LINGUIST List 9.1393

Tue Oct 6 1998

Qs: Phon acquisition, Inalienable possession

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Martin J Ball, Greek Phonological Acquisition
2. Takae Tsujioka, Inalienable possession expressions

One of my final year project students is investigating first language 
acquisition of modern Greek phonology, and is finding it very 
difficult to identify existing research in this area (or on 
developmental phonological disorders in Greek). We'd be very grateful 
for references to published work in English or in Greek, and/or the 
names and e-mail addresses of any researchers working in this area.

She will be happy to forward results from her data collection in due 
course as a return.

Please contact Ismini Toli directly (not my e-mail address):
toli-ieulst.ac.uk

With thanks

Martin J. Ball
Professor of Phonetics and Linguistics
University of Ulster

I am curious to know cross-linguistic distribution of different types of
clausal inalienable possession expressions. Four of the kinds I have
so far encountered are listed below. 

(i) with the pseudo-participle/possessional adjective
	English: 	John is blue-eyed, dark-haired child
	Dutch: 		Deze jurk is geblokt.
			'This dress is chequered.' (Postma 1997)
(ii) with a copula verb
	Spanish:	Juan es largo de piernas
			Juan is long of legs
			'Juan has long legs.' (Espanol-Echevarria 1997)
	French:		Sylvie est jolie des yeux
			Sylvie is beautiful of eyes
			'Sylvie has beautiful eyes.'
(iii) with a verb equivalent to 'do'
	Japanese:	John wa aoi me o site iru
			JohnTOP blue eyeACC done is/has
			'John has blue eyes.'
(iv) with multiple nominative NPs.
	Japanese:	John ga(wa) me ga aoi
			JohnNOM eye NOM blue
			'John has blue eyes.'

I would like to learn cross-linguistic distribution of the above types,
as well as others. Some of the questions I am interested in are as
follows:

A. Is a particular expression limited to inalienable possession?
	ex. English: John is blue-eyed vs. *John is blue-cared.
	
B. What kind of inalienable possession (body parts, abstract properties,
kinship, part-whole)?

C. Is there animate/inanimate variation?

D. For languages in Type (ii), are there differences between 'pretty of
face', 'broad of shoulder', 'dark of skin' vs. 'blue of eyes', long of
eyelashes', 'short of fingers'? That is, between a case in which the
adjectival modification could extend to the whole (possessor), and a case
in which such modification is not conceivable.

E. For languages in Type (iii), are there differences between 'blue 
eyes', 'long legs', vs. 'long hair', 'long nail', etc. The former is not
(in general) volitionally controlled, whereas the latter can be. 

Any input on data, comments, references are greatly appreciated. Please
send a message to:	

		tsujioktgusun.georgetown.edu

I will post a summary on the results. Thank you very much in advance!

Takae Tsujioka 
Georgetown University