26.2564, Review: Semantics; Socioling; Syntax: Aikhenvald, Dixon (2012)

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Subject: 26.2564, Review: Semantics; Socioling; Syntax: Aikhenvald, Dixon (2012)

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Date: Wed, 20 May 2015 15:41:59
From: David Robertson [ddr11 at columbia.edu]
Subject: Possession and Ownership

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-5324.html

EDITOR: Alexandra Y Aikhenvald
EDITOR: R. M. W. Dixon
TITLE: Possession and Ownership
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: David Douglas Robertson,  

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This volume emerges from a week-long workshop in 2010 whose participants came
together to compare fieldwork findings from a wide variety of languages on a
seemingly simple topic: possession.  Working from a shared checklist of
related parameters, their presentations, which became chapters in this book,
highlight the fascinating ways in which possession is marked, and its
additional functions across languages.  The contributors present their
chapters in a Basic Linguistic Theory framework (cf. Dixon 2010a,b and 2012),
that is, the “cumulative typological functional framework” of linguistic
description (ix), thus favoring observation, comparison and explanation over
mutable formalisms.  

Editor Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald contributes an introductory essay sharing its
title with the volume (Chapter 1); this review will focus on her essay because
it so concisely summarizes the substance of the rest of the volume as well as
of the literature on possession.  She launches this masterful summary with a
glance (Section 1) at the cross-linguistic fundamentals of possession that
serves as a key to the volume.  Languages universally express the relationship
of possession, both within noun phrases (elaborated in Chapter 2) and
predicatively within clauses (Chapter 3).  In the latter a dedicated
construction or an 'associative' noun phrase, or both, are used. 
Constructions vary according to the various kinds of PRel (possessive
relationship) and the Pr (possessor) and Pe (possessee) involved therein.  The
marking used for expressing possession can function in further ways (Chapter
4), with many languages tending to employ it to indicate various core and
peripheral arguments.  Possession holds interest for the anthropological
linguist as well, reflecting as it frequently does the deep assumptions and
values of a culture (Chapter 5).  Possessorhood is bound up with notions of
control and power (Chapter 6).  

Aikhenvald goes into further detail about these topics.  Her Section 2 surveys
'Meanings and Forms in Possessive Noun Phrases'; the core types are ownership,
whole-part relations, and kinship relations.  Marking of PRels in NPs can
consist of word order, possessor marking, possessee marking, marking of both,
or an independent marker morph.  Prs tend to be high on the Nominal Hierarchy;
Pes often are classified as involved in alienable versus inalienable PRels. 
Some languages can mark inalienable nouns as 'unpossessed' to turn them into
free forms; some items cannot be possessed.  Time, permanency, control, and
proximity of possession can be grammatically reflected too.  Further
subcategorization of PRels is not uncommon in the form of classifiers, either
of the PRel's properties (e.g. 'alimentary' possession versus other) or those
of the Pe (the more well-known concept of noun classifiers). 

Aikhenvald's Section 3 looks more deeply into clause-level possession, which
can be expressed as a predication, as a grammatical relation, or via
strategies such as topicalization or relativization.  A given language may use
more than one of these.  The predication strategies for expressing possession
include verbs of ownership, which often are reserved for relatively
time-unstable PRels and often are exceptional in lacking various inflectional
possibilities, or in having grammaticalized from another word, or in having
Pr-focused ʹhaveʹ and Pe-focused ʹbelongʹ forms.  Also often seen are copula
constructions and verbless clauses (reflecting several degrees of relative
time-stability in possessive relations), and possessive derivations.  

With section 4 of Aikhenvaldʹs survey essay, she turns from form to function
to summarize some additional uses of possession-marking.  These include
purpose or benefaction, argument marking in a variety of clause types, and
relativization.  Section 5 points out that possessive marking, as sensitive as
it already is to cultural dynamics, is particularly prone to contact
influences.  Those dynamics are surveyed in a bit more depth in Section 6,
which discusses interactions of grammatical possession with social
relationships, values and concepts; with diachronic changes in culture; and
with understandings of what is an essential possession.  Section 7 summarizes
the essay concisely.

