Re: [tied] Re: Nominative Loss. A strengthened theory?

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 02:48:16 +0000, Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>In the construction I have in mind, *wlkWos would be the subject,
>and thus in the nominative; we have here a clause. It may be that
>this construction does not occur in any language; we seem to lack
>interested students of grammar.
>
>In the normal possessor + possession _phrase_, I don't think there
>is a fixed rule as to whether the possessor needs to be marked io
>the possession is marked. In Chickasaw, the possessor is unmarked,
>and both the antigenitive and other case markings may be attached to
>the possession. I think the same applies to Basque, but I could be
>wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'antigenitive', but in Basque,
the construction is:

otsoaren begia "the wolf's eye" (absolutive)
otsoaren begiak "the wolf's eye" (ergative)
otsoaren begiaren "of the wolf's eye" (genitive)
otsoaren begiari "to the wolf's eye" (dative)
otsoaren begian "in the wolf's eye" (locative)
etc.

These are all definite forms. They can be abbreviated as:

otsoarena
otsoarenak
ostsoarenaren
otsoarenari
otsoarenean

if it's clear from context what the possessum is.

>It occurred to me that tatpurushas might be examples. When the
>first element is a thematic stem, why does the thematic vowel
>surface as -o- rather than as -e-?

Can you tell the difference in Sanskrit?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...