Possessives and grammaticalization in Romance

Abstract

This paper deals with possessives in French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian. As is well known, the possessive paradigms of these languages contain three types of possessives: adjectives, determiners and pronouns (see Cardinaletti 1998, Schoorlemmer 1998, Zribi-Hertz 1999, Ihsane 2000, Alexiadou 2004. When comparing these with the Latin system, from which all Romance possessive systems derive, two tendencies prevail: (i) possessive pronouns tend to be eliminated, and (ii) possessive adjectives change into determiners or become deficient adjectives with a restricted distribution. A thorough study of each available type in the four languages, however, shows that the possessive system of each of these four languages is different. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which these differences are the result of different degrees of grammaticalization. Our investigation shows that the possessive system in French is in the lead in terms of grammaticalization in that neither of its two paradigms any longer display adjectival properties. The least grammaticalized system is the Italian, while Spanish and Romanian occupy an intermediate position: Spanish combines the French system of clitic forms with the Italian system of strong forms. As for Romanian, the dependence of the possessive form on the definite article or its substitute AL shows that it is more grammaticalized than the Italian.

An empirical L2 perspective on possessives: French/Norwegian

“…[7] For a more general treatment of the syntax of possessives, see Fabricius-Hansen et al (2017) and references therein: Alexiadou et al (2007), Cardinaletti (1998). For the syntax of French possessive determiners, see Peteghem (2012) and Zribi-Hertz (2003).…”

An L2 perspective on possessives: Contrasts and their possible consequences

“…pl.) (Peteghem 2012). In the evolution from Latin to French, the reflexive variant suus survived in the third person possessor singular, leading to French son/sien.…”

“…[3.3] Categorial status and definiteness Typically, even in theoretically driven accounts (Alexiadou et al 2007;Lødrup 2011;Peteghem 2012), possessive 'pronouns' may be viewed as either 'determiners' or 'adjectives'. Their determiner-like behavior is easy to demonstrate.…”

New insights into an old form: A variationist analysis of the pleonastic possessive in Guatemalan Spanish

“…The different parts of speech of the possessive are related to each other as steps on a grammaticalization cline. Building on Cardinaletti (1998), Alexiadou (2004) stated that strong possessive adjectives are at the outset of grammaticalization, followed by weak adjectival possessives, which ultimately turn into clitic determiners (see also van Peteghem, 2012:623). Alexiadou (2004:34) adopted a hierarchical structure of the DP in which an agreement phrase precedes a number phrase, see (5).…”