Possessive constructions in the world's languages: On the peaceful (and fruitful) coexistence of language analysis and comparison

1 1 “La possession et les expressions”, Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, 2025 Dec 3-5 Possessive constructions in the world’s languages: On the peaceful (and fruitful) coexistence of language analysis and comparison MARTIN HASPELMATH Max Planck Institut for Evolutionary Anthropology 1. Conceptual basics • two construction types (§1.1) • four explanatory approaches (§1.2) • two research goals (§1.3) 1.1. Two construction types: adnominal and predicative possessive constructions • examples of adnominal possessive constructions (adpossessive constructions) (1) English a. the girl’s bag, the colors of the desert b. the boy’s mother, the root of the tree (2) Maltese (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1996: 245) a. is-siġġu ta’ Pietru the-chair of Peter ‘Peter’s chair’ b. bin is-sultan son the-king ‘the king’s son’ • examples of predicative possessive constructions (predpossessive constructions) (3) Spanish a. Tenemos do casas. ‘We have two houses.’ b. Tenemos hambre. ‘We are hungry.’ (Lit. ‘We have hunger.’) (4) Finnish Peka-lla on auto. Pekka-ADESS is car.SG.NOM ‘Pekka has a car.’ (Lit. ‘A car is at Pekka’; Creissels 2013: 468) 2 2 1.2. Four explanatory approaches Linguists have tried to explain grammatical phenomena in a variety of ways. Here I distinguish four broad types: Linguists have often been ideological about their approaches, and they have used terms such as “structuralism”, “functionalism”, “nativism”, “biolinguistics”, “usagebased linguistics”, “cognitive linguistics”. Some of these even have conference series and journalis devoted to them. But ideally, we would combine the strengths of all of these approaches, or – if they are based on incompatible assumptions – try to find out which assumptions are warranted. To a large extent, the differences correspond to different communities of linguists, and this makes it hard to compare or combine the approaches (but nevertheless, I sometimes try it; see also Haspelmath 2024). 1.3. Two research goals in studying grammars Linguists are often interested in two different things at the same time: – analyzing particular languages (particular linguistics) – understanding Human Language (in general) (general linguistics) Conceptually, these two research goals are somewhat independent of each other, and they should not be conflated. In the domain of grammar, general linguistics requires a big-picture view – we need to take into account worldwide trends: 3 3 Language-particular patterns are often very idiosyncratic, e.g. – English uses a special construction with postnominal possessor when the possessed nominal is indefinite Tom’s book vs. a book of Tom’s (*a Tom’s book) German also uses a special construction, but without the genitive -s: Toms Buch vs. ein Buch von Tom (*ein Toms Buch, *ein Buch von Toms) Any analysis of English that shows why English does not allow *a book of Tom does not extend to German – so it is unlikely to be relevant to general linguistics. – in the domain of “predicative possession”, we find that it sometimes extended to sensations and emotions, but in idiosyncratic ways, e.g. Spanish French English German tengo hambre j’ai faim (I am hungry) ich habe Hunger tengo sed j’ai soif (I am thirsty) ich habe Durst tengo frío j’ai froid (I am cold) (ich friere) tengo miedo j’ai peur (I am afraid)/I have fear ich habe Angst tengo sueño j’ai sommeil (I feel sleepy) (ich bin müde) tengo prisa (je sui pressée) (I am in a hurry) ich habe es eilig tengo picazón j’ai une démangeaison I have an itch (mir juckt es) Any analysis of Spanish that shows why tener has an abstract meaning extending to sensations and emotions does not extend even to French – so it is unlikely to be relevant to general linguistics. General linguistics is harder than many people think; in Haspelmath (2021), I formulated the paradox: The general linguistics paradox: We want to explore and understand the nature of Human Language, but what we can observe directly is particular languages. 