Aug. 21st, 2006 10:20 am
Speaking of Armenian
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckIt's been so long since I spent any serious time on my Armenian materials (despite acquiring a sweet new Classical Armenian grammar in my recent Seminary Co-op linguistics book binge) that I forgot that Modern Western has developed suffixed possessives, e.g.:
ẓi "horse" ẓis "my horse"
hayr "father" hayrnis "our father"
This a feature also shared by Persian, Turkish, and the Semitic languages, e.g.:
Persian: asb "horse" asbam "my horse"; pidar "father" pidarimān "our father"
Turkish: at "horse" atım "my horse"; ata "father" atamız "our father"
Arabic: ḥiṣān "horse" ḥiṣāni "my horse"; abū "father" abūna "our father"
It makes me wonder if we could be dealing with a Sprachbund phenomenon, i.e. one that has spread between genetically un- or distanly-related languages spoken in the same area. What I really need to see is more data from varieties related to those mentioned above, but spoken outside of the proposed linguistic area. For instance, you don't see the same phenomenon in Hindi or Greek. (Note that Greek has possessive clitics, but this don't work the same way. For instance, ho híppos mou "my horse", but ho kállistos mou híppos "my best horse". The other languages don't exhibit this kind of movement, e.g. *amenalaws ẓi.)
ẓi "horse" ẓis "my horse"
hayr "father" hayrnis "our father"
This a feature also shared by Persian, Turkish, and the Semitic languages, e.g.:
Persian: asb "horse" asbam "my horse"; pidar "father" pidarimān "our father"
Turkish: at "horse" atım "my horse"; ata "father" atamız "our father"
Arabic: ḥiṣān "horse" ḥiṣāni "my horse"; abū "father" abūna "our father"
It makes me wonder if we could be dealing with a Sprachbund phenomenon, i.e. one that has spread between genetically un- or distanly-related languages spoken in the same area. What I really need to see is more data from varieties related to those mentioned above, but spoken outside of the proposed linguistic area. For instance, you don't see the same phenomenon in Hindi or Greek. (Note that Greek has possessive clitics, but this don't work the same way. For instance, ho híppos mou "my horse", but ho kállistos mou híppos "my best horse". The other languages don't exhibit this kind of movement, e.g. *amenalaws ẓi.)
Tags: