summary of co-possession

Edith A Moravcsik edith at CSD.UWM.EDU
Thu Feb 18 15:53:15 UTC 1999


/I tried to post this message on LINGTYP a few days ago but nobody
 seemed to receive it. When I re-sent it last night, the system
 rejected it saying this message had already been posted. It also
 told me that if I wanted a second posting, I had to add some new text
 to the beginning of the message lest the system recognizes it as
 the old message that it (falsely) believes it had already distributed and
 consequently rejects it again. Hence this preamble./


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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 09:45:59 -0600 (CST)
From: Edith A Moravcsik <edith at csd.uwm.edu>
To: edith at csd.uwm.edu
Subject: no subject (file transmission)




         This is an update on CO-POSSESSION (thanks to Alan King for
     the apt term!): i.e. constructions involving one possessum and
     more than one non-hierarchically interpreted possessor, as in
     English "John's book of prayers", "my part of the house", or "the
     girl's share of the estate". Below I will try to summarize all
     contributions to the discussion i.e., both those that were sent
     before my last summary of January 27 and those that came after,
     and also add a few comments. The following colleagues have
     participated in the discussion ("p.c." means the messages were sent
     to my address rather than to LINGTYP):

         Miriam Butt
         Michael Daniel
         Matthew Dryer
         Marcel Erdal
         Martin Haspelmath
         Alan King
         Edith Moravcsik
         Michael Noonan (p.c.)
         Elke Nowak
         Hannu Tommola
         Kameshwar C. Wali (p.c.)

         While a number of interesting general issues have come up in
     the discussion - for example, under what conditions can two
     constructions be consider to be of the same kind, the power
     struggle between syntactic and morphological desiderata, and the
     extent to which facts of language structure can be explained at
     all - below I will focus on points directly relevant to the
     following three questions:

         a/ DATA
            Which are languages that allow for co-possession and
            which are ones that do not?
         b/ PREDICTIONS
            Are there any structural correlates to the presence
            and absence of co-possessive constructions in s language?
         c/ EXPLANATION
            If there are such correlations, how can they be explained?

                               ***********

     A/ DATA:
        WHICH ARE LANGUAGES THAT ALLOW FOR CO-POSSESSION AND
        WHICH ARE ONES THAT DO NOT?

     The chart below has five columns.
        - The first lists the language names.
        - The second indicates whether co-possession is grammatical if
          the two possessors have the same form.
        - The third shows whether co-possession is grammatical
          if the possessors have different forms.
        - The fourth shows what the form of the non-genitive possessor
          is.
        - The last column indicates whether the language has
          possessor-possessum agreement.
     Blanks indicate no information available. K-T abbreviates
     Koptjevskaja-Tamm (see references at the end of this message).

     LANGUAGE   CO-POSSESSION   CO-POSSESSION  FORM OF THE   POSSESSUM
                WITH FORMALLY   WITH FORMALLY  NON-GENITIVE  AGREES WITH
                IDENTICAL       NON-IDENTICAL  POSSESSOR     POSSESSOR
                POSSESSORS      POSSESSORS

     Basque:    awkward;           YES         make one          NO
                mostly in                      possessor
                written style                  appositional

     Biblical
       Hebrew:  NO                                               NO
     English:   NO                 YES                           NO
     Finnish*:  NO                             one possessor
                                               in Elative or
                                               compounded with
                                               possessum
     French:    YES                YES                           NO
     German:    YES                YES                           NO
     Hungarian: NO                 NO          one possessor     YES
                                               adjectivalized or
                                               compounded with
                                               possessum
     Israeli
       Hebrew:  NO                 YES         one possessor in  YES
                                               construct form
                                               (K-T l995, 24)
     Italian:   YES (K-T l995, 21)                               NO
     Maltese
       Arabic:  YES (K-T 1995, 21)                               NO
     Marathi:   YES                                              YES
     Moroccan
       Arabic:  YES (K-T 1995, 22)                               NO
     Russian:   clumsy                         one possessor     NO
                                               adjectivalized
     Spanish:   YES                YES                           NO
     Turkish:   NO                             possessor-        YES
                                               possession
                                               compound
     Welsh:     NO                                               NO

     * Co-possession seems to occur in some Finnish constructions,
       although, as Hannu Tommola's data showed, not in the translation
       of 'John's share of the estate', etc. Kristiina Jokinen (l991, 7)
       says that the "specificer genitive" and the "descriptive
       genitive" can occur together. Furthermore, Maria Koptjevskaja-
       Tamm cites cases where possessors marked for the same genitive
       case cooccur (1988, 147; 1990 8, 18).

     B/ PREDICTIONS:
        ARE THERE ANY STRUCTURAL CORRELATES TO THIS THE PRESENCE
        AND ABSENCE OF CO-POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN A LANGUAGE?

