| 4.
Genitive case |
| Genitive
is the case of possession, for instance, in the phrase : |
| hatoli
kģ |
`Hatoli’s
house’, |
|
|
| hatoli
shows an adnominal possessive relationship with respect to kķ `house’
i.e., Hatoli is the possessor and kķ `house’ is the possessed item.
Thus, the most typical function of the genitive is to modify a noun/NP
in an endocentric construction which incidentally is also the most
typical function of an adjective. Therefore, a noun/pronoun in its
genitive is functionally an adjective1, as in : |
| hatoli
kģ |
`Hatoli’s
house’ |
| hucumi
kģ |
`red
house’. |
|
|
| In
Sema, there is no limitation or restriction in expressing the genitive
relationship, in that any sub-class of nouns can show genitive relationship
with any other sub-class of nouns. The genitive is not marked overtly
in the standard variety2, i.e., it does not have any case marker/postposition
to indicate the case relation. The noun/pronoun in the adnominal possessive
relation is juxtaposed before the noun with which it has the possessive
relationship, i.e., in a determiner-determined construction, the determiner
is pre-posed to the determined noun, as in : |
| apukģ |
`father’s
house’ |
aza
c nipu |
`mother’s
sister’ |
| hatoli
pu |
`Hatoli’s
son’ |
saluwi a |
`Saluvi’s
daughter’ |
| ac
pukhu |
`dog’s
leg’ |
| yekube
pukhu |
`the
leg of the table’ |
| hatolilu |
`Hatoli’s
field’ etc. |
|
|
| In
expressing the possessive relationship, Sema shows an important feature,
i.e., when the possessed item is a noun referring to an animate human
being except the parts of the body and immovable properties, it is
considered necessary to indicate whether the person concerned is only
having a de facto possession of the object or whether he has the de
jure possession of the object. The legal ownership of the object is
expressed by the noun in adnominal possessive relation taking the
particle wu as in : |
| pawu
kaku |
`his
book’ (i.e., he is the owner of the book) |
| This
form is distinct form : |
|
| pa
kaku |
`his
book’ (i.e., the book is in his possession but he may
or may not own it). |
|
|
| The
ownership marker may be optionally deleted, if the situation does
not demand the indication of the ownership, for instance, while talking
to someone in my house, if I say : |
| ic |
`my
dog’ |
|
|
| The
expression would imply that I am the owner of the dog referred to.
Otherwise the use of a noun/pronoun without the ownership marker would
only indicate that at the time of the utterance, the person concerned
had the de facto possession of the item referred to but may not own
it. This usage has resulted in the innovation of another pattern for
indicating the title to the village, i.e., when a person’s village
is involved a determiner-determined construction, it is required to
be stated whether the village was originally established by the person1
or the village in question is where he was born/usually resides. This
is indicated by the noun in the adnominal relationship taking the
nominative case marker as in : |
| ekili
phu |
`the
village established by Ekili’ |
| ekilino
phu |
`Ekili’s
village (i.e., the village where Ekili was born/usually
resides). |
|
|
| 4.
Sociative case |
| The
sociative case refers to a special association or relationship of
a noun/pronoun in the VP with the noun/pronoun functioning as the
subject, i.e., it has the combative function (in company with). Semantically,
societies and instrumental case relations are the same except the
societies occurs with animate beings and |
1. The new villages in Sema areas were established by a Sema
leader, usually by the children of the old villages. The village
so established is known by the name of the leader who established
it. Therefore even though it is not required to specify the
ownership of the parts of body and immovable properties, this
new device has to be adopted lin the case of villages in genitive
relationship. |
