Predicative Possession Research Articles

Postpositions in Munduruku (Tupi): Formal and Functional Features

The Munduruku people live in the states of Pará and Amazonas, including a handful of residents in Mato Grosso, in Brazil. My research about the language takes place within the Munduruku population of Pará. It is a language of the Tupi stock, that belongs to the Munduruku family. It is of head-marking type. The most common constituent order is s(o)v. The arguments do not receive morphologic marks, usually occurring in noun phrases. The verb receives person marks, which indicate/co-refer subject and direct object. Our objective here is to present the inventory of the postpositions, in order to discuss the properties they share; what their structural and functional features are; and their participation in the passive voice, causative, subordination, modality, source of information, and locative and possessive predication. We also approach the isomorphism among postpositions, nouns and verbs; the syntactic relation that establishes the postpositional phrase with the rest of the sentence: whether argument or adjunct. Finally we will also reflect upon its typology.

Predicative possession in the Novgorod Birch Bark documents in the Ural-Altaic context

This paper discusses predicative possessive constructions in the East Slavic languages, with a particular focus on the Old Novgorod Slavic dialect, in connection to the neighbouring Ural-Altaic languages. An areal-typological investigation shows that the East Slavic languages prefer the use of a locational possessive (mihi est), while the rest of Slavic and Europe’s Indo-European languages primarily use a have-possessive (habeo). Serving as primary data for this study, the dialect written in the Novgorod Birch Bark documents confirms a preference of the locational possessive over the have -possessive. The current study also evaluates three hypotheses on the origin of the East Slavic locational possessive, proposed in earlier studies: 1) a Uralic substrate, 2) a Slavic archaism and 3) a Northern Eurasian areal pattern. Given the typological survey as well as the empirical and historical comparative investigation, the locational possessive can be considered a preferred areal pattern across Northern Eurasia. Being a part of the macro contact zone of Northern Eurasia, the choice of locational possessive in the East Slavic languages is reinforced by the areal diffusion, especially from the close neighbouring languages, Uralic and Turkic.

Possessive Construction in Uab Meto

This paper is a result of research which is aimed to uncover the structure and marking on the possessive construction in Uab Meto based on morpho-syntax point of view. The data collected for this research were classified into the primary data (observation) and the secondary data (the data that are obtained from texts). The technique employed to analyze the data was descriptive-analytic, and the approach applied was deductive-inductive. The result of the research shows that in Uab Meto, predicative possession is expressed through the verb muiɁ ‘have/has’. In some usages, muiɁ metathezised to muɁi. Possesive construction of Uab Meto is also applied topicalization strategy, and the last is using a verbal prefix ma-. This prefix ma- is a verbal prefix because it carries a verbal meaning, that is have/has. Furthermore, there are two attributive possessive constructions, namely juxtaposed construction. The possessor in juxtaposed constructions can be a noun or pronoun. The second attributive possessive is pronominal clitic to show the agreement with the possessors. Relating to the marking, there are only two ways, namely by juxtaposition and pertensive marker to mark the the possession. Uab Meto allows all pronouns to mark the attributive possessive relation. Without free pronoun as the possessor, a speaker Uab Meto will understand that it is a possessive noun phrase. Clitic in possession in is obligatory for inalienable possession in Uab Meto.

Predicative possession and a possible contact-induced phenomenon among Finnic and East Slavic languages: having a headache between the Baltic Sea and the sources of the Volga River

Predicative possession and a possible contact-induced phenomenon among Finnic and East Slavic languages: having a headache between the Baltic Sea and the sources of the Volga River

Convergence as the driving force of typological change in Nahuatl

AbstractThis paper is based on extensive team research focusing on the reconstruction of the history of contact-induced change in Nahuatl from the first encounter with Spanish until the present day, taking into account both peripheral and central varieties. We trace the long-term trajectories of several morphosyntactic features that mark typological change: animacy as a grammatical category; the relational word as a lexical category; the formal distinction between comitative and instrumental markers; existential predicative possession; and relatively free word order. We argue that key innovations in Nahuatl during the colonial period are either borrowed from Spanish or begin as minor internal patterns that gradually become dominant due to similarity with an element of Spanish structure, and that these two processes have driven typological change in the language.

