Inalienable Possession Research Articles

What can the taxonomy of predicative possession in Malwai Punjabi tell us?

Abstract The study aims to examine the syntactic and semantic behaviors of predicative possession (i.e., have-possessive constructions) in Malwai Punjabi, an underdocumented dialect within the Indo-Aryan language family. Data were collected from longitudinal online interviews with native speakers as consultants, with audio recordings for transcribed target sentences. The results revealed that all the alienable possession, either permanent/temporary or abstract/concrete, could be marked by the postposition koḷ ‘near/with’, whereas inalienable possession, such as whole-part relation and kinship, could not be encoded using koḷ. The prototypicality model and schema-based metaphors explained why koḷ was widely used to express alienable possession in Malwai Punjabi. The analysis of companion and proximity schemata also justified the extended semantics of predicative possession, suggesting a metaphorical mapping of accompaniment and location onto possession. From a typological angle, the case study can not only provide further evidence for the existence of split possession but also contribute to a cognitive understanding of predicative possession in relation to other languages.

Gender assignment is local: On the relation between grammatical gender and inalienable possession

Abstract: The grammatical gender of a noun can be sensitive to a number of different factors, including the noun’s lexical semantics, nominalizing morphology, or arbitrary requirements imposed by particular roots (e.g. Corbett 1991, Kramer 2020), though the limits on possible factors are not currently understood, with some work proposing that a noun’s gender can even be valued ‘at a distance’ via agreement with other nominals. The current study explores the understudied phenomenon of gender-possession interactions (Evans 1994), investigating whether being possessed, or being possessable, can have an impact on which gender a noun is assigned. Evidence is provided from four unrelated languages supporting the existence of such interactions. Strikingly, however, these interactions are restricted to inalienable possession; no such interactions have been identified for alienable possession. I propose that this falls out from a general gender locality hypothesis (GLH), which restricts the domain of gender assignment within a phrase n P. The GLH captures the gender asymmetry between ‘local’, inalienable possessors introduced within n P and ‘nonlocal’, alienable possessors introduced outside of n P, for example, in a phrase PossP (Alexiadou 2003, Myler 2016). The GLH also makes further predictions for other features with respect to what may or may not factor into gender assignment, severely restricting or outright prohibiting gender-assignment effects from number, definiteness, and case. Broadly, the work expands our understanding of which types of elements can be relevant to gender assignment and sheds light on underexplored gender-, possession-, and agreement-related phenomena.

The Grammaticalization of Self and Self-World in East Mekeo: Personhood as a Closed System

Abstract: Relational nouns have been studied extensively, typically under the rubric of inalienable possession. Such nouns are typically bound to presupposed referents by an anaphoric morpheme indicating person and number. In Oceanic languages, one large class of relational nouns is linked contingently to nonhuman entities that are routinely specified in the utterance. However, another large class is linked noncontingently to presupposed human referents that typically need not be specified in the given utterance. In this paper, I propose that, in East Mekeo, the latter class of nouns corresponds with (and reveals to the investigator) the main parameters of the Mekeo self and its social world.

Inalienable possession (and lack thereof) in Spanish

Abstract This paper revisits the phenomenon of inalienable possession between a dative argument and a body-part noun in Spanish. Specifically, it looks at contexts where the inalienable possession interpretation is obligatory, as in constructions containing monoeventive verbs of perception, and those where the inalienable reading becomes optional, namely with bi-eventive predicates denoting a change of state. I offer a possessor raising and applicative hybrid analysis, whereby the inalienable possessor originates inside the body-part DP and raises to the specifier of an applicative head to license dative case; the position ApplP occupies in the derivation determines the dative’s interpretation as a mere possessor (low applicative), or as an affected possessor as well (middle applicative). Alternatively, cases where the dative is not understood as the inalienable possessor but simply as affected occur when this argument is an additional one originating in the specifier of the middle applicative head, and the possessor of the body-part noun is encoded internally via a clitic or strong possessive, or by means of a genitive PP inside the DP. Thus, I propose the existence of two types of affected applicative heads: (i) one whose specifier is available for the possessor inside the possessum DP to move into to be case licensed, and (ii) another introducing an additional argument in its specifier. Additionally, this analysis accounts for the complementary distribution between dative possessors and possessive determiners in Spanish.

