi > jalkani 'of my foot'

In most cases, the acc. and/or gen. forms, originally allophonic variants,
came to be generalized.

>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?

>_mou_ is an enclitic form of the full pronoun _emou_ [genitive]. These
>enclitics were, even in ancient Greek, pronounced as one with the word to
>which they were attached & could never appear alone; i.e. _pate:r mou_ was
>a single phonological word.
>
>The former method died out in Hellenistic Greek and only the method using
>enclitics survives in modern Greek.
>
>Although enclitics and suffixes are the more common developments, a Google
>search will quickly find languages with possessive procltics (preposited
>clitics) and possessive prefixes.
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.

- Rob

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