Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 20 Dec 1993 12:48:39 -0500 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 20 Dec 1993 12:24:18 -0500 Message-Id: <199312201724.AA04562@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 7412; Mon, 20 Dec 93 12:46:34 EST Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2642; Mon, 20 Dec 93 12:48:13 EDT Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 12:48:25 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: POssessives X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <199312201629.AA14830@nfs1.digex.net> from "Colin Fine" at Dec 20, 93 04:21:37 pm Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Mon Dec 20 07:48:25 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET 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 for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.