,
12 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
INTERESTING CATAWBA LANGUAGE FACT: "possessive pronouns" don't apply to food, land, etc.
In fact, I've stopped calling them "possessive pronouns" in my classes. I refer to them as "relational pronouns" since...
they only describe your relationship to other humans/some animals.
Of course we don't have possessive pronouns BECAUSE HOW THE FUCK DO YOU OWN THINGS? #settlernonsense
"MY mother" vs "MY toy". MY means two different things in these phrases.
In the second you are expressive a relationship: it's not their mother or your mother but MY mother. I'm the one related to her.
The second expresses that the toy is MY property. I choose what happens to it.
I don't decide what happens to MY mother but I do decide what happens to MY toy.
The first one describes a relationship. The second describes ownership. The second sentence doesn't exist in Catawba.
You could say THE toy, or THE land, or THE food. But not MY toy, MY land, or MY food.
You can say yaksuna (my mother) or yaksuyé (your mother). You cannot say 🚫kusna (my corn)🚫 or 🚫kusyé (your corn)🚫
What I'm saying is that possession is built into English in a way that isn't necessarily natural. There are other ways to discuss the world.
