possessives

[Gideon Goldenberg]

>If the language uses simple juxtaposition of two nouns to express
>possessive relations, does it differentiate possession from a)
>attributives (nominal modifiers like fire truck or steak knife) and b)
>adjectival modification (red truck, sharp knife). And if, so how?

>David Beck

Not formally in the syntactic construction. In Neo-Aramaic
dialects where this is the normal construction (e.g. Saqqiz
dial.) you say brona jwana "a beautiful son" and brata jwanta
"a beautiful daughter", the adjectival forms being marked by
agreement. brata shultana "king's daughter" (lit. "daughter
king") is markedly recognized as a genitive construction by
lack of agreement. Nominal compounds are restrained.  GG

==============================================
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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