Two prenominal possessors in West Flemish

This chapter provides an inventory of the syntactic properties of prenominal possessors in West Flemish (WF). WF has two prenominal possessor patterns: a. Valère zenen oto b. Valère sen oto Valère his car Valère se carIn (a) the possessor Valère is doubled by the possessive pronoun zenen, which matches the possessor in person and number and which also agrees in number and gender with the possessum. In (b) the possessive relation is marked by the possessive marker se(n).The chapter compares the two patterns and reveals a number of syntactic differences, among them the following:i. There is no restriction on the number of the possessor in the a-examples; in the b-pattern, the possessor cannot be plural.ii. The doubling construction allows for a non-local possessor; a non-local possessor is unavailable in the sen-possessor.iii. The possessor DP in a sen genitive may be realised as a reciprocal, while that in the doubling construction cannot be a reciprocal.The differences between the two patterns suggest, contrary to claims in the literature for related patterns in Dutch and in German, that the two WF patterns cannot have an identical syntax.