In
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, inalienable possession (
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) is a type of
possession
Possession may refer to:
Law
* Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance
* Drug possession, a crime
* Ownership
* ...
in which a
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
is
obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or
nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "alienated" from their possessor.
Inalienable nouns include body parts (such as ''leg'', which is necessarily "someone's leg" even if it is severed from the body),
kinship terms
Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology ...
(such as ''mother''), and part-whole relations (such as ''top'').
Many languages reflect the distinction but vary in how they mark inalienable possession.
[ Cross-linguistically, inalienability correlates with many morphological, ]syntactic
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
, and semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
properties.
In general, the alienable–inalienable distinction is an example of a binary possessive class system
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, incom ...
in which a language distinguishes two kinds of possession (alienable and inalienable). The alienability distinction is the most common kind of binary possessive class system, but it is not the only one. Some languages have more than two possessive classes. In Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, for example, Anêm has at least 20 classes, and Amele has 32.[
Statistically, 15–20% of the world's languages have ]obligatory possession Obligatory possession is a linguistic phenomenon that is common in languages whose nouns are inflected for possessor, and some words, commonly kinship terms and body parts, cannot occur without a possessor in those languages. The World Atlas of Lang ...
.
Comparison to alienable possession
With inalienable possession, the two entities have a permanent association in which the possessed has little control over their possessor. For instance, body parts (under normal circumstances) do not change and cannot be removed from their possessor. The following real-world relationships often fall under inalienable possession:
Alienable possession, on the other hand, has a less permanent association between the two entities. For instance, most objects may or may not be possessed. When such types of objects are possessed, the possession is alienable. Alienable possession is used generally for tangible items that one might cease to own at some point (such as ''my money''), but inalienable possession generally refers to a perpetual relationship that cannot be readily severed (such as ''my mother'' or ''my arm'').
The table above outlines some common inalienable relationships, but it is important to note that they are just the most common types of inalienable nouns. Languages with an alienable/inalienable possession distinction differ in which classes fall under each type of possession. However, if a language has such a distinction, kinship roles or body parts (or both) make up some of the entities that are inalienably possessed. Also, languages may make different distinctions within the categories on how many and which entities are treated as inalienable.
Moreover, some languages allow the same noun to be either alienable or inalienable. Thus, trying to determine if a noun is alienable or inalienable based on its meaning or its affiliation to a specific noun category (for instance, ''body parts'') can be difficult.
Variation by languages
Although the relationships listed above are likely to be instances of inalienable possession, those that are ultimately classified as inalienable depend on conventions that are specific by language and culture. It is impossible to say that a particular relationship is an example of inalienable possession without specifying the languages for which that holds true. For example, ''neighbor'' may be an inalienable noun in one language but alienable in another.[ Additionally, in some languages, one entity can be both alienably possessed and inalienably possessed, and its type of possession is influenced by other properties of the sentence.] Thus, whether a certain type of relationship is described as alienable or inalienable can be arbitrary. In that respect, alienability is similar to other types of noun classes
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
such as grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
.
The examples below illustrate that the same phrase, ''the table's legs'', is regarded as inalienable possession in Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
but alienable possession in French: (1b) is ungrammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
(as indicated by the asterisk). French cannot use the inalienable possession construction for a relationship that is alienable.
:
Bernd Heine
Bernd Heine (born 25 May 1939) is a German linguist and specialist in African studies.
From 1978 to 2004 Heine held the chair for African Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany, now being a Professor Emeritus. His main focal points in rese ...
argues that language change
Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...
is responsible for the observed cross-linguistic variation in the categorization of (in)alienable nouns. He states that "rather than being a semantically defined category, inalienability is more likely to constitute a morphosyntactic
In linguistics, morphology () is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morph ...
or morphophonological
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphology (linguistics), morphological and phonology, phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound chan ...
entity, one that owes its existence to the fact that certain nouns happened to be left out when a new pattern for marking attributive possession arose." He considers that nouns that are "ignored" by a new marking pattern come to form a separate noun class.
Morphosyntactic strategies for marking distinction
The distinction between alienable and inalienable possession is often marked by various morphosyntactic properties such as morphological markers and word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
. The morphosyntactic differences are often referred to as possession split or split possession, which refer to instances of a language making a grammatical distinction between different types of possession. In a language with possession split, grammatical constructions with alienable nouns will differ from constructions with inalienable nouns.
There is a strong typological pattern for inalienable possession to require fewer morphological markers than alienable possession constructions.
