Inalienable Possession Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by and +1
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- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Cross-cultural interaction (Archaeology), Archaeology of Mediterranean Trade
- by Marc Zender
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- Morphology, Maya Epigraphy, Mayan Linguistics, Inalienable Possession

In light of the large wine processing installation found in Jezreel in 2013, the pre-Deuteronomistic Naboth story is imagined as featuring a rich Naboth who offended a weak Israelite king. Since the Assyrian conquest of the Jezreel Valley, the Israelite king had little political clout over the region and could thus be snubbed, til the queen of the rump kingdom of Samaria arranged a meeting with the governor of Megiddo.

- by Philippe Guillaume
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- Viticulture, Megiddo, Inalienable Possession, Jezreel Valley

Se describen las restricciones fonológicas que afectan los sufijos de posesión en guajiro o wayuunaiki, una lengua arahuaca hablada por unas 500.000 personas en Venezuela y Colombia. En esta familia, los nombres se clasifican en inalienables, alienables, y no poseíbles, aunque las lenguas particulares difieren en la extensión de estas clases y en particularidades morfológicas. El poseedor se expresa mediante prefijos de persona-número. Sin embargo, los nombres inalienables sólo necesitan tal prefijo para indicar la posesión nominal, mientras que los nombres alienables requieren además de diversos sufijos de posesión, cuya distribución siempre ha sido problemática en estas lenguas, incluyendo el guajiro. Para examinar sistemáticamente la distribución de los sufijos posesivos y determinar si existe alguna restricción, se elaboró una base de datos computarizada formada por 450 nombres alienables en forma poseída, obtenidos de fuentes escritas y por elicitación, la cual fue enriquecida con información sobre peso silábico final, número de sílabas, semántica, y aceptabilidad de formas alternas. Se verificaron varias hipótesis sobre restricciones de co-ocurrencia de tema y sufijo documentadas para otras lenguas de la familia. Entre los resultados obtenidos destacan: el sufijo –se no es significativamente el más frecuente y productivo, los nombres de artefactos no seleccionan un único sufijo, los nombres de seres animados no seleccionan un único sufijo, los préstamos no seleccionan un único sufijo –se, el modo de relación con el poseedor quizás condiciona la selección del sufijo, el número de sílabas no determina la elección del sufijo, la presencia de una sílaba final pesada en el tema nominal determina casi categóricamente la selección del –se. Sin embargo, la haplología condiciona negativamente la selección del sufijo.

- by José Álvarez
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- Indigenous Languages, Wayuunaiki, Inalienable Possession, Arawakan Languages

Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum, and has only one class of alienables. The Japanese language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inali...

- by Johanna Nichols
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- History, Languages and Linguistics, Language Documentation, Syntax

This article mainly explores the usage of two attributive possessive constructions that are traditionally labeled the “Direct Genitive” and “Indirect Genitive” (in both cases, the notion “genitive” refers not to a morphological case but to an attributive possessive function). The former is a productive type of noun compound construction, the later is comparable to the English of-construction. The texts investigated are written in Égyptien de tradition, i.e., in an artificial emulation of “ancient” language in the later 2nd and 1st millennia BCE. Among other things, the article explores constructional as well as semantic influences on the choice of one or the other construction in the Book of Caverns (13th century BCE): (i) influences of constructional complexity of the two related nouns/noun phrases, (ii) the animacy of possessors, and (iii) the alienability of the possessive relation. In the course of this, the statistical impact of cases of “agentive possesseds” like, e.g., ‘ruler of the netherworld’ and “possessing possesseds” like, e.g., ‘possessor of a bier,’ is discussed, i.e., the impact of cases in which the possessed “controls” or possesses the possessor. Finally (iv), the attested “genitive” meanings are mapped onto a semantic map of possessive relations. The quantitative observations made are interpreted as the result of the application of a simple translation rule by which the ancient authors transformed genitive constructions of their contemporary language varieties into genitive constructions of Égyptien de tradition. This may also explain the fact that some patterns found are not perfectly in line with general typological expectations. Three miscellaneous sections deal with (i) a case of passive possession, (ii) cases of genitive constructions in which the analyses of the grammatical structure and the indications of the semantic structure via “phrase classifiers” do not go together, and (iii) a possessive construction that exhibits a curious hybrid of Earlier Egyptian grammar and Late Egyptian spelling habits.

Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum and has only one class of alienables. The language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inalienable into two different phenomena: argument structure (with types based on possessibility: optionally possessible, obligatorily possessed, and non-possessible) and valence (alienable, inalienable classes). Valence-changing operations are derived alienability and derived inalienability. Our survey classifies the possessive systems of languages in these terms.

