Feature GB250: Can predicative possession be expressed with a transitive 'habeo' verb?

Patrons: Hedvig Skirgård

Description ⇫

Summary

This question concerns predicative possession, i.e. clauses that express an ownership relation between a possessor and a possessum. For this feature, we are looking for a verb that expresses predicative possession where the possessor is the subject, the possessum the object and the verb is finite and clearly transitive. The finite element in itself need not be clearly distinct from an existential or locational predicator, the main difference is the argument structure.

Transitivity is a language-specific category that needs to be investigated separately to learn whether or not the construction is transitive. In case of languages where transitivity is hard to define it might be beneficial to compare to verbs of holding and grasping. It is very likely that habeo-verb constructions arise from possessive constructions where the possessor is expressed as a topic.

Procedure

  1. Find the section on predicative possession.
  2. If no such section exists, search for words like ‘own’, ‘possess’, ‘have’ and ‘belong’.
  3. If there is no information on how predicative possession is expressed in the language, code as ?.
  4. If it is clear that there is a finite transitive verb where the subject is the possessor and the direct object the possessed, code as 1.
  5. If there are multiple constructions besides this one to express predicative possession, code 1 for this feature and verify whether any of the other constructions are relevant to GB252, GB253, GB254 or GB256.

Examples

Swedish (ISO 639-3: swe, Glottolog: swed1254)

Swedish is a Germanic language where predicate possession is expressed with a habeo-verb construction where the verb, har, is cognate with the the English habeo-verb have. Swedish is coded as 1 for this feature.

Andrea    har      en   bil
Andrea    have.PRS INDF car
‘Andrea has a car.’

Further reading

Stassen, Leon. 2001. Predicative Possession. In Martin Haspelmath, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds) Language typology and language universals. 954–960. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Stassen, Leon. 2013. Predicative Possession. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.


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0 absent 855
1 present 655
? Not known 664
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Values ⇫

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment