Re: Possession and genitivity

On Friday, April 29, 2005, at 03:11 , Joseph Bridwell wrote:

>> be used for more abstract relationships (shape
>> classifiers, for instance: "a sheet of paper"
>> is "lhazhi rjaxat" with "paper" in the genitive
>> case).
>
> This is sometimes called the partitive or false possessive.
I've always known it as the 'partitive' - at least for the last 50+ years.

But "false possessive" seems a perverse term to me. There are plenty of
natlangs that simply do _not_ use the same construction for possession and
for the partitive. One such language is spoken on this island - it's
called Welsh   :)

In Welsh possession is shown by simple juxtaposition:
llyfr y bachgen
book the boy     = the boy's book

But the partitive is always shown with the use of the preposition _o_ :
siten   o  bapur
a-sheet of paper

_o_ is *never* used to show possession - the two concepts quite different.
  Welsh is not unique in keeping the two concepts distinct.

Ray
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