The “Appositive Genitive” in Classical Manchu

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of what is commonly known as the “appositive genitive” in Classical Manchu. Unlike Japanese, Manchu allows the first noun phrase to appear in the definite, genitive form, as in men-i (we-GEN, “our”) hehe niyalma (woman) when expressing “we women.” As such, it is argued that the first noun phrase in such examples is the genitive subject of a subordinate clause. By analyzing the usage of adnominal forms of the copula in the corpus, I show that 1) contrary to conventional accounts, the adnominal form of the copula can be (or rather is usually likely to be) zero (i.e., phonetically empty). Furthermore, I also point out that 2) a genitive subject can be the subject of this zero copula in the same way as the subject of any other verb. On the basis of 1) and 2), we can consider the Manchu “appositive genitive” structure [NP_1i -i NP_2i] (NP: noun phrase, -i: genitive case marker, i: co-referential) to be a copula clause meaning ‘NP₁ is NP₂’ rather than a noun phrase meaning ‘NP₂ belonging to NP₁’.