Re: coexisting case question

On Sep 9, 2008, at 12:40 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Eldin Raigmore writes:
>> ...
>>> 'Construct state'.  It is a different category from 'case'.
>>
>> Doesn't "state" also have "definite" and "indefinite", and/or
>> possibly "specific/referential" and "nonspecific/nonreferential", as
>> values?  Or is that true only in some languages with a "construct
>> state", but not in, for instance, Arabic?  Or am I just confused?
>
> Definite/indefinite is precisely the point here: the construct state
> has the same noun form as the definite state, only instead of an
> article, a different defining clause comes into play: the genitive
> noun.
Not quite. Feminine nouns in -a take -at in the construct, but not in
the definite. (I'm not sure if other nouns besides feminines in -a
have a different marking...)

However, AIUI a noun in the construct state is understood to be
semantically definite (there is a circumlocution that must be used to
say "a book of the father"). Construct state nouns are not allowed to
take the definite article <al->; nor can they take the final <-n>
that indefinites sometimes take.

>
>> ...
>> I wasn't aware of that!  What're a few good uses of nouns in
>> construct state and genitive case simultaneously?
>> ...
>
> It occurs regularly in chained genitive constructions:
>
>   father's book's page
>
> 'book' would be in both construct state and genitive case.
>
> **Henrik
Alex Fink wrote:
>>> But for quantities:
>>> I-NOM hold glass-REVGEN wine-ACC.
>>> I am holding a glass of wine.
>>>
>>> We might even label this last example as "quantitative case".
>>> What's in a name, but it looks a lot more plausible like this :)
>>>
>>
>> This actually looks like what's called the partitive case in Finnish
>> and maybe some other languages.
>>
>
> But it's the reverse of the partitive case, no?  Just as the construct
> (being agnostic as to whether that's a case or a state or what,
> which surely
> is language-dependent) is the reverse of the genitive.  It would
> still be
> glass-ACC wine-PART using a partitive.
Oops; you're right.

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