Re: Different Possessions

Ray Brown wrote at 2005-04-27 18:45:50 (+0100)
 > On Wednesday, April 27, 2005, at 04:16 , Muke Tever wrote:
 > >
 > > I think possession, or at least genitivity,
 >
 > .... which are _not_ the same thing. 'Possession' is a fairly
 > well-defined concept which, on occasion, may be tested in a court
 > of law [snip]

In ordinary speech, yes, but the use of the term in linguistics is
less restricted.  From _Describing Morphosyntax_:

 | Languages typically express many semantic relationships with the
 | same formal construction used to express ownership.  We will call
 | such formal constructions *possessive constructions*, even though
 | the semantic relationship is not always one of possession, e.eg.,
 | the phrase _my professor_ does not refer to a professor that I
 | "possess" in the same way as _my clothes_ refers to clothes that I
 | possess.
 |
 | It is important to distinguish possessive noun phrases from
 | *possessive clauses*, discussed in section 6.5.  A possessive noun
 | phares contains two elements: a possessor and a possessed item.
 | Sometimes the possessor is referred to as the *genitive*
 | (regardless of whether the language has a morphological genitive
 | case).  The possesed item is referred to as the *possesum* or the
 | *possessee*.

Abstract and deverbal nouns aren't mentioned - what does Trask say
about this?

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