Predicative possession in Nivacle

Predicative possession in Nivacle

Predicative possession in the languages of the Circum-Baltic area

AbstractThis paper deals with the linguistic means used to express predicative possession in the languages of the Circum-Baltic area. The domain of possession is considered here as a prototypically organized domain, where the prototype is the notion of ownership. It is shown that most languages of the area do not provide evidence of splits in their possession systems: rather, they extend the scope of use of their ownership constructions to include all other non-prototypical possessive notions. The linguistic expression of notions that belong to domains neighboring possession, namely experience, location and attribution, is also analyzed. The results show that these notions are rarely coded by means of possessive constructions: exceptions are explained by invoking semantic causes as well as language contact. A comparison of the functions fulfilled by “have”-verbs in the Indo-European languages of the area and by adessive constructions in the Finnic languages is provided, too, and their different scopes of use are explained with reference to their diachronic development and to processes of areal convergence.

Predicative Possession and Existentials on the Oregon Coast: Alsea, Hanis, and Miluk

Abstract: Possessive (‘have’) clauses with indefinite possessees are surveyed in three now-extinct languages of the Oregon coast–Alsea, Hanis Coos, and Miluk Coos. Adjectival or verbal denominals marked by prefix-suffix combinations are employed when the possessee is unmodified; when it is modified, a different construction is used in which the modifier is treated as the clause predicate. Similar constructions also express existence and location of unpossessed entities. Negative possession and negative existentials involve negators distinct from ordinary negation, but the syntax of these differs in Alsea versus Hanis and Miluk. Few or no other languages in the southerly Northwest Coast show quite the same configuration of constructions as either Alsea or Hanis and Miluk.

Predicative possession in Nivacle

In this paper, I identify and analyse fourteen predicative possession strategies employed by speakers of Nivacle, a Mataguayo language from the Paraguayan Chaco. It is intriguing that all of these strategies but three are in common use among the speakers. Because quantifiers and numbers surface as verbs in Nivacle, these can be used as possessive predicates, which appears to be another typological rarity. The paper also includes a brief overview of predicative possession in the other three languages of the Mataguayo family.

Grammaticalization of Predicative Possession in Nanwang Puyuma and as a Basis for Reconstruction in PA n

In Puyuma, the marker i - is used to express meanings of wearing, possession, instrumentality, and existence. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these different meanings can be related and what the developmental path is. It is suggested that the original meaning of this marker is ‘carry, wear’, and that this was later grammaticalized to give the meanings of possession and instrumentality. The meaning of existence is the result of a later development. Evidence from other Formosan languages also shows that the morpheme *Si-, meaning ‘wear, carry’, can be reconstructed to Proto-Austronesian, and thus supports our hypothesis.

Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon (review)

Reviewed by: Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon Lars Johanson Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology. Ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. (Explorations in linguistic typology.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xxii, 319. ISBN 9780199660223. $125 (Hb). This collection of essays about possession and ownership aims at combining linguistic and anthropological concepts concerning the relation between language, culture, and modes of thinking, particularly the ways in which culture and cognition are manifested in grammar. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald’s opening essay, ‘Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic perspective’, is a lucid introduction that defines, explains, and exemplifies all conceivable aspects of the topic. Chs. 2–11 address the ways that linguistic structures reflect cultural patterns, attitudes toward possession, and effects of change. Isabelle Bril analyzes the complex system of ownership relations in the Oceanic language Nêlêmwa of New Caledonia. Gloria J. Gravelle investigates patterns of possession in Moskona, an East Bird’s Head language of West Papua, Indonesia. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald deals with possession and ownership in Manambu, a Ndu language of the Sepik area of Papua New Guinea. Alan Dench analyzes possession in Martuthunira, once spoken in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Lev Michael discusses Nanti, spoken in Peru, in the context of other Arawak languages. Mark W. Post deals with possession and association in the Tibeto-Burman Galo language and its culture. Yongxian Luo examines possessive constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Anne Storch studies possession in Hone, a Jukonoid language of Nigeria. Felix K. Ameka deals with possessive constructions in Likpe (Sɛkpɛlé), a Kwa language of Ghana. Zygmunt Frajzyngier discusses possession in Wandala, a Chadic language of Cameroon and Nigeria. The last two chapters focus on indigenous conceptualization of ownership and its changes in the modern world. Michael Wood discusses the Melanesian understanding of possession as observed in Kamula, spoken in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. Rosita Henry deals with ownership among speakers of Temboka in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. With a special focus on Australian languages, especially Dyirbal, R. M. W. Dixon discusses comitative and privative patterns of predicative possession, the problem of the head in appositional constructions of inalienable possession, and indigenous concepts of possession, ownership, and control. In her introduction, Aikhenvald presents the theoretical principles of analysis and sums up a number of insights on the basis of her own studies, investigation of numerous grammars, and the findings suggested in the succeeding chapters. In the following, the main tenets of this detailed crosslinguistic account of the wide range of possessive structures is briefly outlined. Possessive constructions vary depending on the nature of the possessor, the possessee, and the possessive relationship. They realize a set of recurrent core meanings: (i) ownership, (ii) whole-part relations, for example, between a body or a plant and its parts, and (iii) kinship, that is, consanguineal and affinal relations. Many languages use essentially the same constructions for the core meanings. All combinations of the types are, however, found across the world’s languages. The degree to which possession is conceived as ‘the same’ differs from one society to another and is reflected in linguistic structures. Possession can be expressed with possessive noun phrases. Some languages have dedicated phrase types that cover the core meanings (Moskona, Manambu, Martuthunira, Nanti, Hone). Others represent possessive meanings through more general associative noun phrases. The expression of possession may be viewed as a realization of a broader concept of association (Nêlêmwa, Galo, Mandarin, Likpe, Temboka, Wandala). Kinship possession and whole-part relationship reflect close links between possessor and possessee, the intimate relationship of ‘inalienable possession’. Culturally important objects may fall [End Page 277] into this class. Some languages treat consanguineal kinship and sacred or treasured objects as inalienable. The semantic content varies, and the composition of the classes may change over time, for example, when body-part terms are grammaticalized as spatial relators (Nêlêmwa, Nanti, Moskona, Manambu, Likpe, Wandala). Nouns designating inalienably possessed...

Transitive NEED Does Not Imply Transitive HAVE: Response to Harves and Kayne 2012

Transitive NEED Does Not Imply Transitive HAVE: Response to Harves and Kayne 2012

Possession as Non-Verbal Predication

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper argues that crosslinguistic variation in the forms of clausal possessive predication arises to a large extent from the NON-VERBAL nature of possessive predication. As evidence, I demonstrate that possessive predication across languages shows all the variation possible for non-verbal predication in general. I show the non-verbal approach not only accounts for previously observed major strategies in pos-sessive predication, for both INDEFINITE and DEFINITE possessive predication (also known respectively as HAVE and BELONG possessives), it also predicts the availability of “minor”, less-frequently observed encoding strategies.

The expression of predicative Possession in Lithuanian

AbstractThe object of this paper are the linguistic means used in Lithuanian to express predicative Possession. The possessive constructions are individuated and described, as along with the semantic constraints that favor or disfavor their use. It is claimed that the evidence provided in this paper confirms what Činčlej (1990) stated: Lithuanian should be considered as occupying a transitional position between the

Diachronic Slavonic syntax: Gradual changes in focus (review)

Reviewed by: Diachronic Slavonic syntax: Gradual changes in focus Mila Vulchanova Björn Hansen and Jasmina Grković-Major, eds. Diachronic Slavonic syntax: Gradual changes in focus. Munich: Sagner, 2010. 208 pp. [Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 74.] This volume is symptomatic of a recent trend in grammar studies marked by a revived interest in diachronic research from a theoretical perspective. This trend has been visible in the initiative to arrange a forum for linguists working within language diachrony using a formal analytical framework (mostly generative), which came to be established as the Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (with its 14th meeting in 2012). This kind of work has been supported by the creation and wide availability of numerous electronic resources such as historical corpora, large scale databases of manuscripts for the study of language history. While most recent research has focused on the history of Germanic and Romance languages, with few exceptions (e.g., the recent publication Development of language through the lens of formal linguistics, 2010) research on Slavic diachrony is still relatively limited, sporadic, and scattered. In this respect the current volume is a welcome resource for linguists interested in the development of Slavic languages. It is the result of the conference "Diachronic Syntax of the Slavonic Languages: Gradual changes in focus" held in Regensburg in late 2008 and contains many of the papers presented at that conference, duly reflecting the diversity of topics and ideas aired there. The main organizing idea of the volume is the assumption that the processes that lead to major and observable changes in language are marked by smaller, gradual, and often subtle, transitions, which sometimes even point to conflicting trends. While the contributions all address various aspects of Slavic language history, they reflect a number of theoretical approaches, from formal (generative) to Construction Grammar, language typology, and grammaticalization theory. The book includes 17 papers covering Russian, Czech, and Polish, as well as the almost extinct Ruthenian and Lower Sorbian. Thematically, four of the papers report results and analyze data obtained from language corpora (Bartels, Eckhoff and Haug, Krasovitsky et al., and Rabus), [End Page 299] two address negation (Dočekal and Veselinova). Other papers look at the development of verbal categories such as gerunds (Bjørnflaten) and the perfect (Jung), properties and constituents of nominal expressions (Karlík for a specific category of adjectives and Fried for adnominal participial adjectives), and clause-level categories, such as modal adverbs (Hansen), the syntax of perfect auxiliaries (Migdalski), predicative possession (McAnallen), and reflexive constructions (Lazar). Some papers address more general aspects of diachronic change, such as the grammaticalization of nominal paradigms (Rappaport), the driving forces in the history of Slavic syntax (Večerka), and transitivity and syntactic structure (Grković-Major). The papers that draw on corpus data all share a common theme: the ways in which data extracted from historical corpora may shed light on changes that have been under way or have become visible over shorter (from a diachronic perspective) segments of time (e.g., 50 to 100 years). In this respect, the paper by Krasovitsky, Baerman, Brown, Corbett, and Williams entitled "Morphosyntactic change in Russian: A corpus-based approach" is of particular interest for the topic of the volume. In this paper the authors trace gradual changes in predicate agreement in Russian over the past two centuries. The syntactic contexts included in the survey are base orders, where the subject phrase precedes the verb phrase, expletive (impersonal) structures, where oblique phrases occur in clause-initial position, and sentences where the predicate precedes the (logical) subject. In addition, the semantic nature of the referents is taken into consideration, and animate and inanimate phrases are reported separately in the statistical analyses. Based on data from a large corpus of literary works, the following intriguing generalizations emerge: a radical increase of plural agreement with conjoined NP subjects; a similar, even farther reaching, change for quantified expressions containing the lower numerals (dva 'two', tri 'three', and četyre 'four'), but a very different pattern in the case of nominal expressions quantified by higher numerals (such as pjat' 'five' and above and quantifiers such as neskol'ko 'several' and malo 'few'. These patterns can be explained by the nature of the quantity...

Predicative possession in Medieval Slavic Bible translations Predicative Possession in Early Biblical Slavic

Late Proto-Slavic (LPS) had an inventory of three constructions for expressing predicative possession. Using the earliest Slavic Bible translations from Old Church Slavic (OCS), and to a lesser degree Old Czech, a number of conclusions can be drawn about the status of predicative possession for LPS. The verb iměti ‘have’ was the most frequent and least syntactically and semantically restricted predicative possessive construction (PPC). Existential PPCs with a dative possessor appear primarily with kinship relations, abstract possessums, and in a number of other fixed construction types; existential PPCs with the possessor in an u + genitive prepositional phrase primarily appear with concrete and countable possessums. Both existential PPCs call for an animate, most often pronominal, possessor. The u + genitive was the rarest type of PPC in LPS, though it had undoubtedly grammaticalized as a PPC.