Inalienable possession constructions involve two nouns or nominals: the possessor and the possessee. Together, they form a unit, the determiner phrase In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This is ...
(DP), in which the possessor nominal may occur either before the possessee (prenominal) or after its possessee (postnominal), depending on the language. French, for example, can use a postnominal possessor (the possessor ''(of) Jean'' occurs after the possessee ''the arm''):
![Postnominal DP structure - French](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Postnominal_DP_structure_-_French.png)
:
In contrast, English generally uses a prenominal possessor (''Johns brother''). However, in some situations, it may also use a postnominal possessor, as in ''the brother of John''.[
]
Morphological markers
No overt possessive markers
The South American language
The languages of South America can be divided into three broad groups:
* the languages of the (in most cases, former) colonial powers;
* many indigenous languages, some of which are co-official alongside the colonial languages;
* and various p ...
Dâw uses a special possessive morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
(bold in the examples below) to indicate alienable possession. The possessive morpheme ''ɛ̃̀ɟ'' in examples (3a) and (3b) indicates an alienable relationship between the possessor and the possessee.
:
The possessive marker does not occur in inalienable possession constructions. Thus, the absence of ''ɛ̃̀ɟ'', as in example (4), indicates that the relationship between the possessor and the possessee is inalienable possession.
Identical possessor deletion
Igbo
Igbo may refer to:
* Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria
* Igbo language, their language
* anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria
See also
* Ibo (disambiguation)
* Igbo mythology
* Igbo music
* Igbo art
*
* Igbo-Ukwu, a ...
, a West African language, the possessor is deleted in a sentence if both its subject and the possessor of an inalienable noun refer
Refer or referral may refer to:
*Reference, a relation of designation or linking between objects
**Word-sense disambiguation, when a single term may refer to multiple meanings
*Referral marketing, to personally recommend, endorse, and pass a perso ...
to the same entity. In (5a), both referent
A referent () is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers. For example, in the sentence ''Mary saw me'', the referent of the word ''Mary'' is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, ...
s are the same, but it is ungrammatical to keep both of them in a sentence. Igbo uses the processes of identical possessor deletion, and the ''yá'' (''his''), is dropped, as in the grammatical (5b).
A similar process occurs in some Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...
, notably Serbian:
Word order
Possessor switch
The distinction between alienable and inalienable possession constructions may be marked by a difference in word order. Igbo uses another syntactic
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
process when the subject and the possessor refer to different entities.[ In possessor switch, the possessor of the inalienable noun is placed as close as possible to the ]verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
.[ In the following examples, the possessor ''yá'' is not deleted because both referents are different:
In the ungrammatical (8a), the verb ''wàra'' (''to split'') follows the possessor ''m''. Possessor switch requires the verb to be placed nearer to the possessor. The grammatical (8b) does so switching ''wàra'' with the possessor:
]
Genitive-noun ordering
The Maybrat languages
Maybrat is a Papuan language spoken in the central parts of the Bird's Head Peninsula in the Indonesian province of Southwest Papua.
Maybrat is also known as Ayamaru, after the name of its principal dialect, while the divergent Karon Dori diale ...
in New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea).
It is a simplified version of ...
vary the order of the genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
and the noun between alienable and inalienable constructions:
In (9), the genitive ''Sely'' precedes the possessee ''me'', marking inalienable possession.
However, the genitive follows the possessee in alienable possession constructions, such as (10) whose genitive ''Petrus'' follows the possessee ''amah''.
Possessor marking
Explicit possessors
Another way for languages to distinguish between alienable and inalienable possession is to have one noun class that cannot appear without an explicit possessor. For example, Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
, an Algonquian language, has a class of nouns that must have explicit possessors.[Valentine, J. Randolph ''Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar.'' Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2001. §3.3.1. pg. 106 ff.][Nichols, J. D.; Nyholm, E. ''A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.'' 1995.]
If explicit possessors are absent (as in (11b) and (12b)), the phrase is ungrammatical. In (11), the possessor ''ni'' is necessary for the inalienable noun ''nik'' (''arm''). In (12), the same phenomenon is found with the inalienable noun ''ookmis'' (''grandmother''), which requires the possessor morpheme ''n'' to be grammatical.
Prepositions
Hawaiian uses different prepositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
to mark possession, depending on the noun's alienability: ''a'' (alienable ''of'') is used to indicate alienable possession as in (13a), and ''o'' (inalienable ''of'') indicates inalienable possession as in (13b).
