ünite beş Personal possession; the verb “to have“ (pur and şuk)

UNIT FIVE
Personal possession;
the verb “to have“ (pur and şuk)

Personal possession

In English and some other languages we are accustomed to having special words to indicate possession, as "my, your, their, our, his“ and so on. Chuvash can do this too when it is a question of expressing possession on the part of a person (that is, not the genitive relationship existing between things expressed by “of“ in English), by using words which mean “my, our, your.“

These words are actually the genitive case of the personal pronouns, the entire declension of which will be given in Unit Eight. When possession of things on the part of persons is expressed in this way, the forms are:

 manăn lasha  my horse
 sanăn lasha  your horse
 unăn  lasha  his (her, its) horse
 pirĕn lasha  our horse
 sirĕn lasha  your horse
 vĕsen lasha  their horse

The forms manăn, sanăn actually mean ‘of me, of you,‘ thus, “the horse of me, the horse of you,“ hence “my horse, your horse.“ In the case of the 3rd p. sg., there is an additional suffix - i, which we shall explain shortly. There are also short forma of the first three forms, viz., man lasha, san lasha, un lasha, but not of the others.

Two different forms are translated “your,“ the first being the singular and the familiar (used within the family, with friends one would call by first name, relatives, pet animals, etc.). The second form is plural and polite. It is used to people whom one would call “Mr. ‚“ or whenever there is more than one addressed. However, depending on who is addressed, this form can mean one or more than one, and it is never in doubt which, because there must always be some prior reference that tells one who “you“ means. It is also used for more than one person who would be addressed with the familiar form.

Although the manner of expressing possession n shown above is a very common one in Chuvash, there is another important way, also found in the other Turkic languages and elsewhere. This is to add suffixes (morphemes) to the word to indicate who the owner is. This is a new idea for speakers of English, but one not hard to grasp. Thus, if ‘son‘ is yvăl, by adding -ăm (after a consonant), or -ĕm if it is a front vocalic word, or just –m if it ends in a vowel (as acham ‘my child‘), we create the form yvălăm, which of and by itself means “my son,“ with no need for additional words. The entire scheme is:

 yvălăm  my son    yvălămăr our son
 yvălu  your (fam.) son  yvălăr  your son
 yvălĕ  his, her, son  yvălĕ  their son

Note that the ending of the 3rd p. means not only “his“ but also “hers“ (even “its“ under proper circumstances), and that it violates vowel harmony. Chuvash has experienced a general laxness in its vowel harmony, especially in the sounds -i and -ĕ. Finally, the same suffix is used for singular and plural, viz. “his, her“ as well as “their.“ Since, however, in order to say “his, her,“ or “their,“ it must be clear who is referred to, there is never any trouble to tell them apart.

If speakers want to make it absolutely clear as to what possession is involved, they may combine both forms, and use the genitive of the personal pronoun and then add the appropriate endings to the noun as well, in this way:

 mănăn yvălăm   my son   pirĕn yvălămăr  our son
 sanăn yvălu  your son  sirĕn yvălăr your son
 unăn  yvălĕ  his son   vĕsen yvălĕ their son

This is chiefly used for a stronger emphasis, as “Our son did this, but their son did that.“ Note that this method removes any doubts between “his, hers“ and “theirs“ in the 3rd p. For ease in presentation henceforth, we shall identify the third person only as “his“ throughout.



Table of Possessive Forms

  BACK    FRONT
 Consonant Vowel  Consonant Vowel

 yvălăm  acham  hĕrĕm  ĕnem
 yvălu  achu  hĕrü  ĕnü
 yvălĕ  achi  xĕrĕ  ĕni
 yvălămăr achamăr  hĕrĕmĕr  ĕnemĕr
 yvălăr  achăr  xĕrĕr  ĕnĕr
 yvălĕ  achi  xĕrĕ  ĕni
 

All words may be given possessive forms according to the above possibilities, including loanwords, the only peculiarity there being that a few Russian words in -o use an allomorph -vĕ in the 3rd p. eg. (viz., bjurovĕ ‘his office‘). Note above the use of –i in the 3rd p. sg. possessive vocalic stems, which arises from a replacement of the preceding vowel by -i (thus, lasha + i> lashi). It will be generally clear from the above table what the ending is, but note that the possessive morpheme displaces the regular vowel of the stem in several places.

