(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

[Ahzoh]

My conlang Vrkhazhian can also do this and has a special CONST.GEN suffix -al for such purpose.

I do not like how in Arabic you cannot say things like "the vibrant colours of many feathers" which is not the same as "the many vibrant feather-colours"

Nor could it say:
"a king of the nations" (one of the kings of a specific nation) vs. "the king of a nation" (a specific king of an unspecified nation)

These are impossible to say in Arabic? I still haven't learned that much, but I would have thought there would be get-arounds. Like how in English, you can say "the nations' king" or "a nation's king" but not "the nations' a king." But to express the latter idea, you can say "a king of the nations" or "one of the nations' kings."

This web page lists "Independent Possessive Pronouns" that are used after nouns with the article, so I'd assume they can also be used after indefinite nunated nouns to express the idea of "a ___ of mine/yours/his/hers/theirs." But I'm not sure.

No, the construct state in Semitic language creates compound words, like "hound dog" or "ice cream truck".
In Arabic you could not say "The shining truck of tasty ice cream", only "The tasty ice cream truck" or "the shining ice cream truck" because adjectives modify the whole thing. Nor could you say "The beautiful queen of a wretched country"

However, I think there are certain dialects with a word for "of".

[Sumelic]

My conlang Vrkhazhian can also do this and has a special CONST.GEN suffix -al for such purpose.

I do not like how in Arabic you cannot say things like "the vibrant colours of many feathers" which is not the same as "the many vibrant feather-colours"

Nor could it say:
"a king of the nations" (one of the kings of a specific nation) vs. "the king of a nation" (a specific king of an unspecified nation)

These are impossible to say in Arabic? I still haven't learned that much, but I would have thought there would be get-arounds. Like how in English, you can say "the nations' king" or "a nation's king" but not "the nations' a king." But to express the latter idea, you can say "a king of the nations" or "one of the nations' kings."

This web page lists "Independent Possessive Pronouns" that are used after nouns with the article, so I'd assume they can also be used after indefinite nunated nouns to express the idea of "a ___ of mine/yours/his/hers/theirs." But I'm not sure.

No, the construct state in Semitic language creates compound words, like "hound dog" or "ice cream truck".
In Arabic you could not say "The shining truck of tasty ice cream", only "The tasty ice cream truck" or "the shining ice cream truck" because adjectives modify the whole thing. Nor could you say "The beautiful queen of a wretched country"

However, I think there are certain dialects with a word for "of".

I understand how the construct state works wrt adjectives and definiteness, and Wikipedia does say that different varieties of Arabic have different possessive "particles" that can be used instead. What I'm wondering is if there is no dialect-neutral, classical Arabic alternative to the construct state that is used in such cases.

As I said earlier, the English "s" possessive has pretty much the same restrictions on definiteness as the Arabic idafah construction. But English might be unusual in having two commonly used possessive constructions. I don't see much semantic difference between "The beautiful queen of a wretched country" and "a beautiful queen of a wretched country."

[Ahzoh]

I understand how the construct state works wrt adjectives and definiteness, and Wikipedia does say that different varieties of Arabic have different possessive "particles" that can be used instead. What I'm wondering is if there is no dialect-neutral, classical Arabic alternative to the construct state that is used in such cases.

As I said earlier, the English "s" possessive has pretty much the same restrictions on definiteness as the Arabic idafah construction. But English might be unusual in having two commonly used possessive constructions. I don't see much semantic difference between "The beautiful queen of a wretched country" and "a beautiful queen of a wretched country."

There is a semantic difference: definiteness indicates that the noun is specific rather than generic, aforementioned rather than introduced.

