Answer to Question #210864 in English for Rina

Question

7. If you compare with English pronouns,I,you, he, she,it,we, they, which piece (s) of information is/are not expressed in the Iaai pronouns but is/are expressed in English?

8. Is there any difference in the way alienable and inalienables are possed?(2mark)

9. And if so, describe how this difference is visible in the grammar of Iaai?(4mark)

Answer 1

7 Iaai pronouns only have human or non-human references hence wh- pronouns are prominent. All pieces are expressed in English but in Iaai 'it' is not expressed.

8 Inalienable nouns very often occur as possessed nouns, whereas alienable nouns occur as possessed nouns much more rarely.

9 Iaai language is well known for having rich systems of possessive classifiers occurring in indirect possessive constructions. One is a direct construction, where the possessor is immediately indexed by a suffix on the possessed noun. The second is an indirect construction and entails the use of a possessive classifier to which the possessor morpheme is suffixed. Word order in possessive constructions in Iaai depends on the grammatical nature of the possessor. When the possessor is not lexically expressed, the possessive classifier precedes the possessed noun and carries the possessive suffix. If the possessor is lexical, the possessed noun precedes the classifier with possessive suffix, and the possessor noun ends the construction. Finally, when the possessor is expressed by a proper noun, the word order is similar to the preceding instance, but there is no possessive suffix on the classifier.