Talk:Construct state

Choice of languages to include

Why the emphasis on Arabic? I have added Hebrew and moved the reference to Egyptian to the top.

Also, is the mention of the Irish examples really necessary here? The only similarity is the non-use of the article with the head noun in the phrase. Wouldn't it be better mentioned under cross-linguistic differences in article usage? RJCraig 16:39, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I (the original author of this article) didn't know Hebrew had the same grammatical feature. Actually I don't even speak Arabic, but I read about it in an Arabic grammar and remembered it. The main reason why I wrote this article was simply that it didn't exist yet - a thing that struck me. Caesarion 10:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I mentioned the parallel with the Irish language mostly because it struck me as interesting. If there's a more appropriate location for it, I'd be happy to move it there. It was my first Wikipedia posting - I'm still learning the ropes. Frank gibbons 01:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

If we use the Irish examples, we might as well count English too -- i.e. we say "the student's mother," not "*the student's the mother." 198.150.76.150 13:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, going solely by what this article says (I have no knowledge of Irish), I think it's odd that a language would prepend the definite article, but suppress it when a possessor is postpended. (Contrast it with French la mère de l'élève, Hebrew ha-'ima shel ha-talmid, English the mother of the student, and so on.) I don't know what the reason is, though; it might be that Irish has a state system analogous to the Semitic languages', or it might be something else. Ruakh 16:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Any of you familiar with the old (crackpot?) idea that the Celts (and therefore their languages) were of Semitic origin? I think it was mostly based on typological similarities (VSO word order, prepositions with pronominal endings).

Anyway, before recent sociological developments, the indication of the definiteness of a noun (phrase) modified by post-pending (of a possessor) in English and related languages has largely been redundant. I mean, what exactly would "a mother of a/the/some student" have meant, traditionally?

As for the preposed examples, the possessive noun (phrase) itself acts as a determiner (just like the "possessive pronouns") and multiple occurrence of determiners of the same category is ungrammatical: *the my mother, *my the mother, *the student's the mother, *a student's the mother.

RJCraig 05:36, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your explanations seem weak. Firstly, "Recent sociological developments" are not responsible for the one-to-many nature of some possessor-possession relationships; it's hard to imagine such a thing with mother, but very easy to imagine such a thing with friend or book or sister. Secondly, while it's true that "the possessive noun (phrase) itself acts as a determiner" in English — assuming we restrict consideration to preprended 's phrases — that doesn't explain anything about Irish. (Note that in many languages, such as French and Spanish, possessive noun phrases are never determinatives, and in others, such as English and Hebrew, they don't have to be determinatives, as there exist both determinative and adjective forms.) You need to say something about Irish to explain if it has the same sort of phenomenon as the Semitic status constructus. Ruakh 12:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

You're quite right; I was thinking only of the parental egs. My bad!

"Postpended NPs", even those in possessive case in English (a friend of Ruakh's), are firmly ensconced in prepositional phrases in both English and the Romance languages; this is why they "are never determinatives". (BTW, what are you referring to by "adjective forms" of possessive NPs?)

As for addressing your question about Irish, I wasn't. I'm more familiar with Scottish Gaelic, but even then I'd have to pull out the books to check the facts and find appropriate examples. My guess is that even if the languages are moving toward the development of a Semitic-style state system, the noun forms in question are still genitives and Irish & Scottish Gaelic still firmly within the IE fold. (The marking of nouns for genitive case, by the way, can, depending on gender, involve changes to the vowel of the final syllable of the word and suffixation of case endings in addition to the word-initial consonantal "mutations" mentioned in the article.) RJCraig 15:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: your paragraph starting "'Postpended NPs'": 100% agreed. (By the "adjective form," I just meant the postpended "of __" or "of __'s"; I suppose I should have said "adjective-phrase form.")

Re: the Celtic languages as IE vs. Semitic: Oh, I agree that they're certainly Indo-European, and not at all Semitic; but that doesn't mean they can't have features that are normally thought of as Semitic features, and if they do, then it makes sense to mention Celtic languages in articles about those features.