- by Anna Bugaeva and +1
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- Languages and Linguistics, Language Documentation, Syntax, Asia Pacific Region

In 2010 and 2011, female students at my field site in southern Trinidad experienced ‘mass possessions’ that closed down the secondary school. While Pentecostal-charismatic Christians figured African traditions (particularly ‘Obeah’) as atavisms that caused the events, observers also blamed the ‘possessions’ on salient markers of a twenty-first-century modernity – particularly the Internet, ‘science’, citizen insecurity, and illicit transnational networks. I argue that this seeming temporal disjuncture in causal narratives points towards some common problems with sovereignty that have marked representations of both African religions of ‘possession’ and (neo)Liberal politics. African spirit manifestation religions have often been characterised by the trope of slavery, as a relation of non-sovereign possession between spirit and human, while Liberal politics (or born-again Christianity) have ostensibly promoted a contrasting ideal of self-determination and national (or spiritual) sovereignty. While these seemingly opposed representations show how ‘spirit possession’ has shaped modern ideals of sovereignty through a racialised ‘labour of the negative’, I examine how practitioners of an African religion at my field site questioned these terms of (dis)possession at the school. These practitioners’ conceptions of ‘catching power’ suggest alternatives to both political models of sovereign ‘possession’ and anthropological models of ‘spirit possession’. I close by arguing that African religious practices of ‘catching power’ can provide a critical alternative to these racialised and gendered dynamics of ‘possession’, modifying the conceptual and geographic province of Foucault’s critique of Western political theories of sovereignty.

In this article, I explore the symbolic relationship between " house " and " temple " architecture in northern Mesopotamian site of Tepe Gawra during the late Chalcolithic period. Through a diachronic and comparative study of house and temple architecture and use of space, I illustrate how standardized temple architecture appropriated and further developed the symbolism already present in the structure of the houses. I argue that temples symbolically represent houses as microcosm of the larger cosmological principles, and the social order. The analysis of ritual-architectural elements within the houses suggest that access to ritual knowledge, ancestor veneration and possession of inalienable items played an important role as the basis for social differences at Tepe Gawra.

Only now, twenty years after the Soviet collapse, are we seeing a new wave of serious academic study of the Soviet system during the post-Stalin years. Archival research and oral history of the period have not produced any startling revelations that have overturned our previous understanding of how the system worked. However, new work is giving us a deeper appreciation for the complex and contradictory patterns of Soviet life beneath and behind the apparent simplicity of the Soviet model-a simplicity that was encouraged both by official Soviet propaganda and by much of Western Sovietology.

I offer consequentialist and deontological arguments for a competitive market in human organs, from live as well as dead donors. I consider the objections that a market in organs will frustrate altruism, coerce the desperate, expose under-informed agents to unacceptable risks, exacerbate inequality, degrade those who participate in it, involve a kind of slavery, impose invidious costs, and impair third-party choice sets. I show that each of these objections is without merit and that, in consequence, the opposition to markets in organs is an untenable endorsement of death, suffering and the suppression of freedom.

- by Danny Frederick
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- Business Ethics, Economics, Philosophy, Political Philosophy

Guéron (1985), Vergnaud and Zubizarreta (1992) propose a set of syntactic constraints to account for the distribution of the French inalienable possession construction. Landau (1999) contra Guéron, claims and that the dative possessor in IPCs is generated within the DP denoting the possessee, subsequently moving out of its host. However, none of these proposals covers the full range of empirical data for French. In some contexts, subject to severe lexical constraints on the verb, a full dative noun phrase is legitimate, as in (2). Cliticization, a syntactic process, voids a number of semantic constraints on French full-NP IPCs, though not all of them. Therefore, the semantic content of the verb constrains clitic movement, a result which could not be derived in a reductionist theory of theta-role assignment in bare phrase structure. Such theories claim that syntactic movement is not semantically constrained; yet French clitic IPCs show that this assumption is untenable..

- by Fabrice NICOL
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- Syntax, Cognitive Lexical Semantics, Generative grammar, Inalienable Possession

This study investigates the marking of S, A, and P arguments in (unmarked) syntactic nominalizations of 28 Central-Eastern Oceanic languages with possessive systems that formally distinguish alienable from inalienable possession. First, we consider differential possessive marking of arguments. We find that in the majority of sample languages agents (A and/or Sa arguments) can take inalienable marking. This pattern contradicts a standardly invoked account of differential possessive marking, based on the semantic factor of control, which holds that agents take alienable marking. Instead, we account for the distribution of inalienable possessive marking in terms of a hierarchy of argument types. This hierarchy is motivated by a relative rather than an absolute effect of control, in interaction with transitivity. Moreover, a number of additional factors may co-determine the choice of possessive agent marking. Second, we address the distribution and alignment of possessive as opposed to sentential argument marking in nominalizations. We compare our findings with the world-wide typology of argument marking in nominalizations, and with main clause alignment patterns. We find that S and A arguments may take possessive marking independently of alignment in main clauses of individual languages. We attribute this finding to the referential properties of shared between agents and prototypical possessors.