[sangi39]

This is just a quick guess regarding the Turkish example of double marking in possessive construction, but it looks like it's two ways of marking possession developing relatively independently and then coming together, e.g.:

1) possession is marked by a genitive construction, e.g. man-GEN dog (man's dog), he.GEN dog (his dog), etc.
2) possessive pronouns are replaced by suffixes (which might themselves have their origin in independent possessive pronouns), e.g. he.GEN dog > dog-3SG.POSS
3) the use of possessive suffixes becomes universal in possessive constructions, regardless of whether a possessor is independently specified or not, e.g. man-GEN dog vs. dog-3SG.POSS > man-GEN dog-3SG.POSS vs. dog-3SG.POSS.

[eldin raigmore]

... English might be unusual in having two commonly used possessive constructions. ...

It's not singular, but it is noteworthy. How unusual it is, you can consult http://wals.info/chapter/59 to find out.
In their database, languages recorded without possessive classification outnumber those recorded with it, 125 to 118.
So it looks like nearly half (48.6%) the languages have two or more ways to show possession, provided their sample database is representative.
Of those 118, 94 have exactly two; 20 have three to five, and 4 have more than five.

Multiple ways to show possession, is probably commoner than possessive classification. Possessive classification means that one way applies to one class of nouns, while another way applies to another class of nouns. (It's similar in concept to numeral classifiers.)

Apparently the classes don't need to be disjoint.

Since in English several nouns can freely use both the "Norman genitive" of N or the "Saxon genitive" N's, according to the speaker's whim (or according to the nature of the utterance), in English the classes are not disjoint.

---

Binary possessive classification is more common than 3-or-more-ary possessive classification.
The most-discussed binary classifications appear to be:

• alienably possessed vs inalienably possessed
• optionally possessible vs obligatorily non-possessible
• obligatorily possessed vs optionally non-possessed

---

None of the above has anything to do with double-marking, in which both the possessor and the possessum are marked.
Those are investigated in http://wals.info/chapter/24.

To see some languages that have both possessive classification and double-marking of the possessive phrase, look at: http://wals.info/combinations/24A_59A#2/25.5/157.5,
then look at these eight languages:
Wembawemba
Dizi
Dani (Lower Grand Valley)
Imonda
Mangarrayi
Kipea
Hua
Burushaski

[Sumelic]

I understand how the construct state works wrt adjectives and definiteness, and Wikipedia does say that different varieties of Arabic have different possessive "particles" that can be used instead. What I'm wondering is if there is no dialect-neutral, classical Arabic alternative to the construct state that is used in such cases.

As I said earlier, the English "s" possessive has pretty much the same restrictions on definiteness as the Arabic idafah construction. But English might be unusual in having two commonly used possessive constructions. I don't see much semantic difference between "The beautiful queen of a wretched country" and "a beautiful queen of a wretched country."

There is a semantic difference: definiteness indicates that the noun is specific rather than generic, aforementioned rather than introduced.

Not always. In this construction, the "definiteness" of the first noun often has no greater meaning than indicating singularity relative to the noun in the genitive. For example, in "Bring me the head of a wolf," the noun phrase "the head of a wolf" is generic and introduced, and means basically the same thing as the indefinite noun phrase "a wolf's head." The definite article only indicates that a wolf generally only has one head. In "Bring me a branch of a tree," the indefinite article indicates that trees may have more than one branch. But this kind of information can often be inferred from the meaning of words: most countries have only one queen, and most organisms have only one head, and that's common knowledge.

In fact, even in English, there's not a huge contrast, because to me forms like "a branch of a tree" (or "a leg of a wolf") actually seem slightly unnatural; I think people would usually say instead any of "a tree branch (a wolf leg, a wolf's leg)," "the branch of a tree," (the leg of a wolf) or "one of the branches of a tree" (one of the legs of a wolf).

[HoskhMatriarch]

OK, are there languages where meanings covered by discourse markers or modal particles get glommed onto verbs as affixes? I'm wondering because both of those things start out as adverbs, and many affixes in some languages also seem to start out as adverbs that have been incorporated into verbs. I can't help but picture some poor linguist working on some American or Australian language and being like "what does this affix mean?" and the person is like "it doesn't mean anything" in the same way that most people think of discourse markers, even though I'm not sure that's actually a thing.

