[Lingtyp] Discourse functions of possessive markers

Tue Jul 16 14:46:44 UTC 2024

Dear Zahra,

Mwotlap (Oceanic, Vanuatu) illustrates the shift from possession to
definiteness.

This is done through a morpheme *nan*,  which can be glossed "its":  i.e.
*nan* encodes a possessive relation between a noun (more precisely, an
alienable noun) and a non-human possessor.
It is thus the equivalent of English *its* in *its title* - its battery - *its
beginning*...

(1)  *ni-hiy  ne   mōmō       →   *ni-hiy    *nan*
      Art-bone  GEN   fish*       →   * Art-bone   *its*
      “the bones of the fish”      → “*its* bones”

(2)  *no-yot   ne   ēm̄       →   no-yot*    *nan*
      Art-roof  GEN   house*     →    *Art-roof   *its*
      “the roof of the house”      → “*its* roof”

*ne* is a genitive linker “of N” (for alienable nouns possessed by a
non-human possessor);
*nan* is its anaphoric counterpart, from *na-n  <GEN-3sg>  “of it”.

When the possessor is [+human], a different possessive particle is used (
*nonon*):

(3)  ni-hiy  *nan*      //  ni-hiy   *nonon*
      Art-bone  its          Art-bone   *his/her*
      “ *its* bones”                  “*his*/*her* bones”

Now, the form *nan* has grammaticalized into what I call an associative
marker  "of it / related to it":

(4)  No   mal  et   ni-vidio  *nan*.
      1sg   CPLT  see   Art-movie   Assoc
      “I've seen the movie (based on that book).”

(5)  Nok  qoyo vap  hiy  n-et     *nan*.
      1sg   FUT   say   DAT  Art-person  Assoc
      “I will tell the person in charge (of those matters).”

Cf. research by Kleiber (1999)
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216698000721>
and Charolles
(1999) <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216698000708>
on the useful notion of “associative anaphora”
--- around such examples as {*A letter* was awaiting Sherlock Holmes. *The
envelope* was crumbled.}

___________
Finally, the next step for Mwotlap *nan*
<https://marama.huma-num.fr/Lex/Mwotlap/n.htm#%E2%93%94nan> has been to
grammaticalize into a simple anaphoric:

(6)  Kē  ni-tēy   n-ēm̄     vitwag se.   N-ēm̄    *nan*    nu-su     ēwē.
      3sg  AO-build  Art-house  one      again  Art-house Anaph
 Stat-small  RESTR
       “So he built a second house.  *That* house (in question) was very
small.”

(7)  Tō  ikē  ni-sese n-eh.   Tō   n-eh   *nan*   qele gēn:
      then 3sg   AO-sing  Art-song  then Art-song  Anaph  like  DX
      “So he started singing a song.  *The* song (in question) went like
this:”

(8)  Tō   na-vap  t-am̄ag   *nan*   ni-bah hōw gēn.
     then  Art-word  from-past  Anaph  AO-end  down DX
      “And this is the end of *the* story.”

In sum, a phrase like *n-ēm̄ nan*  has 3 readings in Mwotlap:

   - *possessive *phrase:   “its house”   (e.g. of the dog / of the pig /
   of the firewood…)
   - *associative *phrase:  “the house for those things”  (e.g. if I
   mention beer-drinking → the house where this typically happens)
   - *anaphoric *phrase:   “the (aforementioned) house”

I described this in my grammar of Mwotlap
<http://alex.francois.online.fr/AFpub_books_e.htm#01>:

   - François, Alexandre. 2001. Contraintes de structures et liberté dans
   l'organisation du discours. Une description du mwotlap, langue océanienne
   du Vanuatu [*Structural constraints and freedom in speech elaboration: A
   description of Mwotlap, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu*]. Doctoral
   thesis in Linguistics, Université Paris-IV Sorbonne. 3 volumes.

See especially pp. 573–580
<https://marama.huma-num.fr/data/AlexFrancois_These_DescriptionMwotlap.pdf#page=574>
.

best
Alex
------------------------------

Alex François
LaTTiCe <http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS–
<http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html>ENS
<https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>
–PSL <https://www.psl.eu/en>–Sorbonne nouvelle
<http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
Australian National University
<https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/alex-francois>
Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
_________________________________________

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Zahra Etebari Shekarsaraei via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2024 at 14:53
Subject: [Lingtyp] Discourse functions of possessive markers
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>

Dear all,

I am preparing a dataset for development of discourse functions in
possessive/personal markers cross-linguistically. I am particularly
interested in constructions (relevant examples below) where a
possessive/personal marker is used not to convey possession or refer to
another item, but to denote functions such as definiteness, topicality,
emphasis or contrast.

*Definiteness*

   1. Kútip turǵan *adamı* kelmedi.
                                      [Karakalpak]

*The person* he/she has been waiting for did not come.

(Utepovich 2023: 80)

*Contrast*

   2. Ulizy-vylizy                kyk                   bratjos,
   *pokći-ez*                                  [Udmurt]

             lived-were.3SG        two
brothers         *younger.brother-3SG*

             kuaner,                      *byȝym-ez*
                         uzyr.

             Poor                           *older.brother-3SG*
rich

             There lived two brothers, the younger one was poor, the older
one was rich.

             (Serebrennikov 1963: 133)

So far, I have collected cases from over 60 language varieties spanning Uralic
(Ugric, Permic, Mari, Mordvin, Samoyed), Altaic (Turkic, Tungusic,
Mongolic), Indo-European (Iranic), Afro-Asiatic (Semitic), and Austronesian
(Javanese, Malay) families. If you have encountered similar uses in a
language you work on or if you are aware of any lesser-known source on this
topic, especially non-English sources, I would be extremely grateful if you
could share them with me.

Many thanks for your time!

Best wishes,

Zahra

References:

Serebrennikov, Boris A. 1963. *Istoriceskaja Morfologija Permskix Jazykov*
[Historical morphology of the Permic languages]. Moscow: Izdateľstvo AN SSSR
.

Utepovich, Bekbergenov H. 2023. Semantic peculiarities of the possessive
affixes in the Karakalpak language and their equivalents in English. *Journal
of Advanced Linguistic Studies*. 10(2). 64-82.

Zahra Etebari

Postdoctoral researcher

Department of Linguistics and Philology

Uppsala University

Thunbergsvägen 3H, Box 635

75126 Uppsala, Sweden

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