        Five implicational statements have been proposed. In each
        statement, the implicatum is the non-existence of co-possessive
        constructions or the existence or lack of it of some special
        form of such constructions. The implicantia are of course
        different and their specification heads each statement.

        Names in parentheses indicate the person(s) who either proposed
        the generalization or seemed to agree with it. The formulations
        are non-verbatim renderings of what has been proposed.

        1. IMPLICANS: POSSESSOR-POSSESSUM'S LINEAR ORDER
           Co-possession constructions involving multiple
           preposed possessors are ruled out. (Alan King)

        2. IMPLICANS: POSSESSOR-POSSESSUM ADJACENCY
           Constructions that require adjacency of possessor and
           possessum, with the possessor strictly on one side of the
           possessum, do not, by necessity, allow co-possession
           involving possessors which both observe this constraint.
           (Alan King)

        3. IMPLICANS: POSSESSOR-POSSESSUM AGREEMENT
           Possessor-possessum agreement rules out co-possession
           involving possessors each of which would have to control
           agreement on the possessum. (Michael Daniel, Martin
           Haspelmath, Alan King, Edith Moravcsik, Hannu Tommola)

           Counterexample: Marathi, which, as Kameshwar Wali reported,
           has co-possession and also possessor-possessum agreement.

           Alan King suggested that Aymara, Yapese, and Chamorro are
           some other head-marking (or both head- and dependent-
           marking) languages on which this hypothesis could be further
           tested.

        4. IMPLICANS: POSSESSORS OF SAME FORM
           If a language has several devices for marking adnominal
           relations, co-possession involving possessors of the
           same form is ungrammatical or at least avoided. (Michael
           Daniel, Alan King)

           (Or, a weaker version: If a language allows co-possession
           involving possessors of identical form, it also allows co-
           possession involving possessors of non-identical forms.)

        5. IMPLICANS: AFFIXALLY MARKED POSSESSORS IN CO-POSSESSION
           If affixally marked possessors can form co-possessive
           constructions, so can adpositionally marked ones.
           (Martin Haspelmath)

        /For ##6 and 7, see below./

    C/ EXPLANATIONS:
       IF THERE ARE SUCH CORRELATIONS, HOW CAN THEY BE EXPLAINED?

       Three explanatory principles have been proposed.

       I. AMBIGUITY AVOIDANCE

       This principle would explain why co-possessive constructions
       with identically marked possessors are dispreferred (#4 above).

       Co-possessive constructions introduce the possibility of two
       kinds of ambiguity:
           a/ ambiguity between the interpretation of one of the
              two possessors vis-a-vis that of the other
              For example: "painting of Lucy of you": who is
              the painter or possessor of the picture and who
              if the person painted? (Alan King)
           b/ ambiguity between the co-possessive and hierarchical
              interpretation
              For example: "part of house of John":
              - hierarchical (or stacked, or chained) interpretation:
                "John" is the possessor of "house"; "house" is the
                possessor of "part"
              - co-possessive interpretation:
                both "John" and "house" are possessors of "part"

       Michael Daniel suggested that, at least for dependent-marking
       languages, the desideratum to avoid ambiguity of the
       second kind is the reason why co-possession is not preferred.


       But, as Alan King pointed out, linear order could provide
       the necessary differentiation as it does in Basque between
       co-possessive and hierarchical meanings:
               "house John part": co-possession
               "John house part": hierarchical interpretation.
       And, as Alan also noted, the ambiguity of the Spanish "la
       parte de Juan de la casa" between co-possession and hierarchical
       interpretation is simply condoned, which illustrates that we
       cannot posit a universal ban on ambiguity in such constructions.

       II. GRAMMATICALIZATION: THE ORIGIN OF AGREEMENT MARKERS

       This argument would serve to explain why languages with
       possessor-possessum agreement do not (often) have co-possessive
       constructions (#3 above).

       Martin Haspelmath suggested that the reason why languages
       with possessor-possessum agreement do not allow for co-
       possession is that in such constructions the possessum would
       seem to require have two agreement markers; but, since co-
       possession would be a rare construction, such agreement would
       not get a chance to historically develop.

       I still think that in order for us to be able to take this as an
       explanatory principle, we would need to answer the question of
       why such possessor-possessum-agreement languages do not solve
       the morphological issue by either selecting one of the two
       possessors for agreement, or dispensing with agreement
       altogether. This concern, however, did not seem to be shared by
       other participants of the discussion.

       III. GRAMMATICALIZATION: THE STRATAL UNIQUENESS LAW

       This argument would provide historical explanations for ##1, 3,
       and 5 above.

