Re: Possession and genitivity

On Saturday, April 30, 2005, at 04:14 , Herman Miller wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
>
>> On Friday, April 29, 2005, at 05:19 , Herman Miller wrote:
>>> I'm still trying to sort out how possession works in Minza, but the
>>> locative case is used in some instances. The genitive case tends to 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 not what I consider to be 'possession'. It seems to me to be an
>> extension of the _partitive_ use of the genitive, cf.
>> granum salis "grain of salt", uini gutta "drop of wine", panis pondo
>> quattuor "4 pounds of bread"
>
> I wasn't trying to imply that this use of the genitive case has anything
> to do with possession (actually I was trying to point out a usage of the
> genitive that dídn't have anything to do with possession, in contrast
> with the use of the locative case instead of the genitive case for
> possession, but I guess that wasn't clear enough.)
Nope, you were clear (I've read your words again) - 'twas just me being
dozey. Sorry  :=(


>> In Latin the genitive is used for the object of certain verbs (probably
>> development of the partitive use):
>
> Hmm... being an ergative language, Minza always uses the absolutive case
> for the object of verbs, but it might be interesting to use the genitive
> for the súbject of certain verbs.... Particularly ones where the subject
> isn't much like an agent ("seri" -- "to resemble")....
>
> currently:
>
> sera     magwá   no   fulgha-t zaghi-t
> resemble fog-ABS with soup-GEN peas-GEN
> "the fog resembles pea soup" (intransitive, with "fog" as subject)
>
> alternatively
> sera     magwá-t fulgha   zaghi-t
> resemble fog-GEN soup-ABS peas-GEN
> "the fog resembles pea soup" (genitive as subject)
Interesting - I think I prefer the second version. The 'with' relationship
seems to me a bit strained in the 1st version.

>> 1. verbs of 'filling' and 'lacking' - complere (to fill), abundare (to )
>> ,
>> egere (to lack), indigere (), carere ();
>
> hmm.... it seems like "lack" could be a good candidate for a Minza verb
> that uses the genitive case in some way (although its antonym "have" is
> a regular transitive verb).
The same with Latin  :)

Ray
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