--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> > The nearest example I can find is subject possessor raising in
> > Chickasaw ( http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~smithma/chickasaw.PDF ):
> >
> > Jan im-ofi'-at illi-tok
> > Jan DAT-dog-NOM die-PERF
> > 'Jan's dog died.'
> >
> > Jan-at im-ofi'-at illi-tok
> > Jan-NOM DAT-dog-NOM die-PERF
> > 'Jan's had her dog die.'
> >
> > NOM = nominative marker
> > DAT = dative marker
> > PERF = perfect tense marker
> >
> > Unless I've got hold of the wrong end of the subject, its
> accusative
> > marker indicates focus, which is reminiscent of a suggested
> meaning
> > of the Nostratic noun affix *m!
> Thank you, Richard. Could you explain this so I understand it? It
> looks important. Is Jan a girl, or is the 'her' mentioned a third
> party?
She's a girl. The two sentences have the same basic meaning, but
the longer form emphasises the possessor of the dog.
> If parallel with IE, I read this to make us expect <*wlkWos-
> yos + nominative> made up of genitive + inflected form of the
> relative pronoun. Is this correct? or does it in some way support
> Glen's interpretation of *-yo as a locative or dative (of abnormal
> formation)?
Sorry, the application to PIE is more complex than I thought.
Chickasaw has fairly free word order, at least on noun phrases with
a case marking, with a preference for SOV.
Chickasaw indicates possession using the equivalent of a construct
state, here formed by prefixing 'DAT' to the possessed object. This
is the opposite of the construction seen in Welsh, French, Russian,
Turkish etc. where a preposition governs the possessor. Not all
nouns are marked for case - there is an unmarked form which is
normally used for the possessor, rather reminiscent of the
tatpurusha construction.
The first observation then is that Glen's construction is not
impossible, although admittedly fairly infrequent. (Now who's
proposing new peculiarities for pre-PIE? :) We can have an affix
turning X to is-owner-of-X, (in the same way as English 'in X' can
be seen as being is-in-X). In what follows I will call the affix
OWN. It is not unreasonable to have a construction
(Y-NOM OWN-REL [is]) X
meaning Y's X. (REL = relative stem.) Case and number markers on X
present no problem, and we have a certain freedom of word order. We
would have
Simple form: Y OWN-X-ARB
Complex form: Y-NOM OWN-REL X-ARB
where ARB is an arbitrary case and number marking.
I wish I knew whether this 'not unreasonable' complex construction
actually occurs. So what might the phonetic form of this prefix
be? From tatpurushas and Semitic constructs, one might wildly
suggest zero! I have no idea whether the connection, if any, would
be areal or genetic.
Abbreviating 'is-owner-of' to 'OWN' ('DAT' is too specific to
Chickasaw), it converts
Y OWN-X-NOM
to
Y-NOM OWN-X-NOM
*If* we can see OWN-X-NOM as an attribute, we can then expand this
to
Y-NOM REL-NOM OWN-X-NOM
To make the key point, if OWN is phonetically zero, the most general
forms suggested by Chickasaw are:
1. Y-NOM REL X-ARB (construct rather than genitive for possession)
2. Y-NOM REL-NOM X-NOM (subject possessor raising)
The form you had been suggesting, in keeping with the habits of the
Classical IE languages, is
3. Y-GEN REL-NOM X-ARB
For animate thematic nouns, the phonetic forms in the singular,
assuming nominative in [z], are:
1. *-osyo (final /o/ rather than /e/ unexplained)
2. *-osyos (only governing a noun in the nominative)
3. *-esyos (governing a noun in any case)
Any Chickasaw experts out there?
Richard.