Possessive pronouns: who is the possessor?

[H.P. Houtzagers]

Wayles Brown wrote:
> I recently saw an Attestat zrelosti. It contains the line:
> Nastojashchij attestat daet ego vladel'cu pravo postuplenija v vysshie
> uchebnye zavedenija Sojuza SSR.
> And the same thing in Ukrainian, since this was from the Ukr. SSR:
> Cej atestat daje joho vlasnykovi pravo vstupu v vyshchi uchbovi zaklady
> Sojuzu RSR.
> Can someone tell me why it is "ego vladel'cu/joho vlasnykovi" and not
> "svoemu vladel'cu/svojemu vlasnykovi"?
>
Could it be because not the attestat is the possessor but the
vladelec? 'Ego vladel'cu' can be paraphrased by 'the possessor of it',
'the one who is in possession of it', in which 'it' is the OBJECT of
possession. This is not more than the first idea that occurs to me
upon reading the question. There must be literature on this.

Peter Houtzagers


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Dr. H. Peter Houtzagers, Slavic Department, Groningen University,
The Netherlands, tel. +31 50 3636061/3636067, fax +31 50 3634900
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