Friday, January 27, 2017

A Dairwueh Preprepositional Construction

In Dairwueh, having is expressed using the preposition edə in combination with the third person II copula -

posnegpos
irrealis
preserbdiršŋey
pastŋeediš(ŋe)
Thus, baud ŋe edə vena  - I had a farm (farm was by me).

The preposition edə occurs in some temporal expressions and some fossilized locative expressions, but is otherwise not used much.

However, edə can also take a preprepositional noun or adjective (or even adverb). In combination with the possessive construction, the adjective corresponds to the bolded elements below:
  • to have object as/for complement
  • X's object is complement
  • object is X's complement 
  • object is complement by X/for X
  • owner perceives object as complement
In a few dialects, the complement can also be an infinitive, in which case it's a causative structure, or an active(!) participle, in which case it's a passive.

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