Fw: Possession/modification by simple juxtaposition

[Eitan Grossman]

I would like to respectfully disagree with Raffaele Simone. The Arabic
annexation construction, at least in Classical Arabic, is rather
*unlike*juxtaposition: apart from some few exceptions, both head and
dependent are
marked formally, the former by the absence of nunation, the latter by the
genitive case. For a full exposition of this in the Semitic languages in
general, one might look at G. Goldenberg's "Attribution in the Semitic
Languages" (*Langues orientales anciennes: philologie et linguistique* 5-6,
1995: 1-20, reprinted in *Studies in Semitic Linguistics*).

Best,
Eitan Grossman


On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Raffaele Simone <simone at uniroma3.it> wrote:

>
> In Old French, Old Spanish and, to a lesser extent, in Old Italian, the
> requested structures were widespread in texts. Today their traces are in
> toponomastics and in some expressions:
>
> Old French
> Bourg-la-Reine (< Bourg de la reine)
> Ho^tel-Dieu (< Ho^tel de Dieu)
> la part-Dieu (< la part de Dieu)
> Pont-l'Eve^que (< pont de l'éve^que)
> la Dieu merci (< merci de Dieu)
> la Complainte Rutebeuf
> etc.
>
> Old Spanish
> Puenterrey (<Puente el rey)
> Puente la reina
> etc.
>
> Old Italian
> la Dio mercé (<la mercé di Dio)
>
> Moreover, the Arabic construction called *status constructus* behaves more
> or less the same way.
> Best,
> R Simone
>
> =======================
> Dipartimento di Linguistica
> Università Roma Tre
> via Ostiense 236
> I 00146 Roma
> =======================
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> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spencer, Andrew J" <spena at ESSEX.AC.UK>
> To: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 12:02 PM
> Subject: Possession/modification by simple juxtaposition
>
> > We are interested in finding languages that express possession and
> adjectival modification in the same way, namely, by means of pure
> juxtaposition, without any other morphosyntactic marking (agreement,
> adpositions, case marking etc.). In other words, we're looking for languages
> with the following construction types (head-initial/head-final; the linear
> order doesn't matter to us and the language doesn't have to have a
> consistent head position):
> >
> > good book:             book good // good book
> > the name of (the) boy: name [(the) boy] // (the) boy name
> > Gwen's book/mother:    book/mother Gwen// Gwen book/mother
> >
> > A language which is close to what we're looking for is Spoken Welsh
> (head-initial):
> >
> > good book:
> > llyfr   da
> > book    good
> >
> > the name of the boy:
> > enw   y    bachgen
> > name  the  boy
> >
> > the name of a boy:
> > enw    bachgen
> > name   boy
> >
> > Gwen's book:   llyfr Gwen
> > Gwen's mother: mam Gwen
> >
> > However, in Welsh, adjectives take the soft mutation when they modify
> FEM.SG nouns, so this isn't a 'pure' example of the language type we're
> looking for.
> >
> > If you know of a language with these properties please contact Andrew
> Spencer: spena at essex.ac.uk.
> > We'll put together a synopsis of the replies. (You don't need to reply to
> the whole list.)
> >
> > Andrew Spencer, University of Essex
> > Irina Nikolaeva, School of Oriental and African Studies
> >
> > __________ Informazione NOD32 3629 (20081121) __________
> >
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> >
>
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