Re: Diffrent possessions

J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...> wrote:
> However, in phrases like "his arrival" I wouldn't speak of possession. It's
> a peculiarity of the English language that the actor may be expressed by a
> possessive pronoun. He does not own the arrival, but it's him who arrives.
and JS Bangs wrote:
> EG, given a verbal noun like "arrival" (i.e. a noun that refers to an
> action), most languages need a way to describe the doer of the action.
> When we actually use the verb "to arrive" we just make the doer the
> subject, but with the equivalent noun we need another way. English
> uses the possessive. Yivrian uses the ablative as the subject of
> verbal nouns. Greek uses the genitive as the subject and object of
> verbal nouns, but uses the accusative as the subject of theinfinitive.
I think possession, or at least genitivity, actually does apply: the
difficulty is in the fact that "arrival" is an abstract noun and not
a concrete one (which can be more easily "owned").  The same difficulty
should surely exist for abstract nouns that, unlike "arrival", are not
easily associated [in English] with a verb or agent:  his happiness,
his solitude, his quirks.

To the original poster: It is up to you whether you want to treat
concrete possession the same as abstract 'possession' or association.
I seem to remember that my conlang Trentish could not strictly treat
these the same way as ordinary possession, but details escape me at
present; similarly I also seem to remember that Kirumb actually has
or had a special verb form for things like this ("his being happy",
"his being arrested", "his arriving", with "his" being the [pro-dropped]
subject, and not a genitive as in the English translations).

[Yeah, it's been a long time since I've tended to my conlangs.  I've
been caught up in natlangy stuff.]

	*Muke!
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