110 Chapter 4 Morphology
(44) bukuna Siti ‘Siti’s book’
motorra Ebu ‘mother’s car’
ana'na ba'en ‘your child’
soradda ‘his/her letter’
The fact that third person possessors need not occur overtly inspires an analysis
in which -na is taken to be a third person possessive pronoun, much like Indo-
nesian -nya. Despite this similarity, it should be noted that -na has a distribution
somewhat different than -nya. For example, -na cannot be used as a direct ob-
ject clitic on verbs, as it can in Indonesian. It thus does not have the pronominal
character of Indonesian –nya.
(45) Puspa me-lihat-nya. Indonesian
Puspa AV-see-3
‘Puspa saw him.’
Second, as shown in the data in (44), -na occurs with second person possessors
(ana’na ba’en ‘your child’) and also occurs with first person possessors that
follow the possessed noun (although this is not the preferred form).
(46) %motorra sengko’ ‘my car’
%ana’na sengko’ ‘my child’
In addition, affixation of -na can simply indicate the definiteness of a noun, as
in the sentences in (47), a feature that it has in common with -nya.
(47) a. Buku-na neng meja.
book-DEF at table
‘The book is on the table.’
b. Sengko' senneng dha' guru-na.
I happy to teacher-DEF
‘I like the/my teacher.’
Data like these and other examples below lead to glossing -na as a suffix that
overtly indicates the definiteness of the noun to which it is affixed. As such
definiteness is inherent in possession, one of the possible translations of -na is
as a possessive affix.