- by Marlou van Rijn
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- Oceanic languages, Alignment, Nominalization, Inalienable Possession

Two external possessor constructions occur in ancient Indo-European languages: the dative external possessor construction, and the double case construction. They both indicate adnominal possession by means of syntactically independent NPs, and basically refer to inalienable possession. In the paper, I analyze the two constructions, describe their meaning and their syntactic properties, and review the comparative evidence for each of them. Neither construction is uniformely attested throughout the Indo-European language family. In addition, the dative external possessor construction seems to be quite unstable over time. Based on the data, I conclude that the former can be reconstructed as an original Proto-Indo-European construction, while the latter must be regarded as a language specific construction, with different properties in the languages in which it occurs.

- by Silvia Luraghi
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- Syntax, Dative, Inalienable Possession

_________________________________________________________________________ S. Olivieri -Standards and variations in the Arabic Literature 175 I. Pepe -La langue des journaux en arabe: une analyse des néologismes d'hier et d'aujourd'hui 183 A. Puglielli -The relation between syntactic structure and text organization: the Somali case 193 A. Roccati -The history of the language of Ancient Egypt revisited 205 H. Satzinger -A lexicon of Egyptian lexical roots (Project) 213 P.C. Schmitz -The phonology and morphology of the Phoenician directive suffix 225 O. Stolbova -Chadic parallels to Semitic roots prime, medial, tertiary waw (on the origin of Chadic labialized velars and postvelars) 233 A. Suzzi Valli -Direct object markers in West-Chadic (Maaka) 241 C. Taine-Cheikh -Les particules d'orientation du berbère. Fonctionnement, sémantisme et origine 247 M.V. Tonietti -Some reflections on Early Semitic in the light of the Ebla Documentation 259 [Quaderni di Vicino Oriente XII (2017), pp. 91-106]

This special issue brings together two seemingly opposed concepts—spirit possession and sovereignty--to ask how possessing spirits, selves, and lands can alter political practice in contemporary worlds. The introduction focuses on the problems of agency raised by the anthropological category of spirit possession and its dynamic of possessor and possessed, arguing that such a dynamic risks misrepresenting the mundane ways that persons live with other-than-human powers that inhabit selves and places. Focusing on sustained practices of living with other than human powers rather than ritual episodes of “spirit possession” yields a more unsettled form of sovereignty than either Western political theory or "spirit possession" has often depicted. By looking at this unsettled sovereignty of possession, the contributors to this volume examine the problems with territorial dominion and self-government in contexts ranging from Tibetan Buddhist “self-possession” and Indo-Surinamese Hindu national belonging to the territorial sovereignty of Andean mountain-beings and the possessing forces of the Internet in Trinidad.

A large amount of typological work points towards the following generalizations (Ultan 1978; Seiler 1983; Haiman 1983; Nichols 1992; Heine 1997; Haspelmath 2008; see also also Karvovskaya and Schoorlemmer 2017, p.291; Myler 2016, pp.50-55 for discussion): (a.) If there is a contrast between alienable and inalienable possession with respect to the presence of mophological structure, alienable possession is always more morphologically marked; and (b.) inalienable possession involves a tighter structural bond between possessee and possessor. An intuitively satisfying account of these facts appeals to selection by roots: inalienable noun roots denote relations and select a complement directly, whereas alienable roots denote simple predicates, thus requiring an additional Poss head to introduce a possession relation.
I argue against a root-selection approach to inalienable possession, using a detailed case study of attributive possession in the Mayan language Tzutujil (Dayley 1985). Tzutujil (like other Mayan languages) provides instructive exceptions to (a.) and (b.), the proper analysis of which motivates the following claims: (i) “relational” noun roots are not, in fact, semantically relational; (ii) instead, inalienable relations are introduced by specific variants of little-n; (iii) in contrast, as on existing accounts, alienable possession relations are introduced by a head Poss, higher in the structure than nP. Claim (i) goes against much existing work (Alexadiou 2003; Karvovskaya & Schoorlemmer 2017; Myler 2016) but supports Adger (2013); claim (ii) implies that at least inalienable possession relations have to be introduced rather lower in the structure than argued in Adger (2013); claim (iii) is not novel (see the works cited earlier in this paragraph and Barker 1995), but I show that my analysis has novel implications for the place of (iii) in understanding the typology of the alienable vs. inalienable contrast cross-linguistically.