However, the distinction between ''a'' (alienable ''of'') and ''o'' (inalienable ''of'') is used for other semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
distinctions that are less clearly attributable to common alienability relationships except metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
ically. Although ''lei'' is a tangible object, but in Hawaiian, it can be either alienable (15a) or inalienable (15b), depending on the context.
Definite articles
Subtler cases of syntactic patterns sensitive to alienability are found in many languages. For example, French can use a definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
, rather than the possessive
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
, for body parts.
Using the definite article with body parts, as in the example above, creates ambiguity
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
. Thus, the sentence has both an alienable and an inalienable interpretation:
Such an ambiguity also occurs in English with body-part constructions.
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
also uses a definite article (''el'', ''los'', ''la'', or ''las'') to indicate inalienable possession for body parts.
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
uses a definite article (''die'') for inalienable body parts but a possessive (''meine'') for alienable possession.[
]
No distinction in grammar
Although English has alienable and inalienable nouns (''Mary's brother'' nalienablevs. ''Mary's squirrel'' lienable, it has few such formal distinctions in its grammar. One subtle grammatical distinction is the postnominal genitive construction, which is normally reserved for inalienable relational nouns. For example, ''the brother of Mary'' nalienableis normal, but *''the squirrel of Mary'' lienablewould be awkward.
Since the alienability distinction is rooted in semantics, languages like English with few morphological or syntactic distinctions sensitive to alienability can have ambiguities occur. For example, the phrase ''she has her father's eyes'' has two different meanings:
Another example in semantic dependency is the difference between possible interpretations in a language that marks inalienable possession (such as French) with a language that does not mark it (such as English). Inalienable possession is semantically dependent and is defined in reference to another object to which it belongs.[ Sentence (20) is ambiguous and has two possible meanings. In the inalienable possessive interpretation, ''la main'' belongs to the subject, ''les enfants''. The second interpretation is that ''la main'' is an alienable object and does not belong to the subject. The English equivalent of the sentence (''The children raised the hand'') has only the alienable possessive reading in which the hand does not belong to the children.
Syntactically, ]Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
proposed that some genitive or possessive cases originate as part of the determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
in the underlying structure. The inalienable possessives are derived from a different deep structure Deep structure and surface structure (also D-structure and S-structure although those abbreviated forms are sometimes used with distinct meanings) are concepts used in linguistics, specifically in the study of syntax in the Chomskyan tradition of t ...
than that of alienable possession. An example is interpretations of the phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
''John's arm'':
In the inalienable reading, ''arm'' is a complement
A complement is something that completes something else.
Complement may refer specifically to:
The arts
* Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave
** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class ...
of the determiner phrase. That contrasts to the alienable reading in which ''John has an arm'' is part of the determiner.[ ]Charles J. Fillmore
Charles J. Fillmore (August 9, 1929 – February 13, 2014) was an American linguist and Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan in 1961. Fillmore sp ...
and Chomsky make a syntactic distinction between alienable and inalienable possession and suggest that the distinction is relevant to English.[
In contrast, others have argued that semantics plays a role in inalienable possession, but it is not central to the syntactic class of case-derived possessives. An example is the difference between ''the book's contents'' and ''the book's jacket''. A book cannot be divorced from its contents, but it can be removed from its jacket.][ Still, both phrases have the same syntactic structure. Another example is ''Mary's mother'' and ''Mary's friend''. The mother will always be Mary's mother, but an individual might not always be Mary's friend. Again, both have the same syntactic structure.
The distinction between alienable and inalienable possessions can be influenced by cognitive factors.] Languages such as English that do not encode the alienability distinction in their grammar rely on the real-world relationship between the possessed noun and possessor noun. Nouns that are "inherently relational" and whose possession is associated with a single dominant interpretation (''mother'') are of the inalienable type, and nouns whose possession is open to interpretation (''car'') are of the alienable type.
Interaction with coreference
There are few grammatical distinctions between alienable and inalienable possession in English, but there are differences in the way coreference occurs for such possessive constructions. For instance, examples (21a) and (21b) have interpretations that differ by the type of (in)alienable possession:
In example (1a), the pronominal possessor (''her'') can refer to ''Lucy'' or to another possessor not mentioned in the sentence. As such, two interpretations of the sentence are possible:
However, in example (21b), the pronominal possessor (''her'') can only grammatically refer to Lucy. As such, the hand being discussed must belong to Lucy.