Ruakh 16:36, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, on second thought we don't completely agree. I see the prepositional phrase as being the possessor phrase, rather than as containing it as I take it you do. That is, in a friend of Ruakh's, I view of Ruakh's as the possessor phrase, whereas I take it you view Ruakh's as the possessor phrase. (I guess both viewpoints make sense, but mine is how I'm used to looking at it, and I think it makes more sense diachronically speaking; in French and Spanish at least, the de __ periphrasis is the standard replacement for the Latin genitive, and appears even when the old genitive was a verb argument rather than another noun's possessor.) Ruakh 16:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

<necropost>
The point of the article is a term used in describing a feature of Semitic languages, but the similarity to the odd rule of definiteness in Celtic languages certainly caught my eye the first time I opened a book on Arabic. The one significant difference is that in Celtic languages an adjective must follow its noun. Perhaps there is some significance in these being VSO languages? Anyway I thought I’d add versions of the Arabic example sentence here.

Different noun states

State	Noun form	Meaning	Example	Meaning
Classical Arabic, using the noun ملكة malikah "queen"
Indefinite	ملكةٌ malikatun	"a queen"	ملكةٌ جميلةٌ malikatun jamīlatun	"a beautiful queen"
Definite	الملكةُ al-malikatu	"the queen"	الملكةُ الجميلةُ al-malikatu l-jamīlatu	"the beautiful queen"
Construct	ملكةُ malikatu	"a/the queen of ..."	ملكةُ البلدِ الجميلةُ malikatu l-baladi l-jamīlatu	"the beautiful queen of the country"
			ملكةُ بلدٍ جميلةٌ malikatu baladin jamīlatun	"a beautiful queen of a country"
Egyptian Arabic, using the noun ملكة malika "queen"
Indefinite	ملكة malika	"a queen"	ملكة جميلة malika gamila	"a beautiful queen"
Definite	الملكة il-malika	"the queen"	الملكة الجميلة il-malika l-gamila	"the beautiful queen"
Construct	ملكةmalik(i)t	"a/the queen of ..."	ملكة البلد الجميلة malikt il-balad il-gamila	"the beautiful queen of the country"
			ملكة بلد جميلة malikit balad gamila	"a beautiful queen of a country"
Irish, using the noun banríon "queen"
Indefinite	banríon	"a queen"	banríon álainn	"a beautiful queen"
Definite	an bhanríon	"the queen"	an bhanríon álainn	"the beautiful queen"
Construct	banríon	"a/the queen of ..."	banríon álainn na tíre	"the beautiful queen of the country"
			banríon álainn tíre	"a beautiful queen of a country"
Welsh, using the noun brenhines "queen"
Indefinite	brenhines	"a queen"	brenhines hardd	"a beautiful queen"
Definite	y frenhines	"the queen"	y frenhines hardd	"the beautiful queen"
Construct	brenhines	"a/the queen of ..."	brenhines hardd y wlad	"the beautiful queen of the country"
			brenhines hardd gwlad	"a beautiful queen of a country"

RJCraig’s statement (referring to Irish/Scottish Gaelic) that “the noun forms in question are still genitives” is irrelevant since the Classical Arabic noun is also marked as a genitive (baladi).

Presumably in Modern Arabic, with nouns of the same gender, this kind of definite construction could be quite ambiguous with no marking to show which noun the adjective belonged to.

English examples like a country’s beautiful queen and the country’s beautiful queen show that definiteness being shared by a unit is not a unique feature of Semitic languages, but it’s certainly perceived as an important feature of the languages by their grammarians.
</necropost>

—☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 06:14, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Arabic & Hebrew differences

I'll have to check but IIRC the construct in Hebrew is a bit different from that in Arabic. It might be worthwhile to divide the article into sections such as "The construct in Arabic" and "The construct in Hebrew". RJCraig 16:52, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

NPOV issues; feminine -t in Arabic and Hebrew

In Classical Arabic, words in the status constructus can never get pausal pronunciation. In dialects and loosely spoken substandard Arabic, they can, when the following word begins in an article. In such a case, the above example would run 'Umm-'al-shaikh jamillah. -- Not NPOV; should be cleaned up to say something to the effect of "in spoken dialects of Arabic" or "in some spoken varieties of Arabic," or something similar. I'm not changing it myself because I don't personally know the facts of which varieties allow that. Also, we should probably have a page pausal pronunciation or pausal form (but, again, I don't know enough about it to make one).

