Re: Types of possession

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:46:53 -0500, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>
wrote:

>On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:19:11 -0500, Jefferson Wilson
><jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
>
>> The Glyphica Arcana has no inflection for possession.  Instead,
>> possession is shown through subordinate phrases ("of . . .").  My
>> current problem is defining the types of possession used by the GA.
>> (Though I haven't checked the archives yet, I will be doing that soon.)
>>
>> Now, "hand of mine," "house of mine," and "wife of mine" are all going
>> to be different possessives.  What should I call them and what other
>> forms of possession should I define?
>
>I'd go with the partitive, possessive and associative genetives,
>respectively.
>
>Question for the group: Where would you classify "the king of England"? It
>flits between possessive and associative in my mind.
>
>"Should" is a very broad term when it comes to the design of conlangs. You
>should define as many as make you happy. I don't know of a book that deals
>at great length with possession alone. You could check Payne[1] and
>Comrie[2] for the best treatments I know of.
>
>[1]Thomas E Payne, _Describing Morphosyntax_, Cambridge University Press
>[2]Bernard Comrie, _Language Universals And Linguistic Typology_,
>University of Chicago Press
Hi, Jeff, Paul, and others.

Here are three ideas I remember from T.E. Payne's "Describing Morphosyntax";

1) Many languages divide nouns into two types; possessible and non-
possessible.  For instance, he gives an African language in which a spear
(or some such) is possessible, but the sky is not possessible.

2) Many languages divide nouns into two types; those on the one hand that,
inherently, must be possessed, and those on the other hand that need not,
inherently, be possessed.  For instance, I think, in some language (Inuit,
maybe?), a hand must belong to someone, but a dog need not belong to anyone.

3) Many languages, as other posters have already observed, divide types of
possession into alienable (those that can be given away or sold or traded
or etc.) versus inalienable (those that cannot be given away nor sold nor
traded nor etc.)  What is alienable and what is inalienable is culturally
conditioned.  In our society, hands and spouses and jobs and languages
would be inalienable, because although you can amputate a hand and divorce
a spouse and quit a job, you cannot sell any of them; whereas, houses and
team-members and cars and boats and stories and poems and songs would all
be alienable, because you can sell or trade all of them.
There are societies in which spouses can be bought and sold, or traded;
hence, alienable possessions.  There are societies in which trading or
buying-and-selling team-members would be thought of as chattel-slavery, and
hence against the law; hence, inalienable possessions.  There are societies
where intellectual property cannot be given nor traded; hence it is
inalienable.  There are societies in which a house, or a means of
transportation (perhaps a horse, or perhaps a boat), is so important
culturally, that it is regarded as an inalienable possession.

4) Many languages use a combination of two of the above three ideas.  It is
logically possible, and I think there may exist some natlangs attesting,
all three at once -- I don't know, does anyone else?

"Our Language" would be either Unpossessible or Inalienably Possessed.

"My Hand" would be Inherently Possessed and Inalienably Possessed.

"My Umbrella" would be Possessible, Not Inherently Possessed, and Alienably
Possessed.

I think a transplantable organ, such as blood or skin or corneas or hearts
or kidneys or livers, would still count as inalienably possessed if neither
the donor nor the recipient could live without it.  If the donor can live
without it, but his or her quality-of-life is much degraded without it, it
still might count as inalienable.  In any case, most of these organs would
count as inherently possessed; they cannot last significantly long
unless "owned" by someone.  Banked blood might be an exception.  For most
things, there would be a language-specific choice which would be more-or-
less constrained (usually "more" constrained), but not completely
determined, by semantic, logical, pragmatic, and common-sense
considerations.

---

Tom H.C. in MI