Re: Possession and genitivity
| From: | Patrick Littell <puchitao@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, April 30, 2005, 2:27 |
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On 4/29/05, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> How do prepositions fit into this; in languages that have prepositions
> which govern the genitive case, are these prepositions generally derived
> from nouns?
This definitely appears to be the case. Not every language with
adpositions governing the genitive, or every adposition in such a
language, but I think the generalization is largely valid. In some of
these languages, the adpositions still retain other nouny properties,
such as the ability to take case themselves. I believe Ladakhi
(Tibeto-Burman) has this feature, for example.
I don't think the converse generalization holds; many languages have
adpositions derived from nouns that govern cases other that genitive
(or other such adnominal cases).
Pat
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