<i>The expression of possession</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The expression of possession Engin Arik William B. McGregor , ed. 2009. The expression of possession. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Pp. 435. US$137.00 (hardcover). New investigations continue to provide insights into the linguistic realization of possession. Stassen (2009) is one of the new typologically motivated studies of predicative possession. The current book is yet another which offers a variety of analyses to contribute to our knowledge of possession from typologically diverse language families. This book consists of an introduction, nine additional articles, a list of contributors, and indices of subjects, languages, and persons. In the introductory chapter (pp. 1-12), William B. McGregor overviews the concept of possessives and defines possessives as conceptual relations between entities, between people and their body parts and products, between people and their kin, between people and their representations (such as photographs), between people and their belongings, between people and things that they have control over (such as usership rights), between persons and cultural/intellectual products (such as copyrights), and so on. McGregor then summarizes the articles in the volume. In "English possessives as reference-point constructions and their function in the discourse" (pp. 13-50), Peter Willemse, Kristin Davidse, and Liesbert Heyvaert focus on possessive noun phrases such as his car and argue against the claims that they are definite NPs and/or new information in discourse. Their data come from the COBUILD Bank of English and the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen corpus and consist of 400 instances of possessive noun phrases. The analysis shows that, in addition to a subsequent mention (coreferential, 11.86% of the data) and the first mention (new, 28.03% of the data), they function in three more ways: text reference (a subsequent mention of a text referent, 8.62% of the data), inferable (inferable from an associated referent or scenario in the preceding context, 26.95%of the data), and anchored (anchored to an element in the preceding context, 24.52% of the data). Thus, they propose that these five categories form a continuum from discourse-given (coreferential) to discourse-new (new). In "On the co-variation between form and function of adnominal possessive modifiers in Dutch and English" (pp. 51-106), Jan Rijkhoff investigates possessive modification with of in English and its Dutch counterpart with van which can modify a common noun such as car, dog, or tree. The data are mostly constructed, but in [End Page 423] some cases the author consults search engines on the internet and examples from other languages. Rijkhoff argues that, with respect to the functions modification, predication, and reference, three out of the four possible types of adnominal possessives occur in English and Dutch, i.e., classifying, qualifying, and localizing, but not quantifying. The author pays considerable attention to the functions of the adnominal possessives with of/van which are functions of natural classes such as adjective, verb, and noun. In "Is possession mere location? Contrary evidence from Maa" (pp. 107-142), Doris Payne reports on a study of how Maa, an Eastern Nilotic, Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania, encodes location, possession, and existence. The author focuses on two lexemes: tii and ata. Tii occurs in both transitive and intransitive constructions with locative and existential meanings, whereas ata occurs in both transitive and intransitive constructions with possessive and existential meanings. The author reports an analysis of the first 130 tokens of tii and ata that are found in a corpus consisting of 20,000 clauses (mostly spoken and some written materials). The data show that tii and ata in Maa are in complementary distribution suggesting that possessive ata may not be derived from locative tii, contrary to what one might expect from a localist perspective. In "Learning to encode possession" (pp. 143-212), Sonja Eisenbeiss, Ayumi Matsudo, and Ingrid Sonnenstuhl explore how possessive relationships (adnominal as in my chickens, predicative as in I have chickens, and external possessive constructions as in I tapped him on the shoulder) are encoded in German child language. The authors also provide some child language data available from other languages such as English, Japanese, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as adult German. Their German data come from 64 recordings...

Predicative possession (review)

Predicative possession (review)

The locative alternation: On the symmetry between verbal and prepositional locative paradigms

There is abundant research that deals with diathesis alternations, such as the locative alternation (LA), because they can give us information about the interface between syntax and the lexicon. However, the literature dealing with the LA has frequently ignored the relation that exists between the crosslinguistically reduced set of prepositions that can occur in such construction. This paper postulates that the prepositions involved in the LA have either a locative or a possessive meaning, providing evidence from the comparison of Spanish and English, inter alia. These prepositions share a common underlying structure and are related by means of a simple derivation, following Freeze's (Language 68: 553–595, 1992) account of locative and possessive predication. This prepositional phrase will occupy the lower XP position in a construction with unaccusative properties [vp D [V [XP]]], as developed in Zubizarreta & Oh (On the syntactic composition of manner and motion, linguistic inquiry monograph, MIT Press, 2007).

Attributive and predicative possession: some cases of ambiguity in Baltic and Siavonic

The article deals with a number of Slavonic and Baltic possessive constructions which are vague between predicative and attributive possession. Attention is paid to Russian and Latvian constructions (of the type ?) which are structurally ambiguous between predicative and attributive possession (as the possessor noun phrase can be interpreted as an external possessor in a copular construction) as well as to a Lithuanian construction that cannot be satisfactorily explained as either predicative or attributive. It is argued that a certain type of possessive construction intermediate between both types of possession (with an adjectival modifier added to the possessum) can be identified cross-linguistically.