Possession (was: Re: Ergative)

>JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
>> I don't know anything about Old English, but I wouldn't be surprised
>> if you'd hit the nail on the head.  Certainly the German equivalent
>> "Weh ist mir" is a be+dative construction.
>
>Cool.  What got me to wondering about that is the fact that Latin used
>_esse_ + dative for "have" sometimes.
Use of BE + a dative or locative expression to denote "have" is quite
common.  Both Russian and Hindi express "I have a book" as "a book is
beside me".  I think the Celtic languages do this as well.  So do
Hungarian, Finnish, and Turkish.

What's less common, I think, is having both a BE + dative/locative and
a HAVE construction in the same language (as in Latin and French).

Tokana adopts the BE + dative construction for representing possession:

        Imai    he  halma
        me:DAT  is  book
        "to-me (there) is a book"
        i.e. "I have a book (with me)"

There are also other ways of expressing possession in Tokana.  To denote
alienable possession (ownership of material objects), the verb "eha" =
"belong to, be owned" is used:

        Imai    eha     ante  halma
        me:DAT  belong  many  book
        "I own many books"

To express kinship possession, or possession of land or animals (things
which one has stewardship over), the verb "iala" = "be the responsibility
of" is used:

        Imai    iala            hen  lihpa
        me:DAT  be-responsible  two  sister
        "I have two sisters"

        Itai     kameima        iala            hen  talpe  uet
        the:DAT  family-DAT-my  be-responsible  two  field  barley
        "My family has/owns/works/takes care of two barley fields"

To express a part-whole type of relationship, e.g. possession of body
parts, the verbs "yma" = "include" and "enyma" = "consist of" are used:

        Imai    yma      inie          lune
        me:DAT  include  pair-of-eyes  blue
        "I have blue eyes"

        Itai     katiai     enyma       ehte   kotu
        the:DAT  house-DAT  consist-of  three  room
        "This house has three rooms"
        or "This is a three-room house"

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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