Therefore, the pronominal possessor patterns with pronominal binding in the alienable construction, but the pronominal possessor patterns with anaphoric binding in the inalienable construction. In anaphoric binding, an anaphor requires a coreferent antecedent that c-commands the anaphor and that is in the domain of the anaphor. For example (1b) to obey those conditions, the pronominal possessor must refer to ''Lucy'', not to another possessor that is not mentioned in the sentence. Thus, by having only one grammatical interpretation, (1b) is consistent with anaphoric binding. On the other hand, the interpretation of alienable constructions such as 1a can be ambiguous since it is not restricted by the same properties of anaphoric binding.
Cross-linguistic properties
Although there are different methods of marking inalienability, inalienable possession constructions usually involve the following features:[
* The distinction is confined to attributive possession.
* Alienable possession requires more ]phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
or morphological features than inalienable possession.
*Inalienable possession involves a tighter structural bond between the possessor and the possessee.
* Possessive markers on inalienable nouns are etymologically
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words an ...
older
* Inalienable nouns include kinship terms and/or body parts.
* Inalienable nouns form a closed class
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
, but alienable nouns form an open class.
(Heine 1997: 85-86 (1-6))
Restricted to attributive possession
Alienability can be expressed only in attributive possession constructions, not in predicative possession.[
Attributive possession is a type of possession in which the possessor and possessee form a ]phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
. That contrasts to predicative possession constructions in which the possessor and possessee are part of a clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
, and the verb affirms the possessive relationship. The examples in (22) express the same alienable relationship between possessor and possessee but illustrate the difference between attributive and predicative possession:
Requires fewer morphological features
If a language has separate alienable and inalienable possession constructions, and one of the constructions is overtly marked and the other is "zero-marked", the marked form tends to be alienable possession. Inalienable possession is indicated by the absence of the overt marker. An example is the data from Dâw.
One typological study showed that in 78% of South American languages that distinguish between inalienable and alienable possession, inalienable possession was associated with fewer morphological markers than was its alienable counterpart. By contrast, only one of the surveyed languages required more morphological features to mark inalienable possession than alienable possession. If a language makes a grammatical distinction between alienable and inalienable nouns, having an overt possessive marker to mark inalienability is redundant. After all, by being inalienable, a noun must be possessed.
Tighter structural bond between possessor and possessee
In inalienable possession constructions, the relationship between the possessor and possessee is stronger than in alienable possession constructions. Johanna Nichols
Johanna Nichols (born 1945, Iowa City, Iowa) is an American linguist and professor emerita in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of C ...
characterizes that by the tendency of inalienable possession to be head-marked but alienable possession to be dependent-marked. In head-marking, the head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
of an inalienable possession construction (the possessed noun) is marked, but in dependent-marking, the dependent (the possessor noun) is marked.
Theories of representation in syntax
Since the possessor is crucially linked to an inalienable noun's meaning, inalienable nouns are assumed to take their possessors as a semantic argument
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
. Possessors to alienable and inalienable nouns can be expressed with different constructions. Possessors in the genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
like ''the friend of Mary'' appear as complements to the possessed noun, as part of the phrase headed by the inalienable noun.[ That is an example of internal possession since the possessor of the noun is inside the determiner phrase.
]
External possession
Inalienable possession can also be marked with external possession. Such constructions have the possessor appearing outside the determiner phrase. For example, the possessor may appear as a dative complement of the verb.
French exhibits both external possessor construction and internal possessor construction, as in (23):[
However, those types of possessors are problematic. There is a discrepancy between the possessor appearing syntactically in an inalienable possession construction and what its semantic relationship to the inalienable noun seems to be. Semantically, the possessor of an inalienable noun is intrinsic to its meaning and acts like a semantic argument. On the surface syntactic structure, however, the possessor appears in a position that marks it as an argument of the verb.] Thus, there are different views on how those types of inalienable possession constructions should be represented in the syntactic structure. The binding hypothesis argues that the possessor is an argument of the verb. Conversely, the possessor-raising hypothesis argues that the possessor originates as an argument of the possessed noun and then moves to a position in which on the surface, it looks like an argument of the verb.
Binding hypothesis (Guéron 1983)
The binding hypothesis reconciles the fact that the possessor appears both as a syntactic and semantic argument of the verb but as a semantic argument of the possessed noun. It assumes that inalienable possession constructions are subject to the following syntactic constraints:
# There must be an obligatory possessor.
# The possessor must be in the same minimal domain
Domain may refer to:
Mathematics
*Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined
**Domain of definition of a partial function
**Natural domain of a partial function
**Domain of holomorphy of a function
* Do ...
of the possessee.
