Abstract
Although possessors internal to an argument DP do not qualify as canonical controllers of verbal agreement, in some languages an internal possessor may be cross‑referenced on an applicative verb. The aim of the paper is to propose a historical scenario for the emergence of this pattern, following the basic insights of the constructional approach to language change. The paper argues that this pattern is a historical innovation. It emerged when the external benefactive argument was reanalysed as internal possessor, a process that has parallels in some languages with dative possessors. The change was motivated by cross‑constructional analogy, namely, formal and semantic assimilation to the class of internal possessive constructions. When constituency was reanalysed, the location of agreement remained intact creating a non‑local configuration.
Highlights
Morphological applicatives create an applied object argument with the regular proper‐ ties of primary objects
The goal of the present paper is to propose a historical scenario for the emergence of this unusual pattern
Possessive applicatives are only observed in the youngest linguistic subgroupings, Southern Interior Salish, Greater Tzeltalan and Western Ch’olan
Summary
Morphological applicatives create an applied object argument with the regular proper‐ ties of primary objects. Possessive applicatives exhibit further differences in terms of constituency: the possessor can be external, i.e. a clause‐level verbal dependent, or, crucially for the present paper, it can be syntactically internal to the DP phrase to which the possessed theme object belongs.. In addition to general applicatives, all Southern Interior Salish languages exhibit more specialized possessive applicatives which go back to *‐ł (Kiyosawa & Gerdts 2010: 131) Their primary and most frequent function is to indicate that the applied object is interpreted as the possessor of the theme. Carlson assumes an analysis in which the possessor is DP‐internal but has a status of a verbal argument at some level of represen‐ tation This example contrasts with the general applicative (16b) where the applied and theme objects are two different DPs, each with its own determiner, and the theme lacks. There is initial evidence that in Spokane and Columbian the possessor belongs to the same phrase as the theme, it is impossible to reach a definitive conclusion based on a limited number of available examples
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