[druneragarsh]

Can anyone link me to a good grammar of any of the Paleosiberian languages?

[qwed117]

Can anyone link me to a good grammar of any of the Paleosiberian languages?

Edit:

North Asia

• Chukchee - HTML - Dec 2013
  ...
• Tundra Yukaghir - PDF - 101 pages - Feb 2014

[druneragarsh]

Can anyone link me to a good grammar of any of the Paleosiberian languages?

Edit:

North Asia

• Chukchee - HTML - Dec 2013
  ...
• Tundra Yukaghir - PDF - 101 pages - Feb 2014

Thanks!

[thetha]

OK, are there languages where meanings covered by discourse markers or modal particles get glommed onto verbs as affixes? I'm wondering because both of those things start out as adverbs, and many affixes in some languages also seem to start out as adverbs that have been incorporated into verbs. I can't help but picture some poor linguist working on some American or Australian language and being like "what does this affix mean?" and the person is like "it doesn't mean anything" in the same way that most people think of discourse markers, even though I'm not sure that's actually a thing.

At least one Oceanic language (Wuvulu) attaches several things of that kind as affixes on the verb. There's a free pdf of a grammar of the language if you search for the right thing on google.

[HoskhMatriarch]

OK, are there languages where meanings covered by discourse markers or modal particles get glommed onto verbs as affixes? I'm wondering because both of those things start out as adverbs, and many affixes in some languages also seem to start out as adverbs that have been incorporated into verbs. I can't help but picture some poor linguist working on some American or Australian language and being like "what does this affix mean?" and the person is like "it doesn't mean anything" in the same way that most people think of discourse markers, even though I'm not sure that's actually a thing.

At least one Oceanic language (Wuvulu) attaches several things of that kind as affixes on the verb. There's a free pdf of a grammar of the language if you search for the right thing on google.

Thank you! This is going to be fun to look at...

Edit: What is that kind of affix called? I'm looking through some grammars now and they don't seem to mention anything of the sort, although that might just be because I don't know what I'm looking for.

[Odkidstr]

I'm looking for info on Possession. Specifically, different types of possession and how they work. I'm most interested at the moment in Austronesian possession.

Basically, I've been able to find two different types of Possession so far, but I don't really understand how they work or what they mean. The two I know of are Alienable & Inalienable possession. From my understanding, Inalienable possession is used for things like kinship terms, body parts, etc. Alienable is mainly used for inanimate objects, things that aren't viewed as inherent to someone or something.

I've also heard of Edible/Drinkable possession, but those make less sense to me.

As I understand it, (and I know there's oddities and exceptions within these categories), basically I would classify the following under each type of possession:

My arm (Inalienable)
His father (Inalienable)
Your chair (Alienable)
The dog's bone (Edible)
The cat's milk (Drinkable)

Like I said, I know it varies from language to language, and edible/drinkable has a lot more variation.

Anyways, please let me know if I'm close to understanding any of these possessions. I would appreciate either a detailed explanation with examples or links to places to read more (I have searched around the web but been unable to find satisfactory answers). I would also appreciate any additional knowledge that you could provide in relation to Possession, especially within the Austronesian languages.

Additionally, another thing that has confused me while looking through Austronesian languages is where this type of possession is marked. Is it marked on the possessor or the thing that is possessed (my vs arm, for instance)?

[eldin raigmore]

I'm looking for info on Possession. Specifically, different types of possession and how they work. I'm most interested at the moment in Austronesian possession.

Basically, I've been able to find two different types of Possession so far, but I don't really understand how they work or what they mean. The two I know of are Alienable & Inalienable possession. From my understanding, Inalienable possession is used for things like kinship terms, body parts, etc. Alienable is mainly used for inanimate objects, things that aren't viewed as inherent to someone or something.

I've also heard of Edible/Drinkable possession, but those make less sense to me.

