Genitive Constructions in Neo-Aramaic I Eleanor Coghill: The ...

Genitive Constructions in Neo-Aramaic
I Eleanor Coghill: The diachrony of genitive constructions in Neo-Aramaic
In pre-modern Aramaic, e.g. Syriac, a variety of constructions were
available to express a genitive relation, in all of which the possessed
noun precedes the possessor. One of these involved the ‘construct’, a
special state of the possessed noun, closely bound to the possessor noun.
The others were less closely bound constructions involving a genitive
particle. Tendencies can be discerned in the distributions of each
construction, involving definiteness among other factors. In Neo-Aramaic
the old construct state is much reduced in its distribution, and a new
construction is predominant, involving an affix which developed out of the
genitive particle. This presentation will give an brief overview of these
developments.
II Ariel Gutman: Construct state and Genitive case in North-Eastern Neo-
Aramaic
In the talk we shall present the marking of the attributive relation in
North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic. In NENA, as in other Semitic languages, this
relation is mostly head-marked (by means of a construct state) and not
dependent-marked (by means of a genitive case).
We shall concentrate on the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho (following
the description of Cohen 2012), where a new construct state has emerged
by the incorporation of the historical linker pronoun to the head noun
beside the remnants of the historical construct state (as attested in
earlier strata of Aramaic such as Syriac). The incorporation of the linker
pronoun is also responsible for the emergence of special genitive forms of
the demonstrative pronouns and definite articles, as well as a "genitive"
copula.
This situation will be contrasted with that of the Jewish dialect of
Sanandaj (described in Khan 2009) where the construct state has been
replaced by an izafe-like construction borrowed from Persian/Kurdish, thus
widening the scope of the attributive construction to N + Adj
constructions. In this dialect too, however, a genitive pronoun is still
attested, differing from some other closely related dialects.