Inquiry: Unmarked Possessives (various LCTLs) (fwd)

[David Gil]

Joost,

> There are apparently languages that do not mark possessives in any
> way. They simply juxtapose two nouns to express possession. So for
> example to express "John's car", they would say either "car John" or
> "John car".
>
> I am looking for references to any studies dealing with this
> phenomenon, either in specific languages or in general. I would also
> be very grateful if anyone could tell me about languages that use this
> structure, because so far I have only found a very few cases.

My impression is that it's not so rare.  Some examples:

South America:  Epena Pedee, Ndyuka ...
Africa:  Koyra Chiini Songay, Boko ...
Asia:  East Cham, Minangkabau ...
Oceania:  Amele, Maung ...

Even more languages have bare possessives if you limit your attention to
particular subclasses, such as inalienables, or pronominal possessors.

Best,

David

--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-9952321
Fax: 49-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/