Re: Nominative Loss. A strengthened theory?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> > > > No, it would be an 'antigenitive', a construct state.
> > >
> > > Yes, I'm beginning to see that, though it feels *very*

awkward.

> > And
> > > I do not really understand that a relative pronoun could be

the

> > > thing owned by anybody or anything.
> >
> > In this respect, apart from case (or whatever) the relative

clause

> > if not very different from 'which the wolf has',
> >
> > > This funny thing, "antigenitive", would require to be combined
> > with
> > > a genitive, would it not? In that case *wlkWos- (with

pronouns,

> > *tes-
> > > ) would be a genitive. Is this right?
> >
> > 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.
>
> But "the man's arm" is not sensibly "the man which the arm has",

as

> if the arm owned the man.

No, it's "the arm which the man has", but with 'which' in the 'anti-
genitive', 'the man' in the nominative, and the verb vanishing.

> > 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.
>
> Well, *wlkWos, whatever it is, is not unmarked in *wlkWos-yo.

*wlkWos-yo is genitive. There are a couple of Hebrew constructs
which show a suffix, such as, if you'll forgive the SAMPA, the
construct /?a_evi:/ of /?a:v/ 'father', ('_e' means extra short.) as
in the biblical name
Abimelech, literally 'king's father'. There is no marking on the
second element, /"melex/.

> > In Arabic, the possessor is in the genitive, and case markers

are

> > applied to the construct form. In Hebrew, there are no case
> > markers, and where _possession_ is not indicated by the
> > construction, the suffixes for pronominal possessors are added

to

> > the noun not in the construct.
>
> Isn't that just rules pertaining to the use of the article and so

of

> no relevance here?

Not the article. I was referring to the odd-looking
construction /har qoDSo:/, literally 'hill of his holiness',
meaning 'his holy hill'.

> > Hungarian has a sort of anti-genitive; the construct is
> >
> > possessor[-GEN] + possession-HIS
> >
> > HIS = 3rd person possessive suffix.
> > GEN = 'genitive' ( = 'dative') marker
> >
> > Note the optionality of the marking.
>
> The optional marking is with the dative case ending. I do not see
> the relevance. Surely there were no possessive endings sitting on
> the possessum in PIE helping to show the construction.

Nothing that seems to have survived - unless a now vanished suffix
explained why we see *yo rather than *ye.

>
> > In the English analogues I gave, the possessor is nominative or
> > accusative.
> >
> > It occurred to me that tatpurushas might be examples.
>
> Of what?

Fair point, my train of thought doesn't work. I find it hard to get
my brain to work with marked construct states. I internalised the
Hebrew construct as a form slurred by end stress on the whole
compound, but that's not the whole story.

Richard.