Relational noun
Relational nouns, or relator nouns, are a word class in many languages. They are characterized as functioning syntactically as nouns although they convey the meaning for which other languages use adpositions (prepositions and postpositions). In Mesoamerican languages, the use of relational nouns constitutes an areal feature of the Mesoamerican linguistic area, including the Mayan languages, Mixe–Zoquean languages, and Oto-Manguean languages.[1]
Relational nouns are also widespread in Southeast Asia (e.g. Vietnamese, Thai), East Asia (e.g. Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Lhasa Tibetan), Central Asia (e.g. the Turkic languages), Armenian, the Munda languages of South Asia (e.g. Sora), and in the Micronesian languages.
A relational noun is grammatically speaking a simple noun, but because its meaning describes a spatial or temporal relation, rather than a "thing", it describes location, movement, and other relations, just like prepositions in the languages that have them. When used, the noun is "owned" by another noun and describes a relation between its "owner" and a third noun. For example, one could say "the cup is the table its-surface", where "its surface" is a relational noun denoting the position of something standing on a flat surface. Here are examples:
Ca
Be
ī-pan
its-on
petlatl
mat
in
the
mistōn.
cat
"The cat is on the mat.'
Neko
Cat
wa
[topic]
mushiro
mat
no
's
ue
top/above
ni
[case marker]
neteiru.
sleeps/lies
'The cat is sleeping on top of the mat.'
Tā
She
zài
be.at
fángzi
house
lǐtou.
interior
"She is in the house.'
Otel-in
Hotel-'s
ön-ün-de
front-its-at
bir
one
araba
car
var.
existent
'There is a car in front of the hotel.'
Often, relational nouns are derived from or related in meaning to words for bodyparts and so, for example, to say "inside", one says "its stomach", and to say "on top of", one says "its back".[citation needed]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Campbell, Lyle; Terrence Kaufman; Thomas Smith Stark (September 1986). "Meso-America as a linguistic area". Language. 62 (3). Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America: 530–558. doi:10.2307/415477. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 415477. OCLC 1361911.
Sources
[edit]- Starosta, Stanley (1985). "Relator nouns as a source of case inflection". In Venetta Z. Acson and Richard L. Leed (ed.). For Gordon H. Fairbanks. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. pp. 111–133. ISBN 0-8248-0992-0.