Summary Details
| Query: |
summary: adnominal possessives and animacy
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| Author: | Anette Rosenbach | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Morphology
Syntax |
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| Summary: |
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 Wei? 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 Wei? 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 ch?tzli (''dem Fritz seine kleine Katze'') Fritz little cat (14) s'chlii ch?tzli 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) |
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| LL Issue: | 14.2077 | |
| Date Posted: | 05-Aug-2003 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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