# The possessor must c-command
In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic mov ...
the possessee or its trace
Trace may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* Trace (Son Volt album), ''Trace'' (Son Volt album), 1995
* Trace (Died Pretty album), ''Trace'' (Died Pretty album), 1993
* Trace (band), a Dutch progressive rock band
* The Trace (album), ''The ...
(The c-command must occur in the underlying or surface structures of the inalienable possession constructions.
It is assumed that inalienable possession constructions are one form of anaphoric binding: obligatory control. Thus, the possessor DP originates in the specifier of the verb; the fact that the possessor seems to be a semantic argument of the noun arises from the binding relationship between the possessor and the possessee DPs. The parallel between inalienable possession constructions and obligatory control can be seen in the examples below:[
The hypothesis accounts for differences between French and English, and it may also eliminate the ambiguity created by definite determiners.] According to the hypothesis, anaphoric binding in inalienable possession constructions relates to the theta-features that a language assigns to its determiners. The hypothesis predicts that inalienable possession constructions exist in languages that assign variable theta-features to its determiners and that inalienable possession constructions do not exist in languages that lack variable theta-feature assignment. Therefore, inalienable possession is predicted to exist in Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
and also Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
but not in English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
or Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
. In the French sentence ''Il lève les mains'', the determiner ''les'' is assigned theta-features. Thus, it is understood as inalienable possession. However, in the English translation, the determiner ''the'' does not have theta-features since English is considered not to assign theta-features to its determiners. Therefore, ''the'' does not necessarily signify inalienable possession and so ambiguity surfaces.
That hypothesis, however, does not account for verbs allowing reflexive anaphora (''Jean se'' lave 'Jean washes himself'). To account for the grammaticality of such verbs, Guéron proposes that in an inalienable construction the POSS DP (possessor DP) and BP DP (body part DP) constitute two links of a lexical chain The sequence between semantic related ordered words is classified as a lexical chain. A lexical chain is a sequence of related words in writing, spanning short (adjacent words or sentences) or long distances (entire text). A chain is independent of ...
, in addition to their anaphoric relation. The two links of a lexical chain must obey the same constraints as anaphora, which accounts for the locality restrictions on inalienable construals. Every chain is then associated with one theta-role. Inalienable possession surfaces as ungrammatical when the possessed DP and the possessor DP are assigned two different theta-roles by the verb. That explains why sentence (25b) is ungrammatical. The POSS DP is assigned an agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
theta-role, and the BP DP is assigned a theme
Theme or themes may refer to:
* Theme (arts), the unifying subject or idea of the type of visual work
* Theme (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos
* Theme (computing), a custom graphical ...
theta-role.
Possessor-raising hypothesis (Landau 1999)
Possessor-raising is a syntactic hypothesis that attempts to explain the structures of inalienable DPs
DPS may refer to:
Schools United States
* Dalton Public Schools, the public school district in Dalton, Georgia
* Dearborn Public Schools, the public school district in Dearborn, Michigan
* Decatur Public Schools District 61, the public school sys ...
. Landau argues that the possessor is initially introduced in the specifier position of DP (Spec-DP), but it later raises to the specifier of the VP. The possessor DP gets its theta-role from the head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
D, which gives rise to the meaning that the possessor is related to the possessee.
Landau's analysis is made on the basis of several properties possessives in the data case in Romance languages.[
# The possessor dative must be interpreted as a possessor, not an object/theme.
# Possession interpretation is obligatory.
# The possessed DP cannot be an external argument.
# The possessor dative must c-command the possessed DP (or its trace).
# Possessive interpretation is constrained by locality. (Nakamoto 2010: 76)
]
The French data below illustrate how the analysis is thought to work. The possessor ''lui'' originates in the specifier of DP as an argument of the noun ''figure''. That is equivalent to an underlying structure ''Gilles a lavé lui la figure''. The possessor raises to the specifier of VP, which is seen in the surface structure ''Gilles lui a lavé la figure''.
According to Guéron, a benefit of the hypothesis is that it is consistent with principles of syntactic movement
Syntactic movement is the means by which some theories of syntax address discontinuities. Movement was first postulated by structuralist linguists who expressed it in terms of ''discontinuous constituents'' or ''displacement''. Some constituen ...
such as locality of selection and c-command
In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic mov ...
. If the position to which it must move is already filled, as with a transitive verb
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''.
Transitiv ...
like ''see'', the possessor cannot raise, and the sentence is correctly predicted to be ungrammatical.
However, some languages like Russian do not have to raise the DP possessor and can leave it ''in situ
''In situ'' (; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position." It can mean "locally", "on site", "on the premises", or "in place" to describe where an event takes place and is used in ...
