<HTML><BODY><br><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Dear all,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">what do we know about the relationship between </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";font-variant:small-caps;mso-font-kerning:
12.0pt" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-variant: small-caps; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt;">definiteness </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">and “</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
font-variant:small-caps;mso-font-kerning:12.0pt" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-variant: small-caps; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt;">possession</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">” in noun phrases with substantive dependents (wife of colleague, President of country, murder of President, man’s elbow, nation’s breakdown, answer to question, builder of house, etc.)?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">I am especially interested in how definiteness can interact with “inalienable possession,” which latter means the head of a NP is a transitive (or “relational”) noun, i.e. the one having an obligatory syntactic valency (“son” = “son-of”). I am now working on a description of NPs with substantive dependents in Akkadian, the oldest attested Semitic language (my corpus was written around 1750 BC). Akkadian has neither definite article nor other straightforward ways to express definiteness values, but it has two types of NPs, the shorter one (“man’s son”) and the analytical one “bull of Mr. So-And-So,” where the dependent is encoded by a prepositional phrase. What I am doing now is trying to pinpoint the distribution of the two kinds.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"> Sergey</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
layout-grid-mode:line;mso-no-proof:yes" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-no-proof: yes;">Sergey Loesov</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
layout-grid-mode:line;mso-no-proof:yes" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-no-proof: yes;">Oriental Institute</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
layout-grid-mode:line;mso-no-proof:yes" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-no-proof: yes;">Russian State University for the Humanities</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;" data-mce-style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
layout-grid-mode:line;mso-no-proof:yes" data-mce-style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-no-proof: yes;">6 Miusskaya pl. Moscow 125267, Russia</span></p><br><br><br></BODY></HTML>