tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 05 13:14:06 2004
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Re: Possessive pronouns
On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 01:59:52PM -0500, Scott Willis wrote:
> "ya'll's" ("you" pl.) {-raj}
> "his/hers/it's" {-Daj}
Two minor spelling corrections on the English: those should be spelled
"y'all's" (the {'} takes the place of the {ou } that is dropped from
"you all") and "its" ("it's" can only mean "it is").
And a couple questions, because it's been a while and I've forgotten
a lot of this stuff:
1. ISTR (although my copy is at home and I can't look right now) that {-Daj}
is glossed only as "his/her[s]" in TKD, not as "its". Is there evidence
elsewhere that inanimate objects (things incapable of using language)
can be possessors as well as possessed? Could you, when talking about some
planet, say {monDaj} to refer to "its capital"? Or would you have to
fall back on a noun-noun construction?
2. How are nouns which are temporarily incapable of using language treated?
For instance, my 3.5-week-old son is definitely incapable of using
language at the moment, but I fully expect him to be capable of using it
in the future. So is he {puqloDwIj} or {puqloDwI'}?
-Mark
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