From topic to subject: Grammatical change in the Amharic possessive construction

Ahland, Michael

doi:10.1075/sl.33.3.06ahl

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 33:3 (2009) ► pp.685–717

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From topic to subject

Grammatical change in the Amharic possessive construction

Michael Ahland

Published online: 23 July 2009

https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.33.3.06ahl

The predicative possessive construction in Amharic exhibits a mismatch in grammatical coding: the possessor receives object marking on the verb while the overt NP exhibits phenomena associated with nominative case in Amharic. This article investigates the mismatch in light of its historical development as attested in archaisms found in proverbs and old Biblical texts, examines both overt and covert syntactic properties of the possessor today, and also considers evidence from other related constructions. The possessive construction developed from the existential construction where the possessor corresponded to a locative/recipient and today shows evidence of developing subject status.

Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Meyer, Ronny

2021. Marlene Guss-Kosicka, Die Verbalsysteme des Amharischen und Tigrinischen: Eine vergleichende Analyse. Linguistique et langues africaines :7 ► pp. 81 ff.

Creissels, Denis

2020. La prédication existentielle et les constructions transpossessives. In La Prédication existentielle dans les langues naturelles : valeurs et repérages, structures et modalités, ► pp. 17 ff.

Creissels, Denis

2023. Existential predication and have-possessive constructions in the languages of the world. In Existential Constructions across Languages [Human Cognitive Processing, 76], ► pp. 34 ff.

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