Possessor Agreement

Abstract

AbstractThis entry summarizes the basic facts and the prevalent analyses of the type of possessive construction where the possessive relation is indicated by a possessive suffix on the possessum cross‐referencing the phi‐features of the possessor. The possessor can be caseless, case‐marked or represented by a silentpro. This type of possessive construction is best known from the Uralic and Turkic languages, and the entry focuses on analyses of Hungarian and Turkish. It surveys accounts of the distribution of case‐marked, caseless andpropossessors. The discussion of the morphological make‐up of the possessum centers on the question whether the possessive suffix is a simple morpheme or a sequence or fusion of a possessedness suffix and an agreement suffix. The entry presents the morphosyntactic structures assigned to the Hungarian and Turkish possessive construction and their impact upon the structure of the determiner phrase in generative theory. The discussion also extends to a type of postpositional phrase and to various types of non‐finite clause in the Uralic and Turkic languages that display features of a possessive construction, with possessor agreement respectively on the postposition and on the non‐finite verb. In some Uralic languages and to some extent in Turkish, too, the possessive suffix has also undertaken a partitive–determinative role, and in Udmurt, a language with differential object marking, it has developed into an accusative case marker.