The Acquisition of Inalienable Possession in L2 and Heritage Spanish

Abstract The present study examines the production and interpretation of inalienable possession in dative constructions with body-part nouns in Spanish by 25 English-speaking L2 learners and 25 heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the United States. Twenty Spanish-dominant speakers served as baseline group. The results showed significant divergencies with inalienable NPs among the L2 learners compared to the heritage speakers and Spanish-dominant speakers. The L2 learners produced few instances of clitic se and a definite determiner and favored the use of a possessive determiner with or without a clitic instead. The heritage speakers and baseline group behaved similarly in their use of a clitic and a definite determiner. We argue for age of onset of acquisition and crosslinguistic influence effects in the acquisition of inalienable possession in Spanish.

PLACE-MAKING THROUGH HERITAGE TOURISM: A TRADITION OF MUSIC AND CULTURE OF COMMODITY IN APPALACHIA

Appalachian regional identity is often reduced in mainstream media representations and the popular American imagination to the political conservatism of “red state” America, the vestigiality of “coal country,” or the prejudiced whiteness of “Trump country.” A closer look at heritage tourism representations in South Central Appalachia offers more nuanced connections among culture, capital, and senses of place than such portrayals afford. Foregrounding indexical relationships between culture and place through themes of birth, home, death, faith, and community, the representations in heritage tourism venues along The Crooked Road: Virginia's Heritage Music Trail derive meaning and value from literal grounding in the rural landscapes of Appalachia, establishing musical tradition as an inalienable possession of that place. This paper elucidates the role of commerce and the commodity form in these heritage-authenticating semiotic relations, taking as object of analysis the discursive, visual, and artifactual offerings of three of the heritage trail's major venues and situating them among critical political-economic perspectives on place, space, the local, and the global. The value of place as an inalienable commodity in a global space of proliferating and alienable commodities, required for heritage tourism to work as a revenue generator, finds reflection in representations of the successful transformation of an originally folk music into a commercial form. Additionally, nostalgic displays of older commodities assert the traditional value of the music while simultaneously imbricating it in a larger historical and contemporary valorization of commodity consumption.

The Grammaticalization of Self and Self-World in East Mekeo: Personhood as a Closed System

Relational nouns have been studied extensively, typically under the rubric of inalienable possession. Such nouns are typically bound to presupposed referents by an anaphoric morpheme indicating person and number. In Oceanic languages, one large class of relational nouns is linked contingently to nonhuman entities that are routinely specified in the utterance. However, another large class is linked noncontingently to presupposed human referents that typically need not be specified in the given utterance. In this paper, I propose that, in East Mekeo, the latter class of nouns corresponds with (and reveals to the investigator) the main parameters of the Mekeo self and its social world.

Middle-Passive Constructions, Dative Possessors, and Word Order in Spanish

This paper examines data from Spanish middle-passive sentences whose grammatical subject contains a body-part noun, externally possessed by means of a dative possessor. I advocate for an analysis whereby the possessor originates inside the theme DP and raises to the specifier of an applicative projection to be licensed with dative case. I show that the unmarked order for dative DPs in these configurations is preverbal. These phrases may appear as the sole preverbal constituent, presumably in preverbal subject position, thus forcing the theme DP to remain inside the VP; alternatively, both the dative DP and theme DP can occur preverbally, in which case, the former appears to be left dislocated while the latter would be probed to preverbal subject position. This last scenario leads to a minimality violation, since the theme would be probed over the empty pronominal standing for the possessor that must necessarily sit in Spec, ApplP for the inalienable possession construal to obtain. Instead, I argue that both preverbal dative and theme DPs in Spanish middle-passive sentences are left dislocated and corefer with empty pronominals inside the sentence; the null dative possessor, being closer to T° always raises to subject position, which avoids any potential intervention effects. Finally, I explore how these data can be analyzed within a paratactic approach.