Also, we should mention the final -t of (at least some) feminine construct state nouns in Arabic and Hebrew, which alternates with 0/h. 198.150.76.150 14:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Smikhut

I have corrected the translation of "Smikhut" from "support" to "contiguity". For support for dropping "support", please lookup סמיכות here. RCSB 04:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The construct state in English

Is not "Market Value" an example of the use of the construct state in English ("The Market's Value")? Although "Market" in this context would be traditionally charecterised as an adjective, it does not have adjective attributes ("adjective attributes" - another case in point). In contrast, in the case of "Rental Value", "Rental" does have the -al ending. Any comments? RCSB 04:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

"Market" here is not an adjective, it's what's called an attributive noun (or, more verbosely, noun used attributively). "Market value" is indeed a noun compound, which is indeed equivalent to Hebrew s'mikhut; but English does not have a construct state, does not mark attributive nouns for being attributive, etc.: it achieves the same result a different way. —Ruakh_TALK 05:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Apart from that, the construct state is marked on the head, so if any part of market value were in the construct state, it would be value, not market. --Twid 08:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh, good call. (I was thinking of s'mikhut as being marked on the "first noun" rather than on the "head noun", which in Hebrew is the same but in English is not.) —Ruakh_TALK 16:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

In conclusion: In Modern Hebrew, the construct state isn't really used for the genitive case, or rarely so. Hebrew s'mikhut is simply used to form noun compounds. Witness too that many of these are direct translations from German. For example: בית חולים derives from German Krankenhaus, גן ילדים derives from German Kindergarten. Ruakh, any comments? Do we need to make note of this in Hebrew grammar? RCSB 19:01, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's used for the genitive relationship in that in languages that actually mark nouns for cases (German, Latin, Russian, Greek, Old English, fancy Arabic, etc.), the genitive case is used on non-head nouns in noun compounds; therefore, "genitive relationship" is really another way of saying "hey look, a noun compound!" (There are flaws in this model, but that's how people typically use the term "genitive" when not talking about any specific language.) I don't think Hebrew grammar needs to explain that a lot of these are calques from German, specifically, firstly because it's not like German originated this pattern — e.g., German gives us shul, not beit sefer — and secondly because I think nowadays as many are calques from English as from German. These terms' articles in Wiktionary — wikt:בית חולים, wikt:גן ילדים, etc. — should mention their German-ness in the "etymology" section, though. —Ruakh_TALK 21:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean explaining the etymology of the calques, I meant explaining the difference between a true use of s'mikhut for the genitive (for example: בית האיש) in contrast to its use as a noun compound (for example: בית האבן). But, if none of us is expert enough - then forget it. As for בית ספר - I think it was modelled by Ben-Yehuda on the same German pattern mentioned above, even though in German that pattern doesen't exist in the case of "school", which BTW is Schule, not shul (have you been speaking too much Yiddish lately? :-). RCSB 22:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

But both of those are true uses of s'mikhut — and languages with true genitives would use the genitive for both; I don't speak German, but by my understanding, non-head nouns in German noun compounds are put in the genitive. It might be worth making clear, if it isn't already, that Hebrew s'mikhut compounds can correspond either to English "<noun> <noun>" or to English "<noun>'s <noun>", or sometimes to a single English word. (And sorry, I didn't mean that the spelling <shul> was the German word for school, any more than that the spelling <beit sefer> was the Hebrew. All I meant was that the school-word we get from German is shul. I don't know what "we" I meant there — it's not a Hebrew word — but yeah. I'll shut up now.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Accuracy

