Possession
Possessed nouns are marked with a prefix expressing the person and number of their possessor. The forms of the prefix expressing first person singular is ne-, na-, or ni-, for second person singular it is a-, mwa'a-, a'a-. The third person singular is marked by the prefix ru-. A first person plural possessor is marked by the prefix ta-, second person plural by ha'amwa- and third person plural by wa'a-. Furthermore there are two suffixes. One, -ra'an is used to mark an obviative or fourth person possessor. The other is -me'en used to mark a plural possessum of a singular possessor.
| Number/person of Possessor | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1. person | nechi'i "my house" | tachi'i "our house" |
| 2. person | achi'i "your house" | há'amwachi'i "Your (pl.) house" |
| 3. person | ruchi'i "his/her own house" | wa'áchi'i "Their house" |
| 4. person | chí'ira'an "the house of the other" | |
| pl. possessum + 3.p.sg. possessor | chí'imeen "his/her houses" |
Read more about this topic: Cora Language, Grammar, Nominal Morphology
Famous quotes containing the word possession:
“Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the Ovarian Theory of Literature, or, rather, its complement, the Testicular Theory. A recent camp follower ... of this explicit theory is ... Norman Mailer, who has attributed his own gift, and the literary gift in general, solely and directly to the possession of a specific pair of organs. One writes with these organs, Mailer has said ... and I have always wondered with what shade of ink he manages to do it.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)