DesEsseintes wrote: ↑13 Dec 2017 13:23
gestaltist wrote: ↑13 Dec 2017 11:57
Thanks guys.
So it seems I'm trying to do something unprecedented by making the possessor the head? I'm worried I'm gonna break some kind of universal.
So “I took John’s hat” would be
I took John-ACC hat-POSS
?
If so this is probably possessor raising. This is attested. Compare English ‘He robbed me of my hat’.
This is an option, but I actually envision something else. In English, you'd have the following two phrases:
1) I took John's hat.
2) I spoke to John, whose hat this is.
I.e., if you want to refer to the possessor, you need a subordinate clause to clarify. In Nakarian, it would go the other way:
1) I took the hat which belongs to John.
2) I spoke to John hat-POSS.
In actuality the 1st phrase would probably use a converb with noun incorporation instead of a subordinate clause. Something like:
I hat-ACC John-belong-CONV took.
The 2nd phrase would look something like:
I hat-POSS John-ACC spoke-to.