'' and so it is unclear why the possessor would ever have to raise. Possessor-raising also violates a constraint on syntactic movement, the specificity constraint: an element cannot be moved out of a DP if that DP is specific
Specific may refer to:
* Specificity (disambiguation)
* Specific, a cure or therapy for a specific illness
Law
* Specific deterrence, focussed on an individual
* Specific finding, intermediate verdict used by a jury in determining the fina ...
. In (23), the DP ''lui'' is specific, but possessor-raising predicts it can be moved out of the larger DP ''lui la figure''. Such movement is excluded by the specificity constraint.
Possessor suppression with kin and body-part nouns (Lødrup 2014)
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
*Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
*Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including the ...
is a North Germanic
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
that is spoken mainly in Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
and is its official language. Norwegian expresses inalienability by possessor suppression, which takes place when noun phrases referring to inalienable possessions use the definite form and contain no possessive determiner.
In sentence (28), "haken", the syntactic object, contains a suppressed possessor in its definite form. It does not contain an explicit possessive marker. In contrast, the English translation contains an explicit possessive determiner, "her", which denote possession. Possessive determiners are obligatory in English for subject-controlled body-part terms.
Norwegian treats kinship nouns and body-part nouns similarly in relation to bound variable interpretations. When a definite noun is present, it usually has a referential reading. In (29a), the referential reading is present. However, the presence of definite kinship or body part nouns may also bring about the bound variable reading in which a kinship or body part noun contains a variable bound by the quantifier in the subject, and (29b) may produce both the referential and bound variable readings. With the referential reading, the professors washed a face or father, mentioned earlier. With the bound variable reading, the professors washed their own face or father. Additionally, both kinship and body part nouns behave similarly in sentences with VP pronominalization. VP pronominalization involving both nouns allow for both a referential reading and a "sloppy reading", which involves variable binding. In (29c) in the referential reading, John and Mari wash a face or a mother been mentioned earlier. In the "sloppy reading", John washes his face or mother, and Mari washes hers.
Finally, both kinship and body part nouns bear similarities in locality. Both behave in such a way that the definite form of the noun is bound by the closest subject. In (30a), the possessor must be the subordinate clause subject, not the main clause subject. Likewise, in (30b), the father mentioned is preferably the father of the subordinate clause subject referent, not of the main clause subject referent.
On the other hand, definite kinship and body-part nouns in Norwegian hace a syntactic difference. Definite body part nouns allow a first- or second-person possessor, but some definite kinship nouns do not. For instance, the sentence in (31a) is not allowed as it contains a first-person possessor and kinship term. The kinship term can be used only with a third-person possessor, such as in (31b).
However, body part nouns do not have the restriction on first- or second-person possessors like in (32).
Form function motivations
Inalienable possession constructions often lack overt possessors.[ There is a debate as to how to account for the linguistically-universal difference in form. Iconicity explains the in terms of the relationship between the conceptual distance between the possessor and the possessee,] and economy explains it by the frequency of possession.
Iconic motivation (Haiman 1983)
Haiman describes iconic expression and conceptual distance and how both concepts are conceptually close if they share semantic properties, affect each other and cannot be separated from each other. Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on ...
hypothesizes that the distance between the possessor and possessee in a sentence with alienable possession is greater than in a sentence with inalienable constructions. Because the possessor and the possessee have a close conceptual relationship, their relative positions with a sentence reflect that, and there is little distance between them. Increasing the distance between both would in turn increase their conceptual independence.
That is demonstrated in Yagaria, a Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
that marks alienable possession by a free form pronoun as in (33a). In contrast, inalienable possession constructions use an inalienable possessor that is prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
ed on the possessee, as in (33b), a construction that has less linguistic distance between the possessor and possessee than the alienable construction has:
However, there are cases of linguistic distance not necessarily reflecting conceptual distance. Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
has two ways to express the same type of possession: POSSESSOR + POSSESSEE and POSSESSOR + de + POSSESSEE. The latter has more linguistic distance between the possessor and the possessee, but it reflects the same conceptual distance. Both possessive expressions, with and without the marker ''de'', are found in the Mandarin phrase "my friend", which is seen in (34a) unlike (34b):
:
In contrast to the previous example, the omission of the marker ''de'' is ungrammatical, as in example (35b). The linguistic distance between the possessor and the possessee is much smaller in (35b) than in (35a). It has been argued that the omission of ''de'' occurs only in kinship relationships, but phrasal constructions with a mandatory ''de'' encompasse other cases of inalienable possession, such as body parts. That contradicts the notion that inalienable possession is marked by less linguistic distance between the possessor and the possessee.
