[Lingtyp] Phonological differences of alienable vs. inalienable, possession

[Martin Haspelmath]

Sebastian Löbner's recent post is interesting; however, that "concept 
types" play a role in explaining alienability coding contrasts, as in 
recent work by Löbner and Ortmann (and appearently also in Karvovskaya's 
2018 dissertation, which I haven't studied yet), has long been the 
dominant view – but what exactly is a "semantic explanation"?

Why does "congruence" lead to lack of marking? What is the causal 
mechanism – is it simply Haiman's "iconic motivation"?

I discussed these issues with respect to Ortmann's (2018) paper in this 
2020 blogpost: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2385. Ortmann does not really 
specify the causal mechanism, and he has trouble explaining 
antipossessive marking (as found in several Mayan languages, and 
sporadically elsewhere). He also struggles to explain simple genitive 
marking (as in English or Japanese), because it does not seem to have a 
meaning, while possessive meaning is unexpressed.

Moreover, closer to home, it appears that this proposal does not explain 
*phonological* length effects – it seems that it only explains zero vs. 
overt contrasts.

Thus, I think that an expectation-based theory (in terms of efficient 
coding) fares better than a purely "semantic explanation", because it 
accounts for all these effects.

Martin

Am 03.02.22 um 16:32 schrieb Sebastian Löbner:
> A semantic explanation for the observed asymmetry between the marking 
> (if distinguished) of adnominal inalienable vs alienable possession is 
> proposed in my Theory of Concept Types and Determination (CTD, Löbner 
> 2011). According to CTD, inalienable possession occurs with relational 
> nouns. This type of noun is congruent (unmarked) with possessive 
> determination since the noun concept contains a relational argument 
> that is in need of specification in a “possessive” construction. 
> Nonrelational nouns lack such an argument and are hence congruent with 
> absolute determination. For the use with possessive determination, a 
> nonrelational noun concept needs to be accommodated with a relational 
> argument. The process may be expressed by extra morphosyntactic 
> marking in addition to mere possessor specification.
>
> For a typological survey in this framework, see Ortmann (2018); for a 
> study of the observed split in Hungarian, Ortmann & Gerland (2014)
>
> Löbner (2011) /Concept types and determination. /doi 10.1093/jos/ffq022
> Ortmann & Gerland (2014) /She loves you, -ja -ja -ja: objective 
> conjugation and pragmatic possession in Hungaria/n. doi 
> 10.1515/9783110720075-011 <https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110720075-011>
> Ortmann (2018)/Connecting the typology and semantics of nominal 
> possession: alienability splits and the morphology–semantics 
> interface/ 10.1007/s11525-017-9319-6
>
> Sebastian Löbner
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20220203/934380da/attachment.htm>