Re: Possession and genitivity

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.)

> 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)

> 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).

> With verbs of accusing, condemning & acquitting, the person who is accused
> &c is in the accusative  (if the verb is active) case, but what they are
> accused of, condemned for or acquitted of is expressed by the genitive, e.
> g.
> furti ac repetundarum condemnatus etst = he was condemned for theft and
> extortion.
> parricidi eum incusat - he accused him of parricide.
Yes, this makes sense; somehow I've never happened to have words like
"accuse" in my languages, but now I'm going to have to think of how to
handle them...

> Prepositions governing the genitive in Greek arise from two sources:
> 1. the older layer of 'adverbials' loosely attached to cases; these were
> originally associated with the _ablative_ which became fused with the
> genitive in Greek. These are used only as adpositions in post-Homeric
> Greek or as prefixes in compound verbs.
> 2. Adverbs, which cannot be used as verbal prefixes, but could be used as
> prepositions with the genitive, cf. English 'outside of the house'.
>
> Lstin had no prepositions governing the genitive.
Hmm... Minza doesn't have a distinct ablative case, and the preposition
"za" (from) is associated with the genitive, so this seems like a
reasonable model.

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