- by Neil Myler
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- Argument Structure, Roots, Inalienable Possession, Possessive constructions
- by Paul Kockelman
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- Cognitive Psychology, Self and Identity, Economic Anthropology, The Self

"In recent years, heritage has become a hegemonic idiom helping to legitimize, but also resist, the gentrification and private appropriation of urban space in a global conjuncture dominated by neoliberal policies and voracious real estate pressures. Through the analysis of a conflict around a historical building in a gentrifying neighborhood in Palma (Spain), and drawing on recent contributions analyzing the processual character of cultural heritage as well as on Annette Weiner’s theoretical insights on inalienability, the article explores the economic logic that underpins this hegemonic character of heritage. My analysis shows that the loose articulation of developers, gentrifiers, preservationists, expert discourses, and municipal policies is made possible by and enforces an objectifying definition of heritage as an enclosed, incommensurable sphere. This definition, even if detrimental to individual developers, is consistent with the abstract yet differentiated space the marketization of the area requires. In an urban policy context characterized by progressively weaker regulations, this dominant discourse works as an unlikely arbiter capable of effecting a piecemeal, contingent coordination between the particular and general interests of developers, while diffusing the struggles of those actors who, by connecting heritage to everyday practices and to broader issues of political economy, may challenge those interests altogether."

Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is used in a small village in Ghana of about 1400 inhabitants where a high incidence of hereditary deafness has persisted over many generations. Both deaf and hearing villagers use AdaSL, which is entirely unrelated to Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL), the ASL-based national sign language of Ghana. Compared to the sign languages studied to date, AdaSL has a number of distinctive features that set it apart structurally. These include the absence of entity classifier handshapes in verbs of motion, an unusual system for the expression of size and shape, and idiosyncratic iconicity phenomena, in particular the types of spatial projections allowed (Nyst 2007). The relatively large number of hearing AdaSL signers seems to have caused some of these atypical, language-specific features.

- by Victoria Nyst
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- Akan, Sign Language Linguistics, Language Typology, West Africa Studies

Se describen las restricciones fonologicas que afectan los sufijos de posesion en guajiro o wayuunaiki, una lengua arahuaca hablada por unas 350.000 personas en Venezuela y Colombia. En esta familia, los nombres se clasifican en inalienables, alienables, y no poseibles, aunque las lenguas particulares difieren en la extension de estas clases y en par ticularidades morfologicas. El poseedor se expresa mediante prefijos de persona-numero. Sin embargo, los nombres inalienables solo necesitan tal prefijo para indicar la posesion nominal, mientras que los nombres alienables requieren ademas de diversos sufijos de posesion, cuya distri bucion siempre ha sido problematica en estas lenguas, incluyendo el guajiro. En un trabajo reciente (Alvarez & Socorro 2002), se plantea que en baniva, otra lengua arahuaca, opera una restriccion que impide que nombres terminados en CiV tomen sufijos posesivos con consonantes iniciales identicas -Cie, claramente una variedad del fenomeno de haplo logia morf...

- by José Álvarez
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- Philosophy, Indigenous Languages, Wayuunaiki, Inalienable Possession

In this introduction, we aim to demystify the concept of wealth, too entangled in financial discourses, which have generally reduced it to ‘accumulated assets’. This is at odds with the intricate cultural history of wealth as a concept, as well as with abundant anthropological accounts, instead defining wealth as a question of reproduction, relational flows and life vitality. When we view wealth as firstly a product of relational capacities, we begin to understand the processes wherein it is constantly being pulled at from forces that demand appropriation, be that finance, community or state. We therefore outline wealth as a triangular phenomenon between capital, the commons, and power. Careful at the dynamics between such forces, we structure our analysis around the paradoxical social processes where wealth, originating in every day relationships and human reproduction, is continually exposed to claims – such as market alienation, but also ‘commoning’, or governmental state control.

American languages distinguish generally between inalienable and alienable possession (always or contextually), by means of different marks (juxtaposition, affixation, possessive pronouns, noun incorporation, possessor ascension...). In these language families, cognitive mappings can give account of how possession can be expressed by metaphoric extensions of other semantic relations, such as transitive or locative links. However, we can find also cases that seem to fit into the inverse mechanism: possession as a source domain (pseudo-possession), mapped onto other conceptual spheres, including transitive and locative relations (though bi-directional transfers would contradict the asymmetric conceptual path assumed by cognitive grammar postulates).

Dance in the Republic of Guinea is an object of cultural transmission that magnifies the inherent contingency of social reproduction and the plasticity of the heirloom. Long connected to the vicissitudes of Guinean politics, dance was violently appropriated by the postindependence socialist state (1958–84) as a tool of nation building. In postsocialist Guinea, where the nation-state has relinquished its stake in the performing arts, young practitioners create new improvisational forms that emblematize shifting models of ideal personhood. Novel dance forms incite tension about intergenerational trust and cultural inheritance in a social context in which neither the heirloom nor the cultural identity it signals remains stable

This essay analyses the grammatical category of inalienable possession by examining the interaction of morphosyntatic forms, semantic features, pragmatic functions, and discourse frequencies. Using data from Q’eqchi’-Maya, it is argued that
inalienable possession may be motivated relative to two dimensions: (1) whatever any person is strongly presumed to possess (identifiability); (2) whatever such personal possessions are referred to frequently (relevance). In regards to frequency, inalienable possessions are compared with possessed NPs, and possessed NPs are compared with all NPs, in regards to grammatical relation, information status, animacy rank, and semantic role. In regards to identifiability, it is argued that inalienable possessions are like deictics and prepositions in that they guide the addressee’s identification of a referent by encoding that referent’s relation to a ground; and inalienable possessions are different from deictics and prepositions in that the ground is a person and the referents are its parts or relations.

- by Paul Kockelman
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- Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Psychology, Ontology, Languages and Linguistics

La Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) fue una institución educativa destinada a formar a los suboficiales de la Armada Argentina. Existe un grupo de ex alumnos de dicha escuela de diversas generaciones que a través de un acto voluntario guarda restos, pedazos, lajas, banderas o cualquier retazo material del pasado de la ESMA. En algunos casos los exhiben colectivamente y en otros los guardan en sus casas. Fueron los ex alumnos quienes, en octubre del 2013, correspondieron a mi interés de conocer la historia de la ESMA conduciéndome al sótano del Círculo de Oficiales de Mar donde habían curado un “museo” exclusivo para personal de la Armada y donde narran la historia de la institución educativa a través de la exhibición de objetos. El objetivo de este trabajo es compartir algunas reflexiones acerca de esos objetos bajo la lupa de la propuesta conceptual de la antropóloga estadounidense Annette Weiner sobre el tipo de posesiones que se intentan mantener por fuera del intercambio, a las que llama “inalienables” (1992).

Il possesso detiene rilevanza antropologica, socio-economica e culturale, e si esprime linguisticamente nelle strutture grammaticali, mostrando una complessa interazione tra semantica e morfosintassi, prestandosi a introdurre e approfondire riflessioni più generali sul rapporto tra livello cognitivo e strutture linguistiche. Proprio come nel caso delle lingue storico-naturali, più largamente studiate in questa prospettiva, anche le lingue pianificate codificano in maniera diversificata le strutture per esprimere il possesso. Per strutturare la ricerca ho scelto di analizzare distintamente ogni lingua pianificata selezionandone le proprietà specifiche delle espressioni possessive, per poi inserirle in strutture teoriche adeguate, esplicandone meglio il funzionamento. Attraverso un’analisi tipologica, ho vagliato le variazioni sintattiche del possesso, tenendo conto della sempre presente intersecazione in questi processi della semantica. Quello che ho potuto notare dalla mia analisi, è che ogni lingua pianificata ha la possibilità di creare strutture del possesso teoricamente infinite, eppure, ciò non avviene, permettendo di constatare che esistono dei limiti non solo nell’apprendimento del linguaggio, ma anche nella creazione di esso. Rispetto, quindi, alla possibilità che la relatività linguistica sia riscontrabile attraverso le lingue pianificate, mi sento di collocarmi in una visione centrale: da un punto di vista semantico-cognitivo, i “tipi” di possesso immaginabili possono essere molto differenti, in quanto la sensibilità di che cosa si possa possedere, e in che misura, è caratterizzata culturalmente (e in questo senso l’ipotesi Sapir-Whorf può dirsi confermata); da un punto di vista sintattico, riferendomi dunque ai modelli del WALS, la questione del possesso è incastonata in questa grammatica in qualche modo biologicamente guidata, che non può dunque allontanarsi dagli schemi delle lingue umane storico-naturali.