This article is completely wrong and should be removed. First, "status constructus" is a term 19th century Orientalist grammarians used to refer to the first term of an Arabic idaafa construct; the first term was said to be "in" status constructus. But Arabic is not Latin; the term itself has nothing to say about the Arabic idaafa, and what this article does say about the idaafa is not only badly misleading but simply incorrect, as is often the case with grammatical writing that uses Greco-Latin concepts and terms to talk about Arabic. النحوي (talk) 15:22, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I whole agree. The term "status constructus" AFAIK comes from Wright's A Grammar of the Arabic Language, where he translated traditional Arabic grammar terminology into Latin for the purposes of his grammar. The most common term nowadays in Arabic linguistics at least is "construct state" (though I think the rest of Semitic linguistics also uses this term), which is equated with the "definite" and "indefinite" state. I propose that this article's name be changed to "construct state".--205.250.223.14 (talk) 18:45, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The term (whether in Latin or English) has been fairly widely used for centuries in Western scholarly use (and Christian scholars were actually at first a whole lot more concerned with Biblical Hebrew than with Arabic), so it seems quite grotesque to propose that this article be deleted. AnonMoos (talk) 04:36, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Zuckermann not the source

The article currently ascribes to Prof. Zuckermann the observation that status constructus is no longer productive in Modern Hebrew; this is misleading, as this observation has been repeatedly made long ago, and is not new with Zuckermann. I would fix it but I don't have references to earlier statements of this right now, so I'm just leaving this note in case someone else finds the time to fix this. Ijon (talk) 19:25, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

And the example (em- vs. ha'ima shel) is not a great one, since that particular change is from a native lexeme that has a construct form to an Aramaic-derived lexeme that does not. This may be related to the general decline of the status constructus — the native lexeme is used in the plural, so presumably it would be used in the construct form if the status constructus were common enough to require that suppletion — but it's not a great example of it. —Ruakh_TALK 00:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

The construct is not at all obsolete in Israeli Hebrew (though it is less frequent than in Biblical Hebrew, and less frequent in colloquial Israeli Hebrew than in more formal language). I'm going to change the article to point this out, with references from Glinert's and other grammars, when I get a chance.Linguistatlunch (talk) 12:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Plain English

This is an encyclopaedia, not a specialist technical document. I have an IQ in the top 1%, but even so I find your jargon impenetrable: at the very least, you need to reduce the technical level of the introduction to allow an ordinary reader to find a way into the subject: keep the technical specificity to the main body. You also need to illustrate your meaning with some examples. As it is, I'm not going to try to understand what you mean because it's left me with a suspicion you're engaged in circular logic somewhere. -- 22:20, 19 December 2014 90.203.122.77

It's an article on a grammatical/linguistic phenomenon which does not occur in the English-language (and which is a little strange according to English-native-speaker intuitions), so a certain amount of technical grammatical or linguistic vocabulary is almost unavoidable. It is not densely technical compared to many math and science articles... AnonMoos (talk) 05:51, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I would have to agree with the jargon issue. In the opening, it refers to a first and second noun: "...The first noun is the nomen regens and the second the nomen rectum." What first and second noun? And this part is the ONLY place that those Latin terms are used (searching redirects back to THIS page), so what do they mean?? Talk about circular! WesT (talk) 21:47, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The most basic way to express it is that where English has "John's house" or "The house of John", the relevant Semitic languages would have "House-CONSTRUCT John", where House-CONSTRUCT indicates that the word meaning "house" is in the special construct state or possessed form... AnonMoos (talk) 22:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

P.S. Nomen regens is Latin for "governing noun" and Nomen rectum for "governed noun". They're actually old-fashioned 19th-century terminology, so I'm not sure why they're in the top section of the article. AnonMoos (talk) 22:44, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Incomplete examples

Now also show how it works when the adjective refers to the second member of the construct phrase, not the noun in construct state. 108.18.136.147 (talk) 21:08, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Translation between English / Arabic wikipedia pages

Currently, 'Construct state' in English wikipedia corresponds to 'Idafah (Arabic)' in Arabic wikipedia. Meanwhile, the English page for 'Iḍāfah' has no Arabic version. Perhaps the Arabic page should be changed from a translation of this page to a translation of the 'Iḍāfah' page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.196.181.137 (talk) 13:13, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Technically the term "construct state" refers to an ending on a noun (or other modification of the noun) to indicate that it's possessed, while the Arabic term seems to refer to the whole grammatical construction. AnonMoos (talk) 06:57, 21 June 2022 (UTC)