stordragon wrote:stordragon wrote:However,
any thoughts about the origin of this suffix?
Naava mentioned possessive affixes. I do think that seems likely based on what I read online, but if so, I have no idea how Naava figured it out so fast. (How
did you do that, Naava?)
The answer is, as always, Finnish...
We have the same construction with the same meaning here (both that -ldasa and -tasa) and I think that it even looks exactly the same in South Western dialects as in Estonian. Anyway, that's how I knew what it was when I saw it.
Both of these have two suffixes: -
ldasa is ablative -
lda + 3rd person possessive suffix -
sa, and
suuruutasa has partitive -
ta and the same possessive suffix -
sa. (cf. loomu
ldasa ~ loomu
lt)
In Finnish it would -
ltansa and -
ttansa:
väriltänsä, kooltansa, muodoltansa / suuruuttansa, pienuuttansa, nuoremmuuttansa. It's still productive, and the possessive suffix can be changed, too: (1st)
suuruuttani, (2nd)
suuruuttasi, (3rd)
suruuttansa ; (1st pl)
suuruuttamme, (2)
suuruuttanne, (3)
suuruuttansa.
(In South Western dialects, I've definitely heard
väriltäs, kooltas, muodoltas, but I'm not sure if they ever have the final -a there (
väriltäsä, kooltasa, muodoltasa). I don't know these dialects all that well to say for sure.
But it's definitely closer to Estonian than to standard Finnish, and pretty much proves that that's what happened in Estonian as well.)
//EDIT: I googled "väriltäsä" and found a few results, such as
this poem:
se oli väriltäsä sininen - "the colour of it was blue". The results seem to be in some Savonian dialect, so now I can say that -
ltasa is used at least in (some) Eastern Finnish dialects.