- by Veronica Repetti
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- Languages and Linguistics, Linguistics, Possession, Inalienable Possession

In this paper we propose a syntactic analysis of dative DPs in ditransitive constructions in Russian, answering three questions: (I) what semantic roles the indirect object realizes; (II) how it is syntactically ordered with respect to the direct object realizing the theme argument, and (III) how the first two issues are related to the morphological encoding of the indirect object, as a PP or as a morphologically case-marked DP. Addressing first question (II) we show that two kinds of syntactic hierarchies between the two internal arguments of a ditransitive configuration coexist, and that there are two sorts of datives that are hierarchically higher than the theme: those that can reconstruct and those that cannot. We then establish an interpretative correlation between these two types of dative DP, showing that the former is locational and the latter is not, providing the answer to question (I) and elucidating what underlies the morphological similarity, question (III). The interpretative and syntactic differences between scrambled and base generated high datives lead us to claim that in Russian, dative ditransitives have two distinct underlying structures that are not derivationally related. A scalar approach to event structure enables us to pinpoint the interpretative correlate of each type of dative (locational vs. non-locational) and provides a conceptual argument in favor of a non-synonymy non-derivational approach we pursue here: a path scale encoding event schema cannot be transformed into a different scale based event schema due to movement of the dative DP. Finally, the scalar approach allows us to identify the lexical correlates of a possessive interpretation of the high dative vs. a more beneficiary-like interpretation. Extent scales allow the former whereas property and path scales facilitate the other.

- by Nora Boneh
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- Russian, Syntax, Russian Language, Morphology and Syntax
- by despina catapoti
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- Hybridity, Land management, Land tenure, Post-Colonialism

[Paper in Italian]
Considerations about the morpho-syntax of kinship terms in Eblaite, which closely resembles that of kinship terms in Berber since they always bear a reference to the first person, even when no possessive morpheme appears. This feature might trace back to ancient Afroasiatic times or be simply due to universal trends concerning "inalienable possession".

Oceanic languages typically make a grammatical contrast between expressions of alienable and inalienable possession. Moreover, further distinctions are made in the alienable category but not in the inalienable category. The present research tests the hypothesis that there is a good motivation for such a development in the former case. As English does not have a grammaticalized distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, it provides a good testing ground. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants were asked to write down the first interpretation that came to mind for possessive phrases, some of which contained inherently relational possessums, while o thers contained possessums that are not inherently relational. Phrases with non-relational possessums elicited a broader range of interpretations and a lower consistency of a given interpretation across possessor modifiers than those with relational possessums. Study 2 demonstrated that users assign a default interpretation to a possessive phrase containing a relational possessum even when another reading is plausible. Study 3, a corpus-based analysis of possessive phrase use, showed that phrases with relational possessums have a narrower range of interpretations than those with other possessums. Taken together, the findings strongly suggest that grammatical distinctions between different types of alienable possession are motivated.

In this paper we discuss the alienability splits in two Mainland Scandinavian languages, Swedish and Danish, in a diachronic context. Although it is not universally acknowledged that such splits exist in modern Scandinavian languages, many nouns typically included in inalienable structures such as kinship terms, body part nouns and nouns describing culturally important items show different behaviour from those considered alienable. The differences involve the use of (reflexive) possessive pronouns vs. the definite article, which differentiates the Scandinavian languages from e.g. English. As the definite article is a relatively new arrival in the Scandinavian languages, we look at when the modern pattern could have evolved by a close examination of possessive structures with potential inalienables in Old Swedish and Old Danish. Our results reveal that to begin with, inalienables are usually bare nouns and come to be marked with the definite article in the course of its grammaticalization.

- by Alicja Piotrowska and +1
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- Diachronic Linguistics (Or Historical Linguistics), Swedish Language, Inalienable Possession, Danish Language
- by Gerd Hentschel and +1
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- Slavic Languages, Functional Morphology, Russian Language, Prepositions

This paper aims to determine the connection between inalienable possessions and whole-body relics in contemporary Southern Chinese Buddhism. Within this context, inalienable possessions are understood as things that are integral to a person’s identity, such as body parts, kinship roles, and names. Their close relation to personhood has already been researched by Marcel Mauss, Annette Weiner, Maurice Gondelier and Paul Kockelmann in different cultural settings. Following the ideas of the latter, the identity of a person changes on an ontological level through a shift of their inalienable possessions. By examining the transformation into a whole-body relic of a Chinese monk in 2016, the paper demonstrates this material, social, and semiotic process of “thingication,” a term coined by Kockelmann, within Chinese Buddhism.