Economic motivation (Nichols 1988)
Nichols notes that frequently-possessed nouns, such as body parts and kinship terms, almost always occur with possessors, and alienable nouns occur less often with possessors.
The following shows the frequency of possession between alienable and unalienable nouns in German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
.[ The table below shows the number of times that each noun occurred with or without a possessor in texts from the German Goethe-Corpus of the works of ]Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as trea ...
.
The alienable nouns above are rarely possessed, but the inalienable kinship terms are frequently possessed.[ Consequently, inalienable nouns are expected to be possessed even if they lack a distinct possessive marker. Therefore, overt markings on inalienable nouns are redundant, and for economical syntactic construction, languages often have zero-marking for their inalienable nouns.]
That could be explained by Zipf's Law in which the familiarity or the frequency of an occurrence motivates the linguistic simplification of the concept. A listener who hears an inalienable noun can predict that it will be possessed, which eliminates the need for an overt possessor.[
]
Glossary of abbreviations
Morpheme glosses
Syntactic trees
Other languages
Austronesian languages
Rapa
Old Rapa is the indigenous language of Rapa Iti
Rapa, also called Rapa Iti, or "Little Rapa", to distinguish it from Easter Island, whose Polynesian name is Rapa Nui, is the largest and only inhabited island of the Bass Islands in French Polynesia. An older name for the island is Oparo. The ...
, an island of French Polynesia
)Territorial motto: ( en, "Great Tahiti of the Golden Haze")
, anthem =
, song_type = Regional anthem
, song = " Ia Ora 'O Tahiti Nui"
, image_map = French Polynesia on the globe (French Polynesia centered).svg
, map_alt = Location of Frenc ...
in the Bass Islands archipelago. The language structure of Rapa has two primary possessive particles: a and o. The usage of both particles is dependent on the relation between the possessor and the object. When words are categorized by possessive particles, there is a very close resemblance to the usage of the possessive particle and the object's alienability. However, the relation is better defined by William Wilson in his article ''Proto-Polynesian Possessive Marking''.
Briefly, through his two theories, the Simple Control Theory and Initial Control Theory, Wilson s contrast and thus better defines the usage of the possessive particles. The Simple Control Theory speculates that the determining factor directly correlated to the possessor's control over the object and emphasises a dominant vs. less-dominant relationship. Old Rapa adheres closer to the Initial Control Theory, which speculates that "the possessor's control over the initiation of the possessive relationship is the determining factor." Here, the Initial Control Theory can also be generally expanded to the whole Polynesian language family in terms of better describing the "alienability" of possession.[WILSON, WILLIAM H. 1982. Proto-Polynesian possessive marking. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.]
In the case of Old Rapa, the possession particle o is used to define a possession relationship that was not initiated on the basis of choice. The possession particle a defines possession relationships that are initiated with the possessor's control. The following list and classifications are literal examples provided by Mary Walworth in her dissertation of Rapa. Words that are marked with the o possessive markers are nouns that are:
* Inalienable (leg, hand, foot)
* A whole of which the possessor is a permanent part (household)
* Kinship (father, mother, brother)
* Higher social or religious status (teacher, pastor, president)
* Vehicles (canoe, car)
* Necessary actions (work)
* Involuntary body functions (heartbeat, stomach, pupils, breathing)
* Words that relate to indigenous identity (language, country)
However, Wilson's theory falls short of properly categorizing a few miscellaneous items such as articles of clothing and furniture that his theory would incorrectly predict to be marked with the possessive particle a. The reverse occurs for objects such as food and animals. The synthesis of Wilson's theory and others approach a better understanding of the Rapa language. Svenja Völkel proposed the idea of looking further into the ritualistic beliefs of the community: its mana. That idea has been related to other languages in the Eastern Polynesian language family. It states that objects with less mana than the possessor use the a-possessive particle, and the usage of the o-possessive marker is reserved for the possessor's mana that is not superior.
The same usage of the possessive particles in possessive pronouns can be seen in the contracted portmanteau, the combination of the articles and possessive markers. The resuls are the prefixes tō and tā in the following possessive pronouns, as can be seen in the table below:
Wuvulu
Wuvulu language
The Wuvulu-Aua language is spoken on Wuvulu and Aua Islands by speakers scattered around the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea. Although the Wuvulu-Aua language has a similar grammatical structure, word order, and tense to other Oceanic lan ...
is a small language spoken in Wuvulu Island
Wuvulu Island (also known as Mary Island, Matty, Maty Island, Tiger Island, Tiger-Inseln and Wuwulu) is part of the Western Islands of the Bismarck Archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean, part of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. It is the wes ...
