Kinship terms: Case marking |
Kashaya Grammar |
As mentioned in the general discussion of Kashaya kinship terms, they take many different case forms depending on their role in the sentence – more than other words in the language. The kin terms have as many as six different forms, compared to the three found with pronouns in Kashaya.
Case is expressed at the end of the word, whereas the person involved in the kin relation is mainly marked at the beginning of the word. The following are the ways in which case can be marked, and their basic meanings.
| Subjective | the subject of a sentence | -nʔ with first person, zero with others |
| Objective | the object of a verb or postposition | -to with first person, -(e)l with others |
| Benefactive | for the benefit of the person | -nʔkʰe with first person, -ʔkʰe with others |
| Locative | where that person lives, or is located | -toʔna with first person, -ʔna with others |
| Comitative | together with the person | always ends in -yi |
| Vocative | when directly addressing to the person | sometimes ends in -de but may be zero; has stress on first syllable |
The vocative occurs only with first-person words: it's common to say something like "come here, my mother!" but it would be unusual to say "come here, his father!". The comitative occurs only with second-person and reflexive forms. The other cases occur with all persons.
Here are case forms of a kinship term showing first-person possession, which has the vocative but not the comitative.
| ʔa·kínʔ | "my older brother" as the subject of a sentence |
| ʔa·kitó | "(to) my older brother" as the object of a verb or postposition |
| ʔa·kínʔkʰe | "for my older brother" |
| ʔa·kitóʔna | "at my older brother's place" |
| ʔá·kide | "older brother!" when speaking to him |
The common ending -nʔ in the first-person kinship terms is actually the subject marker, and it changes partly or completely in other case forms.
This kinship term showing second-person possession has a comitative but not a vocative form. This list also illustrates some differences in the way the case is expressed, compared to first-person.
| mikiʹ | "your older brother" as the subject of a sentence |
| mikíl | "(to) your older brother" as the object of a verb or postposition |
| mikíʔkʰe | "for your older brother" |
| mikíʔna | "at your older brother's place" |
| miki·yiʹ | "you and your older brother" when acting together |
See the separate discussions of kinship roots and person marking.