       Martin invoked the Stratal Uniqueness Law - i.e., preference for
       only one instance of a relational category per clause - and
       proposed that it preferentially held for more grammaticalized
       categories over less grammaticalized ones. There are two ways in
       which this constraint may be instrumental in explaining the
       crosslinguistic distribution of co-possessive constructions. On
       the one hand, it makes sense of why some subtypes of co-possivve
       constructions are preferred over others. First, provided pre-
       head positions are in general more grammaticalized in the noun
       phrase, it would explain #1: the ban against the cooccurrence of
       possessors both preceding the possessum. Second, if possessor-
       possessum agreement is a sign of grammaticalization, it would
       explain why constructions that show such agreement in general
       prohibit co-possession (#3 above). Third, it also predicts #5
       according to which adpositional possessors occur in co-
       possessive constructions more than affixally marked ones, as
       well as that bare possessors are more resistant to occurrence in
       co-possessive constructions than affixally marked ones.

       The other explanatory use of the Stratal Uniqueness Law is that
       the very occurrence of co-possessive constructions of any type
       may be predicted by the doubling of other relational terms.
       Assuming the scale cited by Martin and adding "Possessor" to the
       lowest slot:

       Subject > DirectObject > IndirectObject > Oblique > Possessor

       it would follow that if a language allows for the doubling of
       Indirect Objects (or any other term to its left), it would
       also allow for doubling of the Possessor. The following may thus
       be added to the set of 5 implications above:

       6. If in a language sentences may include two Indirect Objects,
          noun phrases show co-possession.

       The three explanations address 5 of the 6 implications given
       above. The only one which has not been addressed is #2 which
       says two possessors cannot coccur if the language would require
       both of them to be on one side of the possessum and both
       immediately adjacent to it. This, however, as Alan King pointed
       out, does not need a linguistic explanation since it
       simply follows from the notion of adjacency.

                               **********

       In closing, here are a few items for future research on
       co-possession:

          - For each language where co-possession is not possible, we
       would need to check whether each of the two prospective
       possessors could by itself express the meaning that it would need
       to express in the co-possessive constructions. If not, then
       the ban is not on the cooccurrence of the two possessors but
       on a particular meaning-form correspondence.

          - Pronominal possession has been relatively neglected in
       the discussion. Pronominal possessors are often adjectival in
       form: is the co-possession involving two adjecitvally expressed
       pronominal possessors ever possible (such as "my your picture"
       for 'my picture of you')?

          - If a language allows for only one genitive in phrases such
       as 'John's part of the house', which of the two possessors will
       be genitival and which will take on another expression? Although
       one might expect a semantic principle to apply here, Alan King
       pointed out that in the Basque expression "your photograph of
       Lucy", either one or the other of the two possessors can be
       adnominal with the other appositional.

          - While it is not that easy to find lexical nouns that
       one might expect to take two possessors, there is a kind
       of common derived noun which one can expect to occur with
       two possessors: action nominalizations, such as "the destruction
       of the city by the enemy", "the banning of street crime by
       officials", etc. As I briefly scanned Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm's
       extensive work on the forms of such constructions across
       languages, several relevant points offered themselves.

          Masha identifies several subtypes of action nominal
       constructions, one of which is the co-possessive type. This
       includes two possessors whether of the same genitival form or
       utilizing alternative genitives (1988, 145-153; 1990, 7-10)).
       She notes that the cooccurrence of two genitives of exactly the
       same form is dispreferred (1990, 7) - cf. implication #4 above)
       and she also invokes an anti-ambiguity principle (1990, 8).
       Furthermore, she found that languages where the possessum
       agrees with the posessor do not allow double genitives in
       action nominalizations constructions (1988, 197); cf.
       implication #3 above. She also points out that no language uses
       a construction for action nominalization that is not also used
       otherwise (1988, 227) and, in particular, she proposes that
       action nominalization constructions are modelled on
       constructions involving other two-place nouns (1988, 227): if a
       language has double-genitive constructions in action
       nominalization phrases, then it also has double genitives
       otherwise (1990, 17-18). If this hypothesis is correct, then we
       gain an futher implicational statement:

       7. If in a language two genitives can occur in action
          nominalization constructions, they can also occur in some
          other possessive constructions that do not involve
          action-nominalization heads.


       (I.e., if "the destruction of the city of the enemy" then also
       "the part of the house of John".)


    REFERENCES:

    Jokinen, Kristiina. l991. On the two genitives in Finnish.
       EUROTYP Working Papers VII/14. European Science Foundation.

    Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1988. A typology of action nominal
       constructions. Stockholm University.

    Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1990. Action-nominal constructions
       in the languages of Europe. EUROTYP Working Papers VII/7.
       European Science Foundation.

    Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. Routledge.
       /Revised version of l988./

    Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1995. Possessive noun phrases in
       Maltese: alienability, iconicity, and grammaticalization.
       In EUROTYP Working Papers VII/25 and in Rivista di
       linguistica, 8, 1, l996.






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