As I understand it, (and I know there's oddities and exceptions within these categories), basically I would classify the following under each type of possession:

My arm (Inalienable)
His father (Inalienable)
Your chair (Alienable)
The dog's bone (Edible)
The cat's milk (Drinkable)

Like I said, I know it varies from language to language, and edible/drinkable has a lot more variation.

Anyways, please let me know if I'm close to understanding any of these possessions. I would appreciate either a detailed explanation with examples or links to places to read more (I have searched around the web but been unable to find satisfactory answers). I would also appreciate any additional knowledge that you could provide in relation to Possession, especially within the Austronesian languages.

Additionally, another thing that has confused me while looking through Austronesian languages is where this type of possession is marked. Is it marked on the possessor or the thing that is possessed (my vs arm, for instance)?

As I understand it, inalienable possession is typically marked by mere juxtaposition.
For instance, "baby daddy" if a baby's daddy is inalienably "possessed" by the baby.

In languages where some nouns (called "dependent nouns") are obligatorily possessed, the possessor of such a noun is typically marked on the noun via an inflection such as an affix.

As far as possession goes, there may be three classes of nouns:
* Things that cannot ever be possessed; that is, to mention a possessor of such a thing is never grammatical
* Things that must always be possessed; that is, no mention of such a thing is grammatical unless the speaker also mentions its possessor
* Things that might be possessed, but also might be non-possessed.

Some natlangs have the possessible-vs-nonpossessible alternation, and some have the obligatorily-possessed-noun vs other nouns alternation; conceivably some natlang could have both, and in my opinion it would be naturalistic and realistic for a conlang to have both.

For things that may or must be possessed, there can be two kinds of possession, as far as I know; alienable possession and inalienable possession.
X alienably possesses Y if X may give Y to Z, or Z may take Y from X, in such a way that Z would then possess Y in the same way that X does now.
X inalienably possesses Y if X may not give Y to Z, nor may Z take Y from X, in such a way that Z would then possesses Y in the same way that X does now.

So parents and children and siblings are inalienable, but spouses are alienable. Body-parts are inalienably possessed by the original owner, but may be alienably possessed by the butcher, the grocer, the cook, or the diner. And so on.

If there are other categories of possession, I don't know what they are and don't remember hearing of them. But since you asked, I'm going to look. Chances are you'll find some before I do, so don't give up.

I do know there are other kinds of genitive than possession. For instance, "golden ring" or "ring of gold" tells what the ring is made of; it doesn't say that gold owns the ring.

---

Good question.

[Salmoneus]

I'm looking for info on Possession. Specifically, different types of possession and how they work. I'm most interested at the moment in Austronesian possession.

There are at least three significant Austronesian possession systems.

The first is alienable/inalienable. The key here is not so much that inalienable things that can't be taken away from you - it's more than you can't be taken away from them. Inalienables are things that it's difficult or impossible to imagine existing without a 'possessor' - so there is no 'father' who is not someone's father, for instance. Inalienable possession tends to reflect part-whole relations, kinship relations, and sometimes verbal nouns as either possessor or possessed (Blust gives the examples of "John's arrival" and "house of eating" (i.e. restaurant)). Two areas where languages differ a lot are in intimate possessions (things that are so deeply associated with the individual that they seem to be part of the person) and in products, like bodily fluids that have been excreted.

Generally, many inalienables do not exist as independent words without possessive affixes to show the owner - doing this may require a construct state affix or indefinite possessor affix ("someone's father"), or may require periphrasis. However, it's not uncommon for there to be some words that may or may not use inalienable possession. Strictly, 'inalienable possession' is the semantic relation; the term for the syntactic structure is usually 'direct possession'. The opposite is indirect possession, which typically does not use affixes directly onto the possessed noun, but uses a 'possessive classifier' (which may often itself take affixes).

