Alienability as control: The case of Daakaka

Prince, Kilu von

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.009

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…At its broadest, alienability is rooted in the semantics of possession. Following, among others, Chappell and McGregor (1996), Heine (1997), von Prince (2016, and Seiler (2001), there is a semantic opposition between inalienable and alienable possessive relationships. Inalienable relationships are those in which the referent of the possessed NP entails a possessor, is an inherent part of the possessor, the possessor has little or no choice or control over the possessive relationship, and/or the possessive relationship between the possessor and the possessed is permanent; commonly cited examples are possessed nouns denoting kin, body parts and other part/whole relations, inherent attributes, and spatial relationships.…”

Section: Split Inalienable Coding In Northwest New Guineamentioning

confidence: 99%

Split Inalienable Coding in the East Bird's Head Family

Arnold

2023

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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.

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Section: Split Inalienable Coding In Northwest New Guineamentioning

confidence: 99%

Split Inalienable Coding in the East Bird's Head Family

Arnold

2023

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Possession and syntactic categories: An argument from Äiwoo

Roversi

2024

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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This paper argues that possession is syntactically category-flexible. While it is clear that in many languages possession is mostly grounded in and operates in the nominal extended projection (Szabolcsi 1983; Kayne 1993), I show that this cannot be universal. The empirical part of this article is a case study of Äiwoo, which I argue has an inherently verbal counterpart of English ’s, an abstract transitive verb I label poss. This verb can be used by itself to form clausal possession: ‘I poss this boat’ ≈ ‘this boat is mine.’ Possessed DPs also contain the verb poss: the object of this verb is extracted, forming a relative clause. Informally, ‘my boat’ really is ‘the boati"Equation missing"’ ≈ ‘the boat that is mine.’ Given this, Äiwoo simply lacks true nominal possessives. The theoretical consequence is that possession can be mapped onto different syntactic categories in different languages. This is a welcome result, as it makes the syntax-semantics mapping as flexible as it needs to be: if possession is just a tool to assert that a certain relation holds between two entities, nothing in our theory of grammar predicts that such a notion should only be limited to a specific syntactic category.

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Alienability splits in action nominal constructions

Lier

Rijn

2018

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

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Adnominal alienability splits typically involve a coding asymmetry: inalienable possessive constructions are shorter (or zero-coded) and/or more bound than alienable possessive constructions. This has been explained using one of two functional principles: iconicity (possessive constructions reflect differential conceptual distance) or economy (possessive constructions are the result of differential usage frequency). Alienability splits may also affect the coding of arguments in action nominal constructions. For this phenomenon only the iconicity explanation has been invoked, using the semantic notion of control. In the present paper, we investigate the merits of the alternative economy explanation for the cross-linguistic distribution of (in)alienable possessive coding of arguments in such nominalizations. Based on typological and corpus data, we conclude that the economy explanation covers the widest variety of typological generalizations concerning split possessive coding, in both underived NPs and derived action nominals.

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Alienability as control: The case of Daakaka

Cited by 5 publications

References 23 publications

Split Inalienable Coding in the East Bird's Head Family

Split Inalienable Coding in the East Bird's Head Family

Possession and syntactic categories: An argument from Äiwoo

Alienability splits in action nominal constructions

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