Open AccessGenitive Marking of Subjects in West Pahāṛī
Author(s) -
Claus Peter Zoller
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
acta orientalia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1600-0439
pISSN - 0001-6438
DOI - 10.5617/ao.7389
Subject(s) - genitive case , possessive , subject (documents) , verb , linguistics , mood , dative case , action (physics) , psychology , noun , social psychology , computer science , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , library science
Some languages of West Pahāṛī may mark their subjects with a possessive ending. This is typically done in order to realise various forms of the inabilitative mood. "Inahilitative mood" means that the subject person is (temporarily) unable to do some action, or his or her agency of action is reduced. However, other forms of this mood, also realised with Genitive Subjects, are the involitive mood (the subject person is unable to control an event) and the 'perferitative' mood (the subject person is unable to preventan essential change of its own condition and has to suffer it). In addition, Genitive Subjects are sometimes employed in reflexiveand gerundive constructions, and in complex sentences expressing contemporaneity and anteriority. These Genitive Subject constructions differ basically from Dative Experiencer constructions in that verb semantics do not seem to play a significant role.