Typological Reflections on the Rise of Possessive Alienability Splits in Tungusic

Abstract In this brief discussion note I consider rise of (in)alienability splits in Tungusic languages in a typological perspective. I provide typological arguments for the diachronic scenario (originally due to Sunik 1947), in which the interrogative pronoun ƞüi ‘who’ developed nominalizing and deictic function, subsequently giving rise to free possessive construction, on the one hand, and the alienability marker, on the other hand. It is shown that the proposed, typologically informed scenario can successfully account for peculiarities of the inalienable possession and related possessive markers in Tungusic languages, which alternative scenarios are not able to explain.

Split Inalienable Coding in the East Bird's Head Family

Abstract: This paper discusses the diachrony of inalienable possessive constructions in East Bird's Head, a small Papuan family of the Bird's Head peninsula in northwest New Guinea. In particular, it focuses on a phenomenon known as Split Inalienable Coding, in which a language has two or more possessive coding strategies closely or exclusively associated with the expression of inalienable possession. Based on the available data, Split Inalienable Coding can be reconstructed to the proto-Meax branch of East Bird's Head, but not to proto-East Bird's Head itself. It is argued that Split Inalienable Coding was innovated in pre-proto-Meax, and had begun to erode in proto-Meax; after the divergence of the Meax branch, further changes in the daughter languages have obscured the original system of Split Inalienable Coding. As Split Inalienable Coding is found in other neighboring yet unrelated languages, the role of contact in the development of Split Inalienable Coding in pre-proto-Meax is also discussed. From the present-day distribution, it is inferred that Split Inalienable Coding first developed in an Austronesian/Papuan contact zone in the east of the Bird's Head, before spreading to other nearby Austronesian languages.

Protracted development in child heritage Spanish: Evidence from inalienable possession

The present study examined the production of inalienable possession with body parts in Spanish among 20 school-age children of Mexican-born parents born and raised in the United States. The results were compared to those of 20 first-generation immigrant parents (main input providers), 27 Spanish-dominant children of similar age, and 12 Spanish monolingual parents living in Mexico. Group and individual results obtained via a question-and-answer task showed low proportion of clitic se plus the definite determiner (e.g. Ella se rompió el brazo ‘She broke her arm’) among the heritage children in their production of the inalienable construal. The heritage children significantly overextended the possessive determiner instead of the definite determiner in contrast to their parents, the Spanish-dominant children and monolingual parents. Results also showed a significant role for dominance and language experience in the degree of morphosyntactic variability among heritage children, supporting recent research. The higher the Spanish dominance and the more Spanish contact and use the heritage children had, the more they aligned closer to their parents and the Spanish-dominant children in the use of the definite determiner. There were no divergences with the use of the definite determiner in alienable contexts. We argue for protracted development in child heritage Spanish stemming from crosslinguistic influence effects, minority language dominance and linguistic experience.

Inalienable possession in Spanish-English code-switching

Intrasentential code-switching is a common bilingual phenomenon that occurs when multiple languages are used in the same utterance. Research has shown that such switching is not arbitrary, but rather systematic and rule-governed. By looking at the syntactic interactions that happen when bilinguals co-activate their languages, we can shed light on our understanding of a variety of structural factors as well as bilingual grammars more generally. The current talk focuses on data from Spanish-English inalienable possession, which is manifested differently in the two languages (e.g., he washed his face vs. él se lavó la cara ‘(lit.) he to himself washed the face’). The results of an acceptability judgment task completed by US heritage speakers of Spanish suggest that regardless of the direction of the switch, an English-like structure is preferred with a possessive determiner (e.g., he washed su cara), and in the case of a Spanish verb switched with an English object, the preverbal clitic is required as well (e.g., él se lavó his face).

