[Lingtyp] Phonological differences of alienable vs. inalienable possession

[Martin Haspelmath]

Haiman (1983; 1985) was the first to propose a highly general 
explanation of alienability contrasts, but it appears that the 
generalization is the following:

If a language has different adpossessive constructions for inalienable 
(i.e. kinship and/or body-part) nouns and alienable (i.e. other) nouns 
and if the grammatical coding is asymmetric, the coding is shorter for 
inalienable nouns.

"Shorter coding" most often means lack of a marker with inalienable 
nouns (as opposed to presence of a marker for alienable nouns), but it 
can also mean that the marker is shorter, or that the adpossessive 
person forms are shorter (as in the Hungarian contrast between -a and 
ja, mentioned by Edith Moravcsik, or the Italian contrast between mio 
and -mo, mentioned by Nigel Vincent). Haiman attributed the difference 
to "iconic motivation", but frequency-induced predictability ("economic 
motivation") is probably a better explanation (Haspelmath 2017 
<https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/zfs-2017-0009/html>). 
(There was a recent LSA talk by Lelia Glass that confirmed the frequency 
asymmetries that I had observed: 
https://twitter.com/lelia_glass/status/1479083599186075649)

It seems that the generalization above, in terms of "coding length", 
also covers the cases of phonological contrasts that we find (e.g. the 
contrast noted for Ojibwe by Marie-Luise Popp: "In Ojibwe, vowel hiatus 
is resolved via consonant epenthesis in alienable possession, but via 
deletion in inalienable
possession.")

Martin

Am 31.01.22 um 08:41 schrieb TasakuTsunoda:
>
> 2022/01/31
>
> Dear Colleague,
>
>     The following work may be relevant.
>
> Haiman, John. 1985. /Natural syntax[:] Iconicity and erosion/. 
> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
>
> I don’t have an access to this book now, but if I remember correctly, 
> this book discusses morphosyntactic differences between expressions of 
> alienable possession and those of inalienable possession. It may 
> discuss phonological differences as well.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Tasaku Tsunoda
>
> 2022/01/28 20:10 に、"Lingtyp (Marie-Luise Popp の代理)" 
> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org 
> (marie_luise.popp at uni-leipzig.de の代理)> を書き込みました:
>
>     Dear all,
>
>     I'm looking for languages, in which alienable and inalienable 
> possession
>
>     is marked by the same set (or at least - phonologically similar)
>
>     exponents, yet do these exponents undergo different phonological
>
>     processes in alienable vs. inalienable possession.
>
>     In Ojibwe, for example, vowel hiatus is resolved via consonant
>
>     epenthesis in alienable possession, but via deletion in inalienable
>
>     possession.
>
>     If anyone knows of more languages of this type, I would be 
> grateful for
>
>     references and comments.
>
>     Best,
>
>     Luise (Leipzig University)
>
>     --
>
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-- 
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/
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