Re: POssessives

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

la kolin. cusku di'e

> But it suddenly occurred to me to wonder how Loglan would have
> turned out in this regard if JCB and the rest of us had all been
> speakers of an NG language like French instead of a predominently
> GN one like English? Would we have felt the need for preposed
> genitives? Or would they be restricted in some way to personal
> pronouns (as in French, where
>
>         le le ctuca ku mlatu
> comes out as
>         le chat de la professeur
> ie with the structure
>         le mlatu pe le ctuca
>
> but
>         le mi mlatu
> is still
>         mon chat
> )?

Well, in Loglan the structures "le mi botcu" and "le la Kristobal Kolon botcu"
actually parse differently:  "(le mi) botcu" vs "le (la K.K.) botcu", because
he treats LE+KOhA as grammatically equivalent to LE.  We eliminated this botch.
So in some sense JCB does feel the pronominal possessives to be different
from (and more basic than) the long-winded possessives.  (He does speak
Spanish, remember, so the Romance connection isn't that farfetched.)

--
John Cowan              sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.