- by Julia Galimova
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- Chinese Buddhism, Personhood, Relics (Religion), Inalienable Possession

A group of Late Minoan signet rings fashioned in precious metals and engraved with complex and evocative iconographic schemes appears to depict ‘nature’ or ‘rural’ cults enacted at extra-urban sanctuaries, and may have functioned as inalienable possessions implicated in the expression and maintenance of elite identities during the Aegean Bronze Age. The images on the ring bezels depict human figures in association with epiphanic figures situated in settings characterised by the presence of trees and stones, columnar shrines, stepped altars, openwork platforms, tripartite shrines and sanctuary walls, perhaps involving occasional rites and the erection and dismantling of temporary cult structures which can themselves be viewed as architectonic replications of rural cult sites and natural forms. Just as the fabric of these rings and the artistry and technical skill of their production were of restricted accessibility and controlled distribution, we may infer that so, too, the rites, places and activities recorded on these rings were socially restricted. Possession of these distinctive and desirable objects of economic, cultural and symbolic value may have signified access to, involvement in and mastery over such rituals, the special status of the owner delineated and broadcast through the circulating media of clay sealings, advertising their special relationship with forces and places within nature. Over time the personal and cultural memory, knowledge and associations accumulated within these rings may form histories or biographies of the rings themselves, implicating the identities of their past and present owners, and of the wider community. In this way, they can be understood as inalienable possessions, objects invested with authority and authenticity that in turn authenticate the status of their owners. These enduring symbols draw the past into the present, instantiating cultural and cosmological ideals which classify and objectify social relations through referencing the past. Thus these rings function as mnemonic devices, palimpsests of memory, association and affect which store and transmit information about spatially and temporally disbursed places, people and events, memorialising and broadcasting elite association with the (super)natural world and forming part of the material affordances of the world of things which recursively produce, reiterate and transform identities through ecologies of practice: the past mediated in the present through memory materialised in objects.

La circulation des oeuvres d'art, spécialement les restitutions, montre que la règle d’inaliénabilité des collections publiques n’a pas de caractère absolu et qu’elle peut être au contraire levée, suivant les circonstances. En dépassant le cas exclusivement national, il est possible de dresser une typologie des rapports entre restitution et inaliénabilité des objets appartenant aux collections publiques. C'est ce que propose cette étude à travers trois cas de figure identifiables : celui où l’inaliénabilité est invoquée comme source de protection/préservation du patrimoine culturel, celui où l’inaliénabilité absente précipite la dispersion des patrimoines culturels, celui enfin où l’inaliénabilité est volontairement disqualifiée.

This paper deals with Spanish adjective-headed compounds (pelirrojo), whose main properties are systematically compared with those of their English counterparts (red-haired). I provide a distinction based on the grammatical category of the non-head projections peli and red and on their relative complexity to capture the relevant differences. Additionally, I focus on the most noticed feature of Spanish pelirrojo compounds, which is the fact that they only codify inalienable possession relationships. I argue that the existence of an inalienable-only compound pattern shows that Spanish pelirrojo compounds contain a relational head which establishes an inalienable possession relationship between a possessee located inside the compound (pelo 'hair'), and a possessor located outside it (e.g., Juan in Juan es pelirrojo. 'John is red-haired.'). The same kind of relational structure is not identifiable inside English parallel structures or other Spanish compound patterns.

- by Bárbara Marqueta
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- Morphology and Syntax, Compounding, Inalienable Possession

The reduction of the length of chronological phases is still a major issue in the current chronological debate in early medieval archaeology on the continent. Short phases imply a rapid and steady change of grave goods assemblages and are thought to support the assumption that the dead were buried with their inalienable personal possessions. This article explores the premises that relate to short phases and the chronological method of seriation, which excludes social variables as essential components of the dating process. Various modes of object exchange and transmission are therefore the next discussion in this article. It is suggested that the wide variety of movables from graves were more often subject to prolonged circulation than generally assumed. The discussion of exchange and transmission shows that the chronological debate can be extended with a theoretical component that reflects on the role of the pre-burial life of objects which contributes to the understanding of chronological results.

- by Mirjam Kars
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- Merovingian period, Inalienable Possession, Merovingian Archaeology, Dating Methods