Nouns in -u/-ü employ their stem alternant in -ăv/-ĕv when any possessive morpheme
follows, hence:

 şyrăvăm  my letter  pĕlĕvĕm  my fact
 şyravu  your letter  pĕlĕvü  your fact
 şyrăvĕ  his letter  pĕlĕvĕ  his fact

 şyrăvămăr our letter  pĕlĕvĕmĕr our fact
 şyrăvăr  your letter  pĕlĕvĕr  your fact
 şyrăvĕ  their letter  pĕlĕvĕ  their fact

Nouns in single consonant plus ă/ĕ employ their stem alternant with geminated consonant when a possessive morpheme follows, thus:

 pullăm  my fish   tĕvvĕm  my knot
 pullu  your fish  tĕvvü  your knot
 pulli  his fish  tĕvvi  his knot

 pullămăr our fish  tĕvvĕmĕr our knot
 pullăr  your fish  tĕvvĕr  your knot
 pulli  their fish  tĕvvi  their knot

In the 3rd p. sg. possessive, words in –t and -d (orthographically -t, -t‘, -d, -d‘) replace that consonant with ch and add ĕ‚ as follows:

 pürt  house   sklad  storehouse
 pürchĕ  his house  sklachĕ  his storehouse

 jat  name   tetrad"  notebook
 jachĕ  his name  tetrachĕ his notebook

In current Chuvash usage, the personal possessive morphemes of the 1st and 2nd p. pl. have been largely supplanted by the analytical forms. Thus, instead of yvălămăr “our son,“ pirĕn yvăl is used, and instead of yvălăr “your son,“ sirĕn yvălu (note ..u!) is used. As mentioned, words in the foreign phoneme -o have their 3rd p. sg. possessive in -vĕ, as kinovĕ ‘his movie,‘ depovĕ ‘his depot.‘ A special possessive morpheme {-ăshĕ} is found with a small class of words made up of kinship
terms and some numerical terms, thus: appa ‘elder sister‘ but appăsh(ĕ) ‘his, her elder sister.‘

 amăshĕ   his mother
 ashshĕ (< *aşăshĕ) his father

 numajăshĕ  many of them (lit. "its many, their many")
 vişşĕshĕ  the three of them (lit. "their three")

The entire declension of atte ‘father‘ is rather irregular.

 atte, attem  my father attemĕr  our father, “Our Father“
 aşu  your father aşăr  your father
 ashshĕ  his father ashshĕ  their father

Later, we shall take up the endings (morphemes) that indicate different persons or actors in the verb, and then the student will notice that these endings are very similar to the personal possessive morphemes. Thus tusămăr ‘our friend,‘ but also şyrtămăr ‘we wrote‘ (lit. “our having written“). From this some have concluded that, in these languages and others, verbal endings are an outgrowth of an originally possessive idea, e. g. ‚ “my seeing exists“ is “I see,“ and “I am a see-er“ becoming “I see.“

The Verb “To Have“ (pur and şuk)

Chuvash does not have a single verb meaning ‘to have‘ the way English and some other languages do. Instead, they usually say something like “my book exists“ (cf. the Russian "to me a book is‘ with omission of is), “our son is non-existent“ for ‘we have no son,‘ and so on. Chuvash has two words used to indicate possession: pur ‘that which is, what exists,‘ and its opposite şuk ‘that which is non-existent, what there is none of.‘ The following examples will help to make this more evident.

 manăn kĕneke pur  I have a book (of me a book exists)
 sanăn văhăt şuk   you have no time (your time is-not)
 unăn ĕne şuk   he has no cow
 manăn lasham pur  I have a horse, I have my  horse
 lasham pur   I have a horse
 kamăn pur, ăna tata parĕş of him who has, to him will be given also (Mark IV, 25)

For those who may have some acquaintance with Turkish, the words pur and şuk correspond exactly in form, origin and usage to Turkic var and yok. Further, just as var and yok may take the past tense morpheme (vardı ‘there was,‘ yoktı ‘there was not‘), In Chuvash too the past tense morpheme {-chchĕ} (of like origin) may be added to form purchchĕ and şukchchĕ “there was, there wasn‘t.“