. Direct possession has a close relationship with inalienability in Oceanic linguistics. Similarly, the inherent possession of the possessor is called the possessum.
The inalienable noun also has a possessor suffix and includes body parts, kinship terms, locative part nouns and derived nouns. According to Hafford's research, "-u" (my), "-mu" (your) and "na-"(his/her/its) are three direct possession suffix in Wuvulu.
* Body parts
Direct- possession suffix "-u"(my), "-mu" (your) and "na-"(his/her/its) can be taken to attach the noun phrase of body part.
* Kinship terms
Kinship terms in Wuvulu language take singular possessive suffixes.
* Derived nouns (Nouns that derived from other words)
Example:
ʔei wareamu (Your word) is derived from the verb ware (talk)
Such a word can take the direct possessor suffix. "-mu" (your {singular])
Tokelauan
Here is a table displaying the predicative possessive pronouns in Tokelauan language, Tokelauan:
{, class="wikitable"
, -
! colspan="2" ,
! Singular
! Dual
! Plural
, -
! rowspan="2" , 1st person
! incl.
, rowspan="2" , o oku, o kita
a aku, a kite
, o taua, o ta
a taua, a ta
, o tatou
a tatou
, -
! excl.
, o maua, o ma o
a maua, a ma a
, matou
matou
, -
! colspan="2" , 2nd person
, o ou/o koe
a au/a koe
, o koulua
a koulua
, o koutou
a koutou
, -
! colspan="2" , 3rd person
, o ona
a ona
, o laua, o la
a laua, a la
, o latou
a latou
Here is a table with the Tokelauan possessive pronouns:
{, class="wikitable"
, -
! Possessor
! Singular reference
! Plural reference
, -
! 1 singular
, toku, taku, tota, tata
, oku, aku, ota, ata
, -
! 2 singular
, to, tau
, o, au
, -
! 3 singular
, tona, tana
, ona, ana
, -
! 1 dual incl.
, to ta, to taua
ta ta, ta taue
, o ta, o taue
a ta, a taua
, -
! 1 dual excl.
, to ma, to maua
ta ma, ta maua
, o ma, o maua
a ma, a maua
, -
! 2 dual
, toulua, taulua
, oulua, aulua
, -
! 3 dual
, to la, to laue
ta la, ta laue
, o la, o laua
a la a laua
, -
! 1 plural incl.
, to tatou, ta tatou
, o tatou, a tatou
, -
! 1 plural excl.
, to matou, ta matou
, o matou, a matou
, -
! 2 plural
, toutou, tautau
, outou, autou
, -
! 3 plural
, to latou, ta latau
, o latou, a latou
, -
!
! colspan="2" , NON-SPECIFIC/INDEFINITE
, -
! 1 singular
, hoku, hota
haku, hata
, ni oku, ni ota
niaku, niata
, -
! 2 singular
, ho, hau
, ni o, ni au
, -
! 3 singular
, hona, hana
, ni ona, ni ana
, -
! 1 dual incl.
, ho ta, ho taua
ha ta, ha taua
, ni o ta, ni o taue
ni a ta, ni a taua
, -
! 1 dual excl.
, ho ma, ho maua
ha ma, ha maua
, ni o ma, ni o maua
ni a ma, ni a maua
, -
! 2 dual
, houlua, haulua
, ni oulua, ni aulua
See also
* Possession (linguistics)
In linguistics, possession is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which (the possessor) in some sense possesses (owns, has as a part, rules over, etc.) the referent of the other (the possessed).
Possessio ...
* Obligatory possession Obligatory possession is a linguistic phenomenon that is common in languages whose nouns are inflected for possessor, and some words, commonly kinship terms and body parts, cannot occur without a possessor in those languages. The World Atlas of Lang ...
* Noun class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
* Determiner phrase In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This is ...
* Noun phrase
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
* Possessive
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
* Possessive affix
In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives.
Possessive affixes are found in many languages o ...
* English possessive
In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners (also called possessive adjectives when corresponding to a pronoun) or of nouns.
For nouns, noun phra ...
* Genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
Notes
References
External links
A map of the world's languages colored by possessive classification complexity
from the World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-ROM i ...
.
{{Formal semantics
Grammatical categories
Grammar
Genitive construction
Grammatical construction types
Formal semantics (natural language)