The volume's other contributions follow, among them Chapter 2, “Ownership,
part-whole, and other possessive-associative relations in Nêlêmwa (New
Caledonia)” by Isabelle Bril, like the following single-language grammatical
studies, opens by situating her discussion in this language's overall
structure, then sketching the overt forms taken by possession in  Nêlêmwa. 
There are separate “direct” (~close relation) and “indirect” (~looser/abstract
relation) possessive pronouns, a distinction that is typical for an Oceanic
language, as is the presence of noun classes: free, bound/relational, and
possessive/relational classifiers.  Unusually however, each noun class has
distinct possessive properties; for example bound nouns are inherently
relational (~possessed) entities.  An interesting observation echoed
throughout the volume is that animacy effects are observable in possession,
with definite human Pr's participating in ownership PRel's (subdivided into
the alienable and inalienable).  Inanimate/non-specific Pr's appear in looser
relations including part-whole, associatives and hyponyms.  Modifying nouns
have sometimes grammaticalized into adposition status, whether of locative,
causal/benefactive or other function. Among the relations that are expressed
in a possessive manner are, interestingly, quantification including numeral
(both cardinal and ordinal) and measure such as 'piece of' and 'two of
(them)'.  Possessive predication is accomplished variously by non-verbal
predication, positively or  negatively/privatively by copulas, or by
incorporation of body parts (in expressions of grooming).  Notably, not all
entities can be possessed.  

The remaining chapters are similarly detailed explorations of a typologically
diverse sampling among particular languages and cultures, here summarized in
less detail.  The first in a sequence of contributions that are primarily
linguistically-oriented is Chapter 3, “Possession in Moskona, an East Bird's
Head language” by Gloria J. Gravelle, examining a western New Guinean
language's phonologically-marked noun classes, among other phenomena that
touch on possession.  Chapter 4, “Possession and ownership in Manambu, a Ndu
language from the Sepik area, Papua New Guinea”, is contributed by editor
Aikhenvald.  This chapter concerns itself with examining how Manambu speech
habits and grammar reflect both totemic subclan ownership of names and
associated lands, and more mundane possession of objects.  Alan Dench's
Chapter 5, “Possession in Martuthunira” [Pama-Nyungan, Australia], is another
anthropologically-informed study, taking care to note the expression of such
concepts as kinship relations (also in local Aboriginal English) and extended
ownership-related concepts like 'steal', 'keep'.  In Chapter 6, “Possession in
Nanti” [Arawak, Peru] by Lev Michael, the language in focus features both the
most restrictive range of possessive concepts in the volume and  a number of
uniquely fascinating verb constructions involving novel expressions of
possesive relations.  A Tibeto-Burman language of India gets an analysis
distinct from others in the volume in Chapter 7, “Possession and association
in Galo language and culture” by Mark W. Post.  He argues that a more relevant
concept to the Galo forms discussed is ASSOCIATION of one entity by another,
rather than its POSSESSION, an idea taken up by some other contributors also. 
Chapter 8 “Possessive constructions in Mandarin Chinese” by Yongxian Luo, is
rich with illustrative examples and shows that many 'possessive' constructions
have no possessive meaning at all. Chapter 9 is “Possession in Hone” [East
Benue-Congo] by Anne Storch, where attention is given to contact-induced
change in both the concepts and expression of Pr-Pe relations, and to the
relatively prominent role of acquisition rather than ownership.  Felix K.
Ameka uses his Chapter 10, “Possessive constructions in Likpe (Sɛkpɛlé)”
[Niger-Congo], to advance the stimulating view that “the primary meaning coded
by possessive constructions is that of kinship and other socio-cultural
relationships” (p.224); he too notes change due to contact.  Among its many
fascinating observations, Chapter 11 “Possession in Wandala” [a Central Chadic
language], by Zygmunt Frajzyngier, makes the point that while this language
fails to mark possessive modification as previously understood in the
literature, it does code possession of X with a 'be with .X' construction that
has grammaticalized from the predication of coexistence.  

The first of two primarily anthropologically-oriented contributions comes in
Chapter 12, “Spirits of the forest, the wind, and new wealth: defining some of
the possibilities, and limits, of Kamula possession”, by Michael Wood.  This
study takes a Melanesian society as an exemplar of possession being conceived
as much in terms of association as of dissociation and exclusion; Wood's
analysis of the precedence taken by Kamula ancestral spirits' possessive
claims to traditional resources (e.g. land) and new ones (e.g. wind power) is
thought-provoking.  The other anthropological piece is Chapter 13, “Being and
belonging: exchange, value, and land ownership in the Western Highlands of
Papua New Guinea” by Rosita Henry, who, like a majority of this volume's
authors, keeps diachronic change in view.  Here she presents a compelling case
for seeing an ongoing negotiated coexistence of traditional 'inclusive'
(tribal group) ownership with newly introduced 'exclusive' (individual) legal
title to the land of a coffee plantation.  The book is in a sense summarized
with Chapter 14, “Possession and also ownership—vignettes”, in which co-editor
R.M.W. Dixon refines a few linguistic and anthropological themes touched upon
less deeply in the previous chapters.  His section 1 discusses how languages
lacking copulas express predicative possession, e.g. with possessive pronouns
and comitative/privative case-marking.  Dixon also examines, in section 2, 
instances counter to the generalization that the possessee is the head  of a
possessive construction (in that a Pe is “the only obligatory component and
may make up a complete phrase on its own”, p.294).  Reflecting the principle
of iconicity, inalienable possession in some languages is conveyed simply by
juxtaposition of Pr with Pe, and in some of the languages it is Pr which is
the head of the expression; Dixon concludes that these constructions are not
'possessive' but 'identification' of an entity in terms of some part of it. 
Finally, with section 3 of the chapter, Dixon meditates on 'What can be
possessed, and owned', examining the range of meaning of the English words
'own' and 'possess', then considering cross-linguistic and cross-cultural
assumptions about which of those concepts applies in regard to one's name,
language, and land.  