El propósito de este trabajo es iniciar una exploración sistemática de la expresión de la posesión en frases nominales en kari’ña con el fin de establecer criterios para su adecuada representación lexicográfica en una revisión del "Diccionario básico del idioma cariña", de Jorge Mosonyi, obra elaborada en 1978, pero publicada posteriormente en 2002. Se pretende con ello elaborar una nueva versión enriquecida y más amigable de este diccionario. En kari’ña, lengua caribe hablada por unas 11.000 personas en los estados Anzoátegui, Bolívar, Monagas y Sucre de Venezuela, la frase posesiva se construye con el orden POSEEDOR + POSEÍDO, con el nominal poseído recibiendo una marca de posesión (“head marking”), siendo el sufijo -rü la marca más frecuente: Ojshe añña-rü ‘mano de José’, kari’ña noono-rü ‘tierra de indígenas’. Si el poseedor no se expresa por un nombre, aparecen prefijos pronominales que pueden sufrir procesos fonológicos que alteren grandemente su constitución: amaññarü ‘tu conuco’ /a-mañña-rü/, pero müaññarü /ü-mañña-rü/ ‘mi conuco’, miaññarü /i-mañña-rü/ ‘su conuco’. Al no recibir marcas, el nominal poseedor es invariable, pero el nominal poseído exhibe cierto grado de variación. Con el objetivo de describir sistemáticamente dicha variación, se elaboró una base de datos computarizada para comparar la forma independiente (FI) con la forma poseída (FP). Dicha comparación evidenció la existencia de 24 tipos de relación entre FI y FP. Tan grande abundancia es el resultado de la operación de procesos morfológicos alterados por la operación de procesos fonológicos de epéntesis de /r/, haplología, armonía vocálica y coalescencia. Finalmente, se discute cómo registrar las formas posesivas en un diccionario de la lengua.

The paper aims to discusses two types of genitive constructions of Sumerian: the anticipatory genitive and the lexical external possession construction. In both constructions the possessor occupies a position before the head of the NP which is a marked position of the possessor in Sumerian. They differ, however, in the case-marking of the possessor. In the anticipa- tory genitive construction (henceforth, AGC), the possessor is case-marked with the genitive, while in the lexical external possession construction (henceforth, EPC), the possessor is case-marked with a case governed by the predicate. It will be argued that in both of them the possessor is left-dislocated to topicalize a cognitively accessible but inactive participant. The difference in their case-marker will be connected with a difference in the marking of internal and external possessors in Sumerian.

- by Gábor Zólyomi
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- Languages and Linguistics, Contact Linguistics, Assyriology, Pragmatics

Alutor (a Paleosiberian language from the Chukchi-Kamchatkan family) has two different forms marking the proprietive: forms with the suffix -l (the 'L-proprietive') and forms with the circumfix a-…-lin(a) (the 'Gproprietive'). In this paper, I will describe the morphosyntactic and semantic features of possessee nouns using each form and demonstrate that the L-proprietive is preferred when there is a particularly close semantic relationship between the possessor and possessee, while the G-proprietive, in contrast, is used when a speaker is interested in the (non-) existence of a possessee, and often expresses temporal possession.

- by Yukari Nagayama
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- Languages and Linguistics, Syntax, Morphology, Linguistics

We propose that the restrictive/non restrictive distinction found in relative clauses corresponds to the Inalienable vs Alienable distinction of the Nominal Possessive constructions. We propose to extend this distinction to adjectives... more

We propose that the restrictive/non restrictive distinction found in relative clauses corresponds to the Inalienable vs Alienable distinction of the Nominal Possessive constructions.
We propose to extend this distinction to adjectives suggesting that is not construction specific.

- by José Bonneau and +2
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- Relative Clauses, Inalienable Possession, Long Distance Reflexive, Binding Theory

In Jarawara, a language of the Arawá family of southwestern Amazonia, there is
a particular use of the inalienably possessed noun ihi/ehene 'result of' which might possibly be analyzed as an impersonal construction. The features of the phenomenon are described, including the various syntactic contexts in which it occurs. Ultimately it is determined that it is probably not an impersonal construction, at least as far as the verb is concerned, although the possessed noun does permit a certain amount of ambiguity. The expression ihi/ehene iti 'kill some person(s) or animal(s)' is also examined, and assimilated to the more general analysis of the phenomenon with
ihi/ehene.
In the process of analyzing these constructions, it is proposed that ihi/ehene is one of a set of three inalienably possessed nouns that can also function as postpositions, the other members of the set being tabiyo 'lack of' and namoni 'bringing a report of'. As postpositions, these words mark a phrase as an adjunct. In this use, but not in their use as possessed nouns, these three words have a function similar to that of prepositions in English. In the constructions which are the main focus of the paper, though, ihi/ehene is not a postposition but a possessed noun, and the phrases it occurs in are arguments such as subjects and objects, not adjuncts. This approach is somewhat different than that of Dixon (2004), who, while recognizing a dual function of ihi/ehene, does not recognize that tabiyo and namoni are in the same class.

I examine the use of a special genitive construction to express inalienable possession in the Greek New Testament, and the strategies to translate it in the Latin Vulgate. The survey reveals a clash between various faithfulness criteria in translation, and presents the different reactions of the Latin translator, showing how discrepancies arise in a domain where the grammatical resources of the two languages sharply differ.