Possessive

[Gideon Goldenberg]

In Semitic languages, most clearly in Aramaic, Hebrew and
Ethiopic, the construction  apparently identical with the
"of-John his-father"(also "his-father of-John") is really
"that-of-John, viz his-father", "his-father, viz that-of-
John". In "his-father" the possessor is pronominal and in
"that-of-John" the possessum is pronominal. In the periph-
rastic construction, the "that" is in apposition with the
"father" and the pron. within "his" is in apposition with
"John". Direct izafet-constructions, where available, may
prove more explicitly the validity of such analysis. Even
more common is "the-house, viz that-of-John".What here is
translated as "that-of-John" is also found with the "X-of"
inflected for gender and number.
In Turkish there is no grammatically direct way to say eg
"Hüsein's son", but only "his-son" (ogl-u);"Hüsein's son"
requires a periphrasis, where the person  behind "his" is
specified appositively: Hüsein ogl-u.
 What is the inner constitution of similarly-translated &
apparently-parallel constructions in those many languages
listed in discussing possessive marking?

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Gideon Goldenberg, Dept. of Linguistics,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus
IL-91905 Jerusalem, Israel
Home Address: 48 Ben-Maimon Avenue,
IL-92261 Jerusalem, Israel
Tel.& Fax: +972-2-5665135
E-mail: <msgidgol at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il>
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