EVALUATION

“Possession and Ownership” is an invaluable contribution to the linguistic
typology literature.   The volume introduces a structured analytical means of
understanding the great variety of forms taken by the expression of 'having',
'owning', and so forth.  The book's nature as a cross-linguistic survey allows
it to clarify many hitherto outstanding issues such as which are the core
types of possesion that are recurrently encountered in languages, and which
are more peripheral.  An equally valuable contribution is to in turn consider
what further uses possessive expressions get put to in the world's languages
and cultures, and to identify tests for 'true' possessives versus such
modified usages.  

The book does a great service too in identifying a number of recurring
principles in possessive marking that almost certainly are new to readers. 
For example, iconicity is pointed out, whereby more-alienable relations tend
to be expressed by greater formal marking, and less-alienable ones by less or
no marking; also noted is the presence of nominal-hierarchy effects, whereby
speech-act participants as possessors often are 'more closely knit' with
possessees than are third persons.  Also quite stimulating is the editors'
identification of areas needing further research, such as the range of
variation in marking of 'lack' (p.27), in relativization of possessors (p.41),
in possible 'semantic motivation' for the extended uses of possessive marking
(p.43), and in connections between possession and taboo (p.50).

The fact that a typologically rich selection of languages are examined in such
detail brings alive the concepts under discussion in a way likely to inspire
and guide much further research.  And the inclusion of an extensive
bibliography accompanying Aikhenvald's introductory survey chapter is itself a
highly useful guide to the state of the possession literature.  

One can expect to put a fair amount of thought into reading this books, due
both to the substantial information it introduces and to the somewhat light
editorial hand that has been applied in compiling its diverse articles.  As
can so easily happen in this sort of volume, terminology is not quite uniform
among the contributors; for example, chapter 2 uses “determiner” without
explanation that this is equivalent to the otherwise-encountered
“Pr”/“possessor”.  The Abbreviations key (pages xv-xxii) is a thorough guide
to  the various articles' dozens of technical abbreviations, though it suffers
from redundancies (both APPL and APPLIC for 'applicative', for example) and
confusing overlaps (like Pr 'possessor', pr 'possessive pronoun' and pr-
'possessive prefix'--all used in chapter 3).  This key includes many
categories that will be unfamiliar to even linguistically sophisticated
readers ('venitive' and 'ventive' are an eye-catching pair), such that a
separate glossary would have been worth including.  There are in addition
passages which might have benefited from an editor's modifying the author's
grammatical yet unidiomatic English phrasing.  There are some mishaps in
outline structure in certain articles.  A random example is the empty heading
“1 Introduction” in Chapter 11, followed by a subsection numbered 1.1 without
any further subsections being present.  A few typographical mistakes at first
cause head-scratching; in Chapter 3, section 4.2 has consecutive subheadings I
and II both titled 'POSSESSORS IN DIRECT POSSESSION PHRASES'; the first should
read 'POSSESSEES...'.  These however are quite minor concerns and the volume
is very highly recommended as an addition to the burgeoning typological
literature.  

REFERENCES

Dixon, R.M.W.  2010a.  Basic Linguistic Theory: Volume 1 / Methodology. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Dixon, R.M.W.  2010a.  Basic Linguistic Theory: Volume 2 / Grammatical Topics.
 Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Dixon, R.M.W.  2012.  Basic Linguistic Theory: Volume 3 / Further Grammatical
Topics.    Oxford: Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

David Robertson is a consulting linguist who specializes in Pacific Northwest
languages.  He is currently working on the documentation of Salish (Lower
Chehalis) and pidgins (Chinook Jargon and previously undescribed pidgins of
British Columbia).





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