Inalienable possession in Spanish-English code-switching

Intrasentential code-switching is a common bilingual phenomenon that occurs when multiple languages are used in the same utterance. Research has shown that such switching is not arbitrary, but rather systematic and rule-governed. By looking at the syntactic interactions that happen when bilinguals co-activate their languages, we can shed light on our understanding of a variety of structural factors as well as bilingual grammars more generally. The current talk focuses on data from Spanish-English inalienable possession, which is manifested differently in the two languages (e.g., he washed his face vs. él se lavó la cara ‘(lit.) he to himself washed the face’). The results of an acceptability judgment task completed by US heritage speakers of Spanish suggest that regardless of the direction of the switch, an English-like structure is preferred with a possessive determiner (e.g., he washed su cara), and in the case of a Spanish verb switched with an English object, the preverbal clitic is required as well (e.g., él se lavó his face).

Introduction: the limits of the explanatory potential of the alienability contrast

Abstract This introductory article outlines the central topic of the present special issue, viz. the contrast between alienable and inalienable possession, and how this contrast is reflected in the grammars and lexicons of natural languages. It sketches the historical background of the alienability contrast in the linguistic literature and points to a number of biases that need to be overcome in order to (1) advance our understanding of the contrast and (2) face the limits of its explanatory potential. Specifically, the present introduction, as well as the contributions to the present issue, proposes to move beyond prototypical possessive relationships (ownership, part-whole, and kinship relations), prototypical possessor categories (human possessors) as well as prototypical possessee categories (artifacts, body-parts and kin). In addition, the issue contains three contributions dealing with Amazonian languages, thus filling in an important gap in previous crosslinguistic studies on possession. The data presented in the special issue show that many morphosyntactic phenomena that have been explained in terms of the alienability contrast – or are amenable to such explanations – cannot be reduced to it, and are sometimes even better described without recourse to alienability at all. The present article thus concludes that the alienability contrast is at best regarded as a heuristic tool in exploring linguistic data, and cautions that, if used as the only explanatory principle, it could actually hamper an adequate description of the data.

Explaining alienability splits in the use of overt and zero possessive marking: a source-oriented approach

AbstractA well-known pattern in the encoding of adnominal possession crosslinguistically involves splits in the use of overt and zero marking for alienable and inalienable possession. Overt marking may be restricted to alienable possession, but it is not usually restricted to inalienable possession. Zero marking may be restricted to inalienable possession, but it is not usually restricted to alienable possession. This has been explained in terms of principles pertaining to general properties of alienable and inalienable possession, such as the relative degree of conceptual contiguity between possessor and possessee or the relative need to disambiguate the possessive relation. These principles, however, have generally been formulated based on the synchronic crosslinguistic distribution of overt and zero marking across alienable and inalienable possession, rather than diachronic phenomena that shape this distribution from one language to another over time. This paper discusses several developmental processes that have been shown to recurrently give rise to the possessive markers involved in the alienability splits in question crosslinguistically. These markers develop through metonymization processes whereby various types of pre-existing elements take on a possessive meaning originally associated with their context of occurrence, independently of alienability. The distribution of these markers across alienable and inalienable possession follows from restrictions in the distribution of the source construction, unrelated to possession. Principles pertaining to alienability may possibly play a role in the extension, retention or loss of particular markers across alienable and inalienable possession contexts once they are in place in a language, thus ultimately contributing to the relative crosslinguistic frequency of particular alienability splits. This, however, remains to be investigated. These facts call for a new, source-oriented approach to alienability splits and recurrent crosslinguistic patterns in general. In this approach, individual patterns and their relative crosslinguistic frequency are explained in terms of the properties of multiple source constructions and diachronic phenomena that give rise to the pattern and shape its crosslinguistic distribution over time, rather than particular synchronic properties of the pattern in themselves.

Ownership language informs ownership psychology.

Many languages grammatically distinguish between alienable and inalienable possessions. The latter are sometimes restricted to body parts, but they often include other kinds of personally significant entities too. These cross-linguistic patterns suggest that one's most precious owned objects tend to fall within a complex self system that includes not only the core (corporeal) self, but also the extended (noncorporeal) self.

