This next section deals with possession constructions, at the nominal level. In particular, it will cover:
However, the term "possession" is a bit of misnomer; while these constructions do mark actual possession, this is just a subset of their more general function: marking all sorts of relations between two NPs. One such example of this more general usage is the relational nouns discussed previously.
Akin to what we will see with arguments of verbs, Skerre does not mark possession in the exactly the same way with nominal possessors as it does with pronominal possessors. I will discuss each separately and begin first with nominal possession.
If non-pronominal noun phrase is the possessor (it doesn't matter what is being possessed), the genitive syntactic marker, i, is placed between the possessed and the possessor. The order is possessed-i-possessor, as in:
As the second example above shows, modifiers of the possessed noun go in front of the genitive phrase.
a wiyet i skatak ABS boat GEN trader the trader's boat
a wiyet rana i skatak ABS boat big GEN trader the trader's big boat
If the possessor is a pronoun, a possessive pronominal is used, in lieu of a genitive marked phrase. The paradigm of possessive pronominals is as follows:
| singular | plural | |
| 1st | he | we |
| 2nd | ne | re |
| 3rd | se | te |
These are separate from, but clearly morphologically related to, the other pronominal paradigms: the disjunctive pronouns, the object affixes, and subject clitics.
These forms attach to the head noun in the possessed NP, as shown in the following schema:
| Noun | =Possessive Clitic | (Rest of the Phrase) |
Though they are not mobile like the subject clitics, the possessive pronominals undergo the same morphophonological processes (or lack thereof, as it is) as the subject clitics.
Some examples of pronominal possession:
ana-he mother=1SG.POSS my mother
wiyet-te boat=3PL.POSS their boat
ana-he kanti mother=1SG.POSS dear my dear mother
The pronominal objects of the complex prepositions — those that use relational nouns — are also marked with the possessive pronominals, as in the following:
ya akik-se DAT side=3SG.POSS near her, at her side
Forward to Section 11: Quantifiers and Modifiers
Back to Section 9: Case Markers
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