That's the second issue: classifiers. Sometimes there is only one, that marks all indirect possession indiscriminately. Other times, there are several. If there are two, one classifier is used for things that are possessed in order to be eaten or drunk, and the other is used for everything else. If there are three, one is for drinking, one is for eating, and the other is general. In some micronesian languages, the number of possessives is much larger. These classifiers refer to the nature of the relation between possessor and possessed, not the nature of the noun per se; however, they can become fixed if particular nouns are almost always used in particular ways. Normally, though, you can change the classifier to show different relationships. So "o coconut" may be 'the coconut I'm going to eat', "a coconut" may be 'the coconut I'm going to drink', "u coconut" may be 'the coconut that I use as a house', "i coconut" may be 'the coconut that I'm going to give to my cousin for his birthday', and so on.

The third system is found in polynesian, and is often just called a/o possession. In this, there are two types of possession, which are basically distinguished by the degree of volitionality and control that the possessor has. A/o because a) it's sometimes called an agent/object distinction, and b) because in many languages it is conveniently shown by two possessive particles, which are 'a' and 'o'.
So "a smallpox" may be "the smallpox I have in a vial and will use to destroy the world", whereas "o smallpox" may be "the smallpox that is killing me". "A vocal sound" may be "the words I speak" or "the song I sing", while "o vocal sound" is "my voice", "how my voice sounds". "A story" is "the story I tell", but "o story" is "the story about me". This distinction can also be used to deal with alienable/inalienable: "a woman" (the woman I own) vs "o woman" (my wife). However, some languages do have both a/o and direct/indirect distinctions.

Outside oceanic, there are two other patterns of austronesian direct/indirect possession. One works like that, but allows much more variety in what is or isn't direct. Another makes the distinction only in the case on indefinite possession: that is, you say "cat-m" and "father-m" for 'my cat' and 'my father', but you say "cat" and "father-n" for "a cat" and "a father" - the father still has to be owned by someone, whereas the cat doesn't.

Additionally, another thing that has confused me while looking through Austronesian languages is where this type of possession is marked. Is it marked on the possessor or the thing that is possessed (my vs arm, for instance)?

Generally, direct possession is marked directly on the possessed thing. Indirect possession (including a/o) isn't. Indirect possession can be thought of as the English 'of' construction:
"a cat of mine"
Depending on language, you can find "a cat of mine" (no affixes, explicit possessor), "a cat my-of" (affix on the classifier), or "a cat my-of mine" (both possessor and affix). This can of course vary with person (so you might say "cat my-of" but "cat of the doctor"). I'm not aware that any languages mark possession on the possessor too, but it wouldn't totally surprise me if some did.

[eldin raigmore]

What Salmoneus said about possessive classifiers is relevant, and there's a chapter and a feature in WALS.info about it.
Also, if a language has inalienable (or direct) possession and also has obligatorily possessed (or dependent) nouns, inalienably possessed items tend to be obligatorily possessed, and obligatorily possessed items tend to be inalienably possessed.

About where it is marked; see Chapter 24 of WALS.info. The marking may all be on the classifier, or on some other word that signifies there is a possessor/possession relationship, marked with syntactic and/or semantic information about the possessor and the possession. That's covered in the "1.5 Other".

There's more in Chapter 57 of WALS.info; particularly about affixes that tell about a pronominal possessor.

Chapter 58 of WALS.info talks about obligatory possessive inflection. It includes stuff about "bound inalienables", and about non-possessible nouns, and about obligatory use of possessive classifiers to show semantic possession of a grammatically-nonpossessible noun.

(Chapter 117 also may have stuff you might find relevant to your questions.)

WALS.info lets you combine up to four features together.

Let's combine features 24A, 58A, 58B, and 59A.

Edit: Chichimeca-Jonaz has head-marking in possessive noun phrases, has obligatory possessive inflection (so, dependent nouns), has two to four possessive nouns (so, non-possessible nouns), and has more than five classes of possessive classification.
It is the only language sampled in WALS.info's database recorded with a value other than "None reported" for "Number of Possessive Nouns" (Feature 58B), and a value other than "No marking" for "Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun-Phrases" (Feature 24A), and a value of "Exists" for "Obligatory Possessive Inflection" (Feature 58A).

