[Lingtyp] Identifying a type of possessive constructions

[Yuan-Lin Yang]

Dear all,

I am currently working on Toda Seediq, an under-described Formosan
(Austronesian) language spoken in Taiwan. Recently I just discovered a kind
of possessive constructions that seem to be seldom studied by previous
Formosan literature (not sure for the typology literature for the moment,
tho):

(1) *Naqah k<n>dus-an=na                                     ka
bubu=mu.*
      bad     DEP<PFV>live-LOCNMLZ*=3SG.GEN*  *NOM  mother=1SG.GEN*
      'My mother led a difficult life.'

(2)  *Ini       k-paru      pahung=na                   ka        hiya.*
      NEG   DEP-big   gallbalder*=3SG.GEN*    *NOM   3SG.NEUT*
      '(S)he is not bold.'

Toda Seediq is predicate-initial and PSA-final, and there is only one overt
case marker in the language, namely the nominative *ka,* which can be seen
as marking the boundary between the predicate and the argument the former
is predicated of in a clause. In both (1) and (2) above, the predicate
parts consist of complex NPs with genitive pronoun *=na* marking the
possessor, yet there is also another nominatively marked PSA argument that
is co-referential with the genitive *=na. *This is a less-common type of
possessive cxns in the language (and perhaps also in other Formosan
langauges), because (i) usually the adnominal possessive cxns only have
either the genitive pronouns or the overt NP possessors that follow the
possessums and are not marked by *ka* (as in (3) and (4) below), and (ii)
the genitive pronoun and the PSA argument are not in the same NPs.

(3)  *rulu=mu*
      wheel=1SG.GEN
      'my car'

(4)  *laqi     Emi*
      child    PN
      'Emi's child'

I can only tell syntactically (1) and (2) might involve clitic doubling,
but this label is not satisfying for me. Hence, I tentatively analyze the
cxns in question as hanging topic cxns, but I still wonder by what type of
possession should I describe such a kind of possessive cxns. Do they
exhibit a kind of external possession? Or do they belong to other types of
split possession or adopt a strategy I am not familiar with? I wonder if
any of you have have found the same or similar phenomena in the languages
you work on, and can thus shed some lights on this issue for me.


Best regards,
Yuan-Lin Mickey Yang,
MA Student, Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University.
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