zompist bboard

I think I have indeed encountered the construction above, and yes, it does parallel the Russian, although I'm not sure that it's derived from it. In my fuzzy recollection of my Kazakh lessons, I believe that I encoutered both construction, but that the one I gave above was considered more "correct" ...

[quote="Glenn Kempf"]Kazakh (a Turkic language) normally expresses possession in a manner similar to that in Hungarian (a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) one), by using a possessive noun/pronoun plus an indication of existence or nonexistence. For example: (Mening) mysyghym bar = I have a cat. (Mening) mysyghy...

[I don't know of any real-world examples, but I could imagine pronouns developing out of numbers-- 'I' am 'number one'! If that seems unlikely, there are instances of numbers becoming demonstratives, a development I borrowed for Kebreni. Well, "1" is, of course, the source of the indefinite article...