Edit: The following languages have interesting combinations of values of features 24A, 58A, and 59A:

Code: Select all

Two classes / Double marking / Exists
     Dani (Lower Grand Valley)
Three to five classes / Head marking / Exists
     Wichí
Three to five classes / Double marking / Exists
     Burushaski
More than five classes / Head marking / Exists
     Chichimeca-Jonaz
Two classes / Dependent marking / Exists
     Wintu
     Khoekhoe
Two classes / Head marking / Exists
     Kui (in Indonesia)
     Tanglapui
     Hatam
     Quileute
     Tunica
     Haida
     Barasano
     Koasati

Edit: The following languages have interesting combinations of values for features 24A, 58B, and 59A:

Code: Select all

Two classes / One / Head marking
     Washo
Three to five classes / One / Dependent marking
     Trumai
Three to five classes / Five or more / Double marking
     Kipea
More than five classes / Two to four / Head marking
     Chichimeca-Jonaz

Edit: The following languages have interesting combinations of values for features 58A, 58B, and 59A:

Code: Select all

Three to five classes / Two to four / Exists
     Paamese
More than five classes / Two to four / Exists
     Chichimeca-Jonaz

Edit: So that's eighteen natlangs that might be interesting from the point-of-view of your question.
Barasano
Burushaski
Chichimeca-Jonaz
Dani (Lower Grand Valley)
Haida
Hatam
Khoekhoe
Kipea
Koasati
Kui (in Indonesia)
Paamese
Quileute
Tanglapui
Trumai
Tunica
Washo
Wichí
Wintu

It might be more informative, at least at first, to combine them in pairs:
http://wals.info/combinations/58A_59A#2/25.5/153.7 has seven combinations with more than one language each, and one combination with 1 language.
http://wals.info/combinations/24A_58A#2/25.5/157.5 has nine combinations with more than one language each, and one combination with 0 languages.
http://wals.info/combinations/58A_58B#2/25.5/153.7 has six combinations with more than one language each, and two combinations with 0 languages.
http://wals.info/combinations/24A_59A#2/25.5/157.5 has 15 combinations with more than one language each, two combinations with 1 language each, and three combinations with 0 languages.
http://wals.info/combinations/58B_59A#2/25.5/153.7 has five combinations with more than one language each, seven combinations with 1 language each, and four combinations with 0 languages.
http://wals.info/combinations/24A_58B#2/25.5/157.5 has seven combinations with more than one language each, two combinations with 1 language each, and 11 combinations with 0 languages.

For most of those pairs of features, there are more combinations of values for which there is at least one language sampled in their database, than one would expect (IMO).
The exception seems to be 24A_58B.

---

If you combine them three at a time you see an awful lot of zeroes, which means no language in their sample database was recorded with that particular combination of values for those three features.
http://wals.info/combinations/24A_58A_59A#2/25.5/157.5 has at least one language in most combinations. 12 combinations have 0 languages; the other 28 combinations have at least one each. Just over two-thirds the possible combinations actually occur in at least one language in WALS.info's database.

http://wals.info/combinations/59A_58B_58A#2/25.5/153.7 has 17 zeroes and 15 non-zeroes. Just under half the possible combinations actually occur in at least one language in WALS.info's database.

The remaining threesomes contain both 24A and 58B, and so more than half their combinations of values have 0 languages in WALS.info's database recorded as reported with those combination of feature-values.
http://wals.info/combinations/24A_58A_58B#2/25.5/157.5 has 26 zeroes and 14 non-zeroes.
http://wals.info/combinations/59A_24A_58B#2/25.5/157.5 has 57 zeroes and 23 non-zeroes.

I may have gotten most of that last paragraph wrong. But you can see how to find out for yourself.

