Different Possessions

Muke wrote:
> The same difficulty
> should surely exist for abstract nouns that, unlike "arrival", are not
> easily associated [in English] with a verb or agent:  his happiness,
> his solitude, his quirks.
Speaking of possession, I thought I'd throw out the three
different kinds of possession that Nahuatl has:  alienable,
inalienable but not a body part, and part/whole possession:

alienable:    kone:tl -->
              no-kone:-w-(an)
              1SgPoss-child-al.poss-(pl.)
              'my child(ren)'

inalienable,  no-to:ka
 nonbody-part 1SgPoss-name
              'my name'

part/whole:   omi:tl -->
              no-omi:-yo
              1SgPoss-bone-PW
              'my bone'

This can sometimes lead to interesting contrasts: noomi:yo
'my bone which is still part of my body' vs. noomi:w 'my bone
which I have acquired from somewhere else' or even better
notlakayo 'my torso' vs. notlakaw 'my male-lover'. :)   I've
been wondering whether to steal these ideas from Nahuatl for
my conlangs...

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637