"To have" in Wena/Hibuese/Ngehu
Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2020 8:44 am
Languages employ a lot of different strategies to express "having" something and I just wanted to talk about how it's expressed in my conlang that I've variously called Wena, Hibuese, Ngehu etc. etc. (I also keep moving the setting. Terrible!)
Wena essentially doesn't have a lexical category of verbs other than, arguably, the non-inflecting copular / predicate marking particle i (e after another i, which is used to link noun phrases. You can think of a sentence such as "I write books" as essentially being structured like "I am a writer of books": Na i ngegyo ya ndyolya (1S COP writer GEN book). Obviously you can syntactically find a predicate and you could argue that i ngegyo "is a writer" is simply a verb meaning "writes", but there is no distinction in lexical categories and could then end up saying i mba is a verb meaning "is a house". There is also no grammatical distinction between a possessor and an object, as the equivalent of objects are essentially present as genitive modifiers. The genitive marking can even be dropped when context allows, forming a loose compound such as ngegyo ndyolya ("book writer") (as opposed to a "tight" compound which is written as one word and distinguished by stress) and with certain words, the genitive marking is more often dropped than not (that generally depends more on the head than the modifier).
There are three words that basically express different shades of "having".
Here are some examples to show them a bit better:
Na i nyu (ya) mba.
1S COP owner (GEN) house
I have/own a house.
I'm a home owner.
Funny coincidence: nyumba means "house" in Swahili.
Na i za (ya) nggu wo.
1S COP holder (GEN) money GEN.2S
I've got your money.
Na i ne (ya) hugo.
1S COP PASS (GEN) brother
I have a brother
Generally the ya would be dropped in these sentences.
If you're confused about there is overlap between passive marking and possession, essentially the idea here is that, "to have a murderer" means "to be murdered", "to have a writer" means "to be written" etc. There's also a little bit of a parallel in the use of a kind of a past participle formed from a noun to form ornative adjectives in English and some romance languages, like "dark-haired".
ne (ya) hwi (ye) dwo
PASS (GEN) hair (ATTR) black.thing
"black-haired (person, animal)"
Compare the transformation of active to passive with both verby and nouny nouns.
Hi e vwe nga.
DEM COP seer GEN.1S
This (person) sees me.
*This is my seer / a seer of mine.
Na i ne vwe.
1S COP PASS seer
I am seen.
*I have a seer.
Hi e hwi dwo nga.
DEM COP hair black.thing GEN.1S
This is my black hair / a black hair of mine.
Na i ne hwi dwo.
1S COP PASS hair black.thing
I have black hair.
I am black-haired
Wena essentially doesn't have a lexical category of verbs other than, arguably, the non-inflecting copular / predicate marking particle i (e after another i, which is used to link noun phrases. You can think of a sentence such as "I write books" as essentially being structured like "I am a writer of books": Na i ngegyo ya ndyolya (1S COP writer GEN book). Obviously you can syntactically find a predicate and you could argue that i ngegyo "is a writer" is simply a verb meaning "writes", but there is no distinction in lexical categories and could then end up saying i mba is a verb meaning "is a house". There is also no grammatical distinction between a possessor and an object, as the equivalent of objects are essentially present as genitive modifiers. The genitive marking can even be dropped when context allows, forming a loose compound such as ngegyo ndyolya ("book writer") (as opposed to a "tight" compound which is written as one word and distinguished by stress) and with certain words, the genitive marking is more often dropped than not (that generally depends more on the head than the modifier).
There are three words that basically express different shades of "having".
- nyu - owner (expresses legal ownership)
- za - holder, wearer, carrier, one who has ... on/with oneself (expresses physical location or at least temporary control over the object)
- ne - one who has ... without volition; one who is endowed with ...; undergoer, victim (expresses non-volitional possession, ornative case, passive voice)
Here are some examples to show them a bit better:
Na i nyu (ya) mba.
1S COP owner (GEN) house
I have/own a house.
I'm a home owner.
Funny coincidence: nyumba means "house" in Swahili.
Na i za (ya) nggu wo.
1S COP holder (GEN) money GEN.2S
I've got your money.
Na i ne (ya) hugo.
1S COP PASS (GEN) brother
I have a brother
Generally the ya would be dropped in these sentences.
If you're confused about there is overlap between passive marking and possession, essentially the idea here is that, "to have a murderer" means "to be murdered", "to have a writer" means "to be written" etc. There's also a little bit of a parallel in the use of a kind of a past participle formed from a noun to form ornative adjectives in English and some romance languages, like "dark-haired".
ne (ya) hwi (ye) dwo
PASS (GEN) hair (ATTR) black.thing
"black-haired (person, animal)"
Compare the transformation of active to passive with both verby and nouny nouns.
Hi e vwe nga.
DEM COP seer GEN.1S
This (person) sees me.
*This is my seer / a seer of mine.
Na i ne vwe.
1S COP PASS seer
I am seen.
*I have a seer.
Hi e hwi dwo nga.
DEM COP hair black.thing GEN.1S
This is my black hair / a black hair of mine.
Na i ne hwi dwo.
1S COP PASS hair black.thing
I have black hair.
I am black-haired