Edit: Recounted; pretty sure I got them right this time.
BTW; WALS.info now lets you sort the combinations by number of languages.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Does anyone have something on what sounds are contrasted in different languages including allophones? Mostly I'm trying to see if any language has a [q͡χ] as an allophone of /qʰ/ (I heard someone say that's common but I've never seen it myself) and contrasts it with [q] ever (which it would if it were an allophone of /qʰ/), but I've also heard there are things that natural languages either don't ever contrast or do but aren't "supposed" to (such as all the sibilants in Polish) and I want to get a good feel for what kinds of contrasts are naturalistic when it comes to more unusual ones.

[sangi39]

I haven't come across one yet. Other than searching through resources like Wikipedia and then PDFs through Google searches, I've not come up with a better way of looking up this sort of thing.

To take you [q͡χ] example, I simply searched for "q͡χ" in Wikipedia and then opened up every single page that came up in the results and had a look at the phonologies presented for each language. In Burushaski, for example, it does appear as an allophone of /qʰ/, which contrasts with /q/, and similar pattern can be seen in Tsez where you have /q͡χ/ and /q'/ but no corresponding /q/ (since other affricates have an ejective counterpart it doesn't seem too unlikely that /q͡χ/ used to be /q/). In Akhvakh, on the other hand, it appears only in contrast with other /q͡χ' q͡χ: q͡χ:'/, having no corresponding uvular plosives at all, as it does in Avar.

Things get a little more interesting when you start looking at Kabardian.

Kabardian has /q͡χ/ and /q/. Other affricates usually have both voiced and ejective counterparts, as do plosives (except the velars, so at first glance it looks almost as if /q͡χ/ might be from an earlier /q/ while Kabardian /q/ might be from, say, /ɢ/. However, a little more digging suggests that Kabardian /q/ comes from Proto-Circassian /qʰ/ (corresponding to Standard Adyghe /q/ and Bzhedug Adyghe /qʰ/) while /q͡χ/ comes from Proto-Circassian /q/~/q͡χ/ (corresponding to Standard Adyghe /q/ and Shapsug Adyghe /χ/).

What might be done next is to see whether Wikipedia's information holds up with other sources on Proto-Circassian and Kabardian (and Adyghe) to make sure someone writing and editing the article hasn't misread something (unfortunately, some of the changes presented don't match up with examples provided further down the Proto-Circassian page because it looks like PC aspiration is inconsistently marked).



As for your other question, getting a "good feel" of what contrasts are natural and which ones aren't, at least in my experience, simply comes from a lot of reading and looking at what languages make what sorts of contrasts by going through loads and loads of Wikipedia articles, PDFs and listening to what other users on both the ZBB and the CBB have said.

Unfortunately, pooling all of that together might not be reasonably easy to do beyond fairly basic statements, especially regarding allophony, which as far as I understand it, relies at least somewhat on the contrasts a languages does not make, allowing for sounds to fill out the resulting gaps (especially, it seems, in the case of vowels, although this isn't always true either).

[Odkidstr]

First off, thanks for all the help and answers to everyone who has helped

The third system is found in polynesian, and is often just called a/o possession. In this, there are two types of possession, which are basically distinguished by the degree of volitionality and control that the possessor has. A/o because a) it's sometimes called an agent/object distinction, and b) because in many languages it is conveniently shown by two possessive particles, which are 'a' and 'o'.
So "a smallpox" may be "the smallpox I have in a vial and will use to destroy the world", whereas "o smallpox" may be "the smallpox that is killing me". "A vocal sound" may be "the words I speak" or "the song I sing", while "o vocal sound" is "my voice", "how my voice sounds". "A story" is "the story I tell", but "o story" is "the story about me". This distinction can also be used to deal with alienable/inalienable: "a woman" (the woman I own) vs "o woman" (my wife). However, some languages do have both a/o and direct/indirect distinctions.

The a/o system is still confusing me a bit. I've actually been reading up on it a lot as my latest conlang is inspired by Hawaiian (which I know little about but am learning a lot). a/o possession seems like alienable/inalienable possession to me. I'm not really understanding how they're all that different, except that a/o is a bit more flexible and can be used to change the meaning sometimes. o-possession seems to indicate that something is inalienable or, if not fitting that category perfectly, something that is extremely personal to the possessor. a-possession, more or less, seems like what we'd imagine possession being like in English.

