inalienable possession and core arguments

[Sergey Lyosov]

Dear all,

have you ever read/thought about reinterpreting “inalienable possession” (within noun phrases) in terms of nominal valency? I.e., certain semantic kinds of nouns display valency slots that have to be filled by all means (e.g., a kinship role ‘[one’s] son’, an action noun ‘[one’s] crossing [of something]’), and these core arguments are encoded differently from non-obligatory arguments. In zero approximation, an English example would be ‘Jacob’s son’ as against ‘the son of his old age.’ Akkadian is a language that is keen on morphologically opposing core and non-core arguments in its noun phrases.
  Thank you very much,
   Sergey   
Sergey Loesov
Oriental Institute
RussianStateUniversity for the Humanities
 
6 Miusskaya pl. Moscow 125267, Russia.      Tel.: (7095) 250-6733, (7095) 250-6994.
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