possessive markers

[Sang Hwan Seong]

An older stage of the Germanic possessor-possessee relations looks much
different from the current stage(Middle Dutch from Burridge 1993):

Ten doden kinde. Als een vrouwe een kint in haren lichaem doet is, so
salse drinken caneel met warmen water
'For dead children(title). When a woman(topic)--a child is dead in her
body then she shall drink cinnamon with warm water'

Anijs is heet ende droege ... hi is goet der boser leueren ende der
milte. Ende die vrouwe oket hi dat melc
'Aniseed is hot and dry ... it is good for unehealthy livers and the
spleen. And the woman(topic)-- it increases the milk

This topic-prominent construction is obviously reminiscent of the dative
possession in Dutch or German.
Kellner(Historical outlines of English Syntax:London 1905) writes: When
speaking of the parts of the human body, we use the possessive pronoun
in Modern English; the older periods omit it altogether as superfluous,
or make up for it by the Dative of the personal pronoun.
In Korean the Middle Dutch type of 'Possessor-Possessee relation' is
abundant:
Tom-un   Mori-ka aphuta.
   top. head-nom. aches  (Lit.)'Tom's head aches'
But, 'Tom-un Mori' is unacceptable. Rather, Tom-uy Mori(Tom's head) with
genitive head-marking is grammatical.


John Verhaar schrieb:
>
> Hartmut Haberland is right. Nonstandard Dutch, too, has this
> double-marking. Not on nouns, but on a pronoun possessor, as in
> hem zijn boek
> he:DAT his-book
> (_zijn_ is mandatorily atonic as a head-marker).
>         For a full treatment, see my "Head-marked possessive phrases in
> Dutch", in _Leuvense Bijdragen_ 86 (1997): 89-108. Middle English also had
> such constructions, as also in nonstandard Modern French.
> John Verhaar
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