14.2077, Sum: Adnominal possessives and animacy

Tue Aug 5 19:52:47 UTC 2003

LINGUIST List:  Vol-14-2077. Tue Aug 5 2003. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 14.2077, Sum: Adnominal possessives and animacy

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry, Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org):
	Simin Karimi, U. of Arizona
	Terence Langendoen, U. of Arizona

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>
 ==========================================================================
To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.
=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Tue, 05 Aug 2003 06:13:30 +0000
From:  Anette  Rosenbach <ar at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de>
Subject:  Adnominal possessives and animacy

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 05 Aug 2003 06:13:30 +0000
From:  Anette  Rosenbach <ar at phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de>
Subject:  Adnominal possessives and animacy

A month ago I posted the following query (Linguist 14.1869):

''Is anyone aware of a OV-language which has 2 adnominal possessive
constructions which differ in the position of the possessor
(i.e. which have both a preominal and a postnominal genitive) and
where there is an animacy-induced preference for either position?
Similar to English (though a VO-language) where human possessors are
preferably realized in prenominal position (1),while inanimate
possessors usually occur postnominally (2).

(1) Johns book
(2) the roof of the house

Is there anything comparable for OV-languages?

I wish to thank Gerlof Bouma, Mark Donohue, Dafna Graf, Detmar
Meurers, Hirotaka Mitomo, Pius ten Hacken, Claus Pusch, Horst Simon,
and Helmut Weiß for their responses. Heres a
summary of what they wrote:

Hirotaka Mitomo wrote that:
Japanese is a typical OV-language, and only has a prenomimnal position
for dependents on a noun.  Your (1) and (2) are translated into (1a
and (2a) respectively.

(1)    a.    John-no   hon
                  -Gen book

        b.    *hon John(-no)

(2)    a.    ie-no        yane
             house-Gen roof

        b.    *yane ie(-no)

Mark Donohue pointed out Saweru, a SOV language of central Yapen
island, New Guinea, which has various possessive strategies:
Possessive prefixing (with 2 sets, alienable and inalienable) (cf. 3),
dative marking (4 and 5) and the general modification strategy
(6). While human possessors show a preference to occur prenominally
(3-5), inanimate or at best non-human possessors tend to occur
postnominally (6). (5) is restricted to human possessors and the only
possibility for pronominal possession.

(3)	ruama (afi) a=watu(n)
        woman she 3SG.GEN.ALIEN=house
        'the woman's house'

(4)	ruama   (afi)=ai        watu(n)
        woman   she=DAT house

(5)	ruama watun=rai
        woman house=3Sg.F.DAT
        the womans house

(6)	watun=o mae
        house=LNKR dog
        'dog's house'

Horst Simon, Detmar Meurers, and Helmut Weiß pointed out German
as an underlyingly OV-language, where prenominal possessors are
restricted to human possessors (7, with 7b being non-standard), and
inanimate possessors have to occur postnominally (8)

(7)	a.	 Friedas Vater
                 Frieda-GEN father
                 Friedas father
	b.	der	 Frieda ihre Mutter
		the-DAT   Frieda her mother
		Friedas mother
(8)	der Sattel von meinem Fahrrad
	the  saddle of  my bike

Claus Pusch provided data from his German dialect,
Alemannisch:

(9) John's book = em Johann si buech (dem Johann sein Buch)
(10) the roof of the house = s'dach vom huus (''das Dach vom Haus'')

He also pointed out that he feels that the prenominal position is
particularly preferred if *both* the possessor and the possessum are
animate, as in (11) and (12)

(11) em Johann si brueder (''dem Johann sein Brueder'')
(12) em Fritz si chatz (''dem Fritz seine Katze'')

A further expanded possessum does however decrease the acceptability
of the prenominal construction (13 and 14):

(13) ? em Fritz si(s) chliis chätzli (''dem Fritz seine kleine Katze'') Fritz little cat
(14) s'chlii chätzli vom Fritz the little cat of Fritz)

Gerlof Bouma and Pius ten Hacken pointed out Dutch, which behaves
quite similarly to English and German. The following detailed data
were provided by Gerlof Bouma:

(15)	 Jans      huis
         john+gen  house
(16)	  het         huis  van Jan
          the(neuter) house of  john
(17)	 het         dak  van het         huis
         the(neuter) roof of  the(neuter) house
(18)	*het huis'     dak
         the house+gen roof

(18) is out, also because the gen. of `huis' simply does not
exist. Only in idiomatic constructions like:

(19) 	 's               lands     beste koffie
          the(neuter+gen)  land(gen) best  coffee

which can easily be paraphrased as:
(20) 	 de        beste koffie van het       land
         the(comm) best  coffee of  the(neut) land

Gen. forms (created by suffix -s) only exist in Dutch for
proper-names. As a native speaker I would say names for persons are
strongly preferred, but others are not ruled out. A construction with
an adjective like the following, I would allow:

(21)	 Europa's belangrijkste  bankier
         Europe's most-important banker

Finally, names denoting things other than persons do not have a
genitive form if they include a (visible) determiner. The following
line is from the website of DSM, formerly `De Nederlandse
Staatsmijnen':

(22)	 Toen de mijnwinning groeide en DSM's                 verwerkingsactiviteiten
  when the mining  grew  and     DSM(gen) processing activities
  uitbreidden ...
  expanded

Replacing DSM with the old name does not work...

(23)	 * en  De Nederlandse Staatsmijnens  verwerkingsactiviteiten
    and the-dutch-state-mines(gen)   processing activities

Finally, it _does_ work with a proper-name denoting a person, with a
determiner:

(24)	 De Gooiers     acteertalent
 	  de gooier(gen) talent-for-acting

   (Rijk de Gooier is a Dutch actor)

Finally, Dafna Graf pointed out Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamms
(2001) article on Adnominal possessives in:
Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.): Language Typology and Language
Universals, Volume 2, 960-970. (Handbooks of Linguistics and
Communication Science 20. 1,2): Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Thanks again to everybody!

Anette Rosenbach
(Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-14-2077