Is there a morpho-syntactic difference in attributive possession that can be ascribed to alienability?
This feature applies to constructions with both pronominal and nominal possessors.
Typically, inalienable possession applies to the semantic domains of body parts and kinship, but it is sometimes found in other categories that do not align perfectly with the canonical notion of 'alienability', such as part-whole relationships other than body parts, social relationships other than kinship, or things inherently linked to a person (e.g. a person's voice, mental states, or other attributes).
This feature targets splits in possessive marking where different classes of possessum are associated with different constructions, and where one of those possessum classes includes body parts and/or kinship terms, and possibly other categories that have strong semantic associations with their owners, social relationships, or part-whole relationships.
Luiseño (ISO 639-3: lui, Glottolog: luis1253)
Luiseño possessive constructions are formed by attaching a possessive pronominal prefix (e.g. meaning ‘my’, ‘your’, etc.) to the possessed noun. A suffix -ki is also attached to the possessed noun when the relationship between possessor and possessed is alienable: ‘my sinew (in my body)’ = no-ta̱; ‘my sinew (for the bow I am making)’ = no-ta̱-ki (Grune 1997: 4). Luiseño would be coded 1.
Nakanai (ISO 639-3: nak, Glottolog: naka1262)
In Nakanai the inalienable possession construction requires suffixes that indicate the person and number of the possessor, while possessors are indicated only with phonologically independent forms in the alienable possession construction. Nakanai is coded 1.
la luma taku ART house my ‘my house’ la lima-gu ART hand-my ‘my hand’ (Johnston 1980: 168)
Spanish (ISO 639-3: spa, Glottolog: stan1288)
Like many languages, Spanish has multiple possessive constructions, but each is compatible with the semantic classes of nouns typically associated with inalienable possession (body parts and kinship terms) as well as other nouns generally. There is no distinction that splits according to alienability. Spanish would be 0.
mi dedo el dedo de Ana my finger DET finger of Ana ‘my finger’ ‘Ana's finger’ mi hermano el hermano de Ana my brother DET brother of Ana ‘my brother’ ‘Ana's brother’ mi libro el libro de Ana my book DET book of Ana ‘my book’ ‘Ana's book’ (personal knowledge)
Chappell, Hilary & William McGregor. 1996. The grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2017. Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity. Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft 36. 193–231.
Nichols, Johanna. 1988. On alienable and inalienable possession. In William Shipley (ed.), In honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas festival conference on native American linguistics, 557–609. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Grune, Dick. 1997. A survey of the Uto-Aztecan language Luiseño. (Unpublished manuscript.)
Johnston, Raymond L. 1980. Nakani of New Britain: The grammar of an Oceanic language. (Pacific Linguistics B, 70.) Canberra: Australian National University.
To display the datapoints for a particular language family on the map and on the classification tree, select the family then click "submit".
You may combine this variable with a different variable by selecting on in the list below and clicking "Submit".
| 0 | absent | 1070 | |
| 1 | present | 961 | |
| ? | Not known | 356 |
| Name | Glottocode | Family | Macroarea | Contributor | Value | Source | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Description
Map
Values