poss-marking
Michael Noonan
noonan at CSD.UWM.EDU
Tue Aug 17 20:52:43 UTC 1999
Lango has a grammatical difference between alienable and inalienable
possession. With inalienable possession, the head and the attributive NP
are simply juxtaposed:
wi rwot
head king
'the king's head'
With alienable possession, an attributive particle is obligatory:
wicc a rwot
head ATTR king
'the king's (animal) head'
Lango is head-initial [right-branching], but there are also head-final
[left-branching] languages with no overt genitive marker. Languages
belonging to, for example, the Kamarupan and Lolo-Burmese sub-families of
Tibeto-Burman are head-final, but often have zero-marked genitives, as in
Angami, for example:
belho ki
Belho house
'Belho's house'
Mickey
Michael Noonan Professor of Linguistics
Chair Office: 414-229-4539
Dept. of English Fax: 414-229-2643
University of Wisconsin Messages: 414-229-4511
Milwaukee, WI 53201 Webpage: http://www.uwm.edu/~noonan
USA
More information about the Lingtyp
mailing list