Consequently, I kind of imagine the following English sentences with a/o possession.

Spoiler:

Pau's bone [a chicken bone from what she's eating] - a-possession
Pau's bone [her actual bones in her body] - o-possession

My car - a-possession
My car [the car was inherited and is like a family heirloom] - o-possession

His shirt - a-possession
His shirt [the one he is currently wearing] - o-possession

Am I on the right track here with understanding?

As well, the following is kind of what I'm imagining for my conlang:

An a/o possession system, of which the a/o possessors are prepositions. I'd like to add edible/drinkable possession in a similar way (prepositions) and I'd like some nouns to have mandatory possession. For those that are inherently possessed, I was thinking that they could have some sort of possessive suffix to go along with the preposition. Is that too weird for a Hawaiian based conlang, with Austronesian/Fijian influence?

[HoskhMatriarch]

I haven't come across one yet. Other than searching through resources like Wikipedia and then PDFs through Google searches, I've not come up with a better way of looking up this sort of thing.

To take you [q͡χ] example, I simply searched for "q͡χ" in Wikipedia and then opened up every single page that came up in the results and had a look at the phonologies presented for each language. In Burushaski, for example, it does appear as an allophone of /qʰ/, which contrasts with /q/, and similar pattern can be seen in Tsez where you have /q͡χ/ and /q'/ but no corresponding /q/ (since other affricates have an ejective counterpart it doesn't seem too unlikely that /q͡χ/ used to be /q/). In Akhvakh, on the other hand, it appears only in contrast with other /q͡χ' q͡χ: q͡χ:'/, having no corresponding uvular plosives at all, as it does in Avar.

Things get a little more interesting when you start looking at Kabardian.

Kabardian has /q͡χ/ and /q/. Other affricates usually have both voiced and ejective counterparts, as do plosives (except the velars, so at first glance it looks almost as if /q͡χ/ might be from an earlier /q/ while Kabardian /q/ might be from, say, /ɢ/. However, a little more digging suggests that Kabardian /q/ comes from Proto-Circassian /qʰ/ (corresponding to Standard Adyghe /q/ and Bzhedug Adyghe /qʰ/) while /q͡χ/ comes from Proto-Circassian /q/~/q͡χ/ (corresponding to Standard Adyghe /q/ and Shapsug Adyghe /χ/).

What might be done next is to see whether Wikipedia's information holds up with other sources on Proto-Circassian and Kabardian (and Adyghe) to make sure someone writing and editing the article hasn't misread something (unfortunately, some of the changes presented don't match up with examples provided further down the Proto-Circassian page because it looks like PC aspiration is inconsistently marked).



As for your other question, getting a "good feel" of what contrasts are natural and which ones aren't, at least in my experience, simply comes from a lot of reading and looking at what languages make what sorts of contrasts by going through loads and loads of Wikipedia articles, PDFs and listening to what other users on both the ZBB and the CBB have said.

Unfortunately, pooling all of that together might not be reasonably easy to do beyond fairly basic statements, especially regarding allophony, which as far as I understand it, relies at least somewhat on the contrasts a languages does not make, allowing for sounds to fill out the resulting gaps (especially, it seems, in the case of vowels, although this isn't always true either).

Thanks. They should fix the Wikipedia article on affricates though, if Kabardian actually contrasts not just phonetic but phonemic /q/ and /q͡χ/, because that article says no languages contrast them. It's one thing if hypothetically they shouldn't, but that's not what they said.


OK, does anyone know where possessive determiners (not ones that act as adjectives like Italian but ones that act like articles) are from and where possessive affixes are from? I decided my other possession thing wasn't realistic but I still want head-marking on possessive phrases mostly for internally headed relative clauses reasons (in those cases the dependent would be off in another clause and likely enough not even its own phonologically-independent word).