Marking of Possessor Noun Phrases (Feature 38)
From Apics
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Feature Annotation
Here the question is how the possessor noun phrase is marked in an adnominal possessive construction (’the man’s house’, ‘the bird’s wing’, ‘the roof of my house’).
Possession is defined broadly as comprising ownership, part-whole relations and kinship relations (and of course normally other abstract relations as well, but these three are criterial.)
Often pronominal possessors are treated differently from full noun phrases. Here we only look at (non-pronominal) full noun phrases. (For pronominal possessors, see Feature 37)
Note that we ignore word order here. (For word order, see Feature 2.)
Additional remarks
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Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | Possessor is identified by indexing on the head noun | This means that there is an agreement/cross-referencing person-form on the head, e.g. Nigerian Pidgin [dì wuman] ìm mòto ‘the woman’s car’ (lit. ‘the woman her-car’) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Possessor is marked by an adposition or case | Case-marking or adpositional marking on the possessor (e.g. English [Robert’s]house/the house [of Robert]) |
| 3 | Possessor is both indexed and adposition/case-marked | Simultaneous presence of indexing and adposition/case-marking, e.g. Turkish [Ali-nin] ev-i [Ali-gen house-3sg] ‘Ali’s house’ (lit. “Ali’s his house”). |
| 4 | Possessor has no marking | Simple juxtaposition of possessor and possessum, e.g. Haitian Creole liv [Robè] a ‘Robert’s book’ |
| 5 | Possessor is marked in some other way | e.g. “floating” marking (by means of a clitic that is not attached to the possessor) |
WALS No.
24 (Total)
