25.4382, Confs: General Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Typology/Netherlands

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-4382. Mon Nov 03 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.4382, Confs: General Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Typology/Netherlands

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Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:26:06
From: Irina Nevskaya [nevskaya at em.uni-frankfurt.de]
Subject: Possession and Ownership in the “LENCA” Languages

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Possession and Ownership in the “LENCA” Languages 
Short Title: Possession and ownership 

Date: 02-Sep-2015 - 05-Sep-2015 
Location: Leiden, Netherlands 
Contact: Irina Nevskaya 
Contact Email: nevskaya at em.uni-frankfurt.de 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Morphology; Syntax; Typology 

Meeting Description: 

Possession and ownership in the “LENCA” languages
A Workshop organized by Irina Nevskaya and Lars Johanson

Complex system of ownership relations and the ways in which linguistic structures reflect cultural patterns, attitudes to possession and effects of their change have attracted the attention of Typological and Cognitive Linguistic relatively recently (Heine 1997; Aikhenvald 2000; Guéron 2007; Aikhenvald and Dixon 2013; Nichols and Bickel 2013). Possessive constructions vary depending on the nature of the Possessor, the Possessee and the Possessive relationship. They realize a set of recurrent core meanings: (i) ownership, (ii) whole-part relations, e.g. between a body or a plant and their parts, (iii) kinship, i.e. consanguineal and affinal relations, etc.

Many languages use essentially the same constructions for the core meanings. All combinations of the types are, however, found across the world’s languages. The degree to which possession is conceived as ‘the same’ differs from one society to another and is reflected in linguistic structures. 

Possession can be expressed with possessive noun phrases. Some languages have dedicated phrase types that cover the core meanings. Others represent possessive meanings through more general associative noun phrases. A marker, affixed or independent, may be attached to the Possessor, the Possessee, or both. Possessive constructions can vary along a further set of parameters. 

Possessive relations can also be expressed beyond the noun phrase, in clauses with predicative structures involving verbs of ownership, existential copula constructions, locational constructions or verbless clauses. In a few languages, possession can be expressed through verbal derivational affixes attached to the Possessor.

A device going beyond the clause is the Mandarin ‘double subject’ construction, which essentially involves topicalization of a Possessor. It consists of two juxtaposed noun phrases in clause-initial position, both with subject-like roles. The first phrase refers to the ‘whole’, the second one to its ‘part’. Whole-part and close possession can also be expressed through relativization.

The choice of constructions may reflect different culturally anchored types of ownership. 
The proposed workshop will address these and related problems, especially in languages of Europe and Northern and Central Asia (LENCA) that seem to be underrepresented in recent typological investigations.	

Literature:

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Classifiers: a Typology of Noun Categorization Devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. and R. M. W. Dixon. (2013). Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology. Ed. by. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guéron, Jacqueline (2007). ''Inalienable Possession''. In Everaert, Martin; van Riemsdijk, Henk. The Blackwell Companion to Syntax. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. pp. 589–638.
Heine, Bernd (1997) Possession: Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johanna Nichols and Balthasar Bickel. 2013. Possessive Classification. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/59, Accessed on 2014-10-30.) 









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