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In:Possession in Languages of Europe and North and Central Asia:
Edited by Lars Johanson, Lidia Federica Mazzitelli and Irina Nevskaya
[Studies in Language Companion Series 206] 2019
► pp. 7–26

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Expressing ‘possession’

Motivations, meanings, and forms

 | James Cook University , Australia
Published online: 5 March 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.206.02aik
Abstract
Competing motivations are often at work in the choice of form and meaning of possessive and associative noun phrases. The article offers a broad typological review of the ways of expressing possession at the NP-internal level. In particular, it discusses how iconicity and economic motivations interact in determining the shape of NP-internal possessive expressions, also addressing the topics of how socio-cultural factors affect the grammar of possession and how societal changes are reflected in language variation.
Article outline
  • 1.Possession, ownership, and association
  • 2.Forms and meanings in possessive constructions: Iconic and economic motivation
    • 2.1Iconic motivation in expressing possession: Some examples
    • 2.2Iconic motivation and the specificity of a noun referent
    • 2.3Economic motivation in possessive constructions
    • 2.4The special status of speech act participants
    • 2.5Non-possessive meanings in possessive constructions
  • 3.How the expression of possession reflects societal practices
  • 4.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (2)

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Berg, Thomas
2022. The iconicity of possessive-affix position in Malayo-Polynesian. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 9:1 ► pp. 31 ff. DOI logo
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
2021. Removing the Owner: Non‐Specified Possessor Marking in Arawak Languages*. Studia Linguistica 75:2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

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