Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

[Padraic Brown <pbrown@POLARIS.UMUC.EDU>]

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, FFlores wrote:

> Padraic Brown <pbrown@POLARIS.UMUC.EDU> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, FFlores wrote:
> >
> > > in your conlangs? Myself, I tend to use the good ol'
> > > genitive case, but in Ciravesu I simply resorted
> > > to juxtaposition (head-final).
> >
> > Coincidentally, it's also one of the ways Brithenig does it.  It has the
> > standard Romance 'X de Y' form: la gas di'll of (the man's house); but
> > also cas ill of, which I think answers to the Welsh form.
>
> Sorry, I think one of us is wrong here. In "man's house",
> as I see it, "house" is the head, so _la gas di'll of_ is
> head-first. Ciravesu is head-final: _cava enta_ "man house"
> = "man's house".

Sorry.  I seem to have snipped the bit I was replying to, which being the
paragraph on a similarity between Welsh and Semitic.  Ray gave a bunch of
nice examples (in Welsh) of the genitive construction; and it is _that_
Welsh construction which Brithenig is similar to.

>
> [snip]
> > The second kind of
> > possession in Kernu uses the rather complicated construction with the
> > preposition 'do', which means to or at: "dol omen la domu" litterally
> > means 'at the man the house'; and is used with 'aver' (there is) and
> > certain other constructions.  So "the man owns a house" is "dol omen ay
> yn
> > domu" (at the man there is a house).
>
> That's a nice construction. I think I've seen a similar
> one somewhere. Not exactly the same, but Ciravesu uses
> dative case for possessive pronouns: _ce_ "he", _ceo enta_
> "his house" (common nouns use juxtaposition only, as I said
> above).
>

It's a wonky construction.  Being a preposition, "do" can take clitic
personal endings; it must _always_ come first in a phrase or sentence,
thus wreaking havoc with other elements that must _always_ come first; it
wreaks havoc on word order, upsetting the normal SOV flow into OVS.

Padraic.

>
> --Pablo Flores
>