Split Inalienable Coding in linguistic Wallacea: typology, origins, spread

AbstractThis paper is a typological survey of inalienable possessive constructions in the linguistic area of Wallacea and its surrounds. In a sample of 189 Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages, 13 have a phenomenon not previously recognised in the theoretical or typological literature: Split Inalienable Coding (SIC), whereby a language has two or more possessive coding strategies that are closely or exclusively associated with expressing inalienable possession. This paper focusses on semantically conditioned splits, where minimally one strategy encodes the possession of body parts, and another the possession of kin terms. Geographically, all of the sampled languages with semantic SIC are located in Wallacea; special attention is therefore given to the development of split inalienables in this region. In most of these languages, SIC has developed very recently. I argue that there have been multiple causes of SIC: Austronesian languages are predisposed to develop SIC, due to the inheritance of a structurally defined class of kin terms that favours the distinction; and contact has also played a role in Northwest New Guinea, with SIC diffusing both across and within genealogical groupings.

Possession in Patani

AbstractThis paper provides the first description of the possessive system in Patani, a South Halmahera-West New Guinea language (Austronesian). Possession in Patani involves the interplay of several parameters. Syntactically, there are two broad possessive constructions: direct, and indirect. Morphologically, both constructions make use of pronominal proclitics and possessive suffixes which express the person and number of the possessor. In the direct construction, this possessive marking attaches directly to the noun, whereas the indirect construction makes use of a possessive particle (a relational classifier) on which the possessive marking occurs. Semantically, all nouns which are directly possessed are inalienable nouns expressing kinship, part-of-whole relations, and close association. In the indirect construction, a semantic distinction is made between items related to eating and drinking on the one hand, and general possession on the other. This distinction is signaled through the choice of one of two possessive classifiers. At the same time, there are some idiosyncrasies which are not explained by the main semantic pattern. When both direct and indirect constructions are used together in a sentence, each part maps a different semantic relationship. Typologically, the Patani order is possessor-possessed, as is common in the region. Finally, both the direct and the indirect construction may be used phrasally (‘my house’), or predicatively (‘I have a house’).

The grammaticalization and dissolution of High Extended Intonation: an inalienable possession paradigm in Roon

Abstract This paper is concerned with the documentation, typology and diachrony of a single inflectional paradigm expressing inalienable attributive possession in Roon, a language of the South Halmahera West New Guinea subgroup of Austronesian. The paradigm in question exhibits a substantial amount of variation both within and across speakers. Formally, the paradigm is exceptional in that, in some of its variants, it makes use of an H toneme, the only attested usage of tonality in the entire language. Functionally, the paradigm is remarkable in that, in some of its variants, the possessor is distinguished not for person but rather for distal deixis. Historically, the H toneme forming part of the paradigm is argued to derive from the grammaticalization of a High Extended Intonation contour expressing excessivity along a scalar dimension, characteristic of many languages of New Guinea and Australia. In some languages of North West New Guinea, this intonation contour anchors to certain particles, resulting in ideophones such as the Papuan Malay eeeH. One such ideophone, it is suggested, was subsequently incorporated into the expression of inalienable attributive possession in Roon. The proposed analysis thus provides a case study of how intonation may develop into tone, and, more generally, how gesture may be incorporated into grammar.

Possessive marking strategies in Mehináku (Arawak)

In this paper, I describe the possessive constructions in Mehináku, highlighting the types of strategies found in the language, so far, to express possession relationships. I present two major types of possession constructions: (i) nominal (also known as attributive) possession, and (ii) predicative possessive constructions, which involve both the use of nouns and verbs. Regarding nominal possession, Mehináku, like other Arawak languages ​​(PAYNE, 1991; AIKHENVALD, 1999), recognizes a split between inalienably possessed and alienably possessed nouns, expressed through the attribution of different morphemes to these nouns. Inalienable nouns, for example, receive fewer morphological formatives, including only the marks of person and agreement with possessor and number, whereas alienable nouns can occur without the presence of an obligatory possessor. In this case, they will carry, in addition to the morphological formatives that appear in the inalienable nouns, specific morphemes of alienable possession. Predicative possession constructions, in turn, are formed mainly by juxtaposition, but also by other strategies, such as prefixing the attributive morpheme ka- (k-, before vowels) to the noun or verb; or through the suffixation of the existential morpheme =waka, among other possibilities.