Lesson 5 — Grammatical Topic — Possessive phrases

You've learned how to use person and number markers with nouns to indicate who possesses or is in relationship to the noun:
	ma k–ay	"my daughter"
	ma k–iy–wot kiwot	"our chief"
	ma p–itn	"your child"
	ma –t	"his/her name"
	ma –i–pepe	"their older brother/sister" (two)
So far expressionsof this kind have all involved a single word — at least in Samala. You can also use "possessive phrases," to spell out who or what stands in the relationship to the noun with the possessive marker. What if you wanted to say something like
	"the chief's son"
	"the people's land"
	"the eagle's eye"
Before we look at Samala, it helps to remember another way to say these same phrases in English:
	"the chief's son"	or  "the son of the chief"
	"the people's land"	or  "the land of the people"
	"the eagle's eye"	or  "the eye of the eagle"
The pattern in Samala is more like the second pattern in English:
	ma –tx ha slow	"the eye of the eagle"
You use
	ma or ha to introduce the whole phrase
	the s– possessive that means "his/her/its"
	the item that's possessed — the part that comes before "of" in English
	ha to introduce the second noun
	the noun that possesses — the one that comes after "of" in English
	This is literally "the its eye the eagle."
More examples of possessive phrases:
	ma s–wop ha wot	"the chief's son — the son of the chief"
	ma –tu ha ma	"the rabbit's ear[s]"
	ma –teleq ha wic	"the bird's tail"
	ma s–sa ha ii ma sa ha ii	"the child's tooth"
The second noun — the one that possesses — can show up with a possessive marker itself, such as "my" in the example below.
	ma –antk ha k–ay	"my daughter's friend"
	ma –t ha k–i–itn	"our child's name" [we two]
	ma s– haxwi ha p–ay	"your daughter's clothes"
	ma s–ap ha –nene	"his/her grandmother's house"

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