4 4 I noted that there are three ways in which the study of a particular language can contribute to general linguistics: (i) nonconventional aspects of Human Language e.g. psycholinguistic measurements, slips of the tongue (ii) worldwide language comparison e.g. Greenberg (1963), World Atlas of Language Structures (iii) a natural-kinds programme for the building blocks of languages (i.e. the proposal that the ingredients of grammars are innate) D’Alessandro (2019: 10) observes that if there are such innate building blocks, then “the constraints that are discovered about one language could be used to describe a different language. This, I think, is the key difference between generative grammar and other linguistic enterprises, such as typology: while typologists assume that, say, the existence of wh-movement in English cannot tell us anything about Chinese, generativists assume that this isn’t the case.” But it cannot be taken for granted that the ingredients of grammars are innate, so it is important to distinguish, at least in principle, between two goals: – analyzing particular languages (particular linguistics, p-linguistics) – understanding Human Language (in general) (general linguistics, g-linguistics) 2. Adpossessive constructions: Three possible universals §2.1. word order §2.2. head-marking vs. dependent-marking §2.3. asymmetric alienable/inalienable coding 2.1. The order of adpossessor and noun correlates with the order of object and verb (Dryer 1992) 5 5 The order of adpossessor correlates even more clearly with the order of adposition and noun (as already noted by Greenberg 1963, Universal 2) 6 6 The importance of the order of adpossessor and noun was actually observed a long time ago, by Schmidt (1926) 2.2. If a language is dependent-marking at clause-level, it is also dependent-marking in adpossessive constructions (cf. Nichols 1986; 1992) (5) Tagalog (Filipino) a. Hinabol nang+aso ang+pusa. chased ERG+dog ABS+cat ‘The dog chased the cat.’ b. aso nang+babae dog gen+girl ‘the girl’s dog’ (6) Yucatec Maya a. T-u=nes-ah-Ø hun-túul pàal. PFV-3SG.ERG=gnaw-CMPL-3SG.ABS one-CLF child ‘The cockroach bit a child.’ (Bohnemeyer et al. 2016: 177) b. u=k’àaba’ le xch’up-pàal-a’ 3SG.POSS=name the woman-child-DEM1 ‘this girl’s name’ (Lehmann 2002: 42) 7 7 2.3. If a language has an asymmetric alienability split, alienable nouns require more coding elements (Haspelmath 2017) alienability split: different constructions for inalienable nouns (kinship and body-part terms) and alienable nouns (others) (7) Abun (Berry & Berry 1999: 77-82) a. alienable possession ji bi nggwe I GEN garden ‘my garden’ b. inalienable possession ji syim I arm ‘my arm’ 8 8 (8) Jeli (Mande; Tröbs 1998: 167-169) a. Soma ra monbilo (*Soma monbilo) Soma of car ‘Soma’s car’ b. Soma bulo-ni (*Soma ra bulo-ni) Soma arm-PL ‘Soma’s arms’ (9) Lango (Nilotic; Noonan 1992: 156-157) a. gwôkk à lócə " dog of man ‘the man’s dog’ b. wì rwòt head king ‘the king’s head’ (10) Karo (Tupian; Gabas 1999: 148ff.) a. maʔwɨr at kaʔa man of house ‘man’s house’ b. aaro cagá parrot eye ‘parrot’s eye’ (11) Kayardild (Tangkic; Evans 1995: 143, 248) a. dibirdibi-karran(-ju) dulk(-u) Rock.Cod-GEN(-CASE) place(-CASE) ‘Rock Cod’s place’ b. dangkaa thukanda man chin ‘man’s chin’ (12) Mandarin (Sinitic; Li & Thompson 1981: 113, 115) a. tā-de chènshān he-GEN shirt ‘his shirt’ b. tā(-de) māma he(-GEN) mother ‘his mother’ 9 9 Note: alienability splits may also be symmetric: (13) Samoan (Oceanic; Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992: 282-90) a. le naifi a le fafine the knife of the woman ‘the woman’s knife’ b. le uso o le fafine the sister of the woman ‘the woman’s sister’ 3. Predpossessive constructions: Little universality 3.1. A range of diverse strategies (14) transpossessive strategy: Persian دارم زﯾ ﺎ دی ﭘول ﻣن Man pul ziyâde dâram. I much money have. ‘I have a lot of money.’ (15) locpossessive strategy: Finnish Peka-lla on auto. Pekka-ADESS is car.SG.NOM ‘Pekka has a car.’ (Lit. ‘A car is at Pekka’; Creissels 2013: 468) (16) compossessive strategy: Hausa (Abdoulaye 2006: 1122) Bàlki ta-nàa dà kùjèeruu màasu kyâu. Balki 3F.SG-be with chairs having beauty ‘Balki has nice chairs.’ (Lit. ‘Balki is with nice chairs.’) (17) proprietive strategy: a. Greenlandic (Van Geenhoven 1998; Creissels 2020: 7) Angut taana illu-qar-puq. man this house-PROPR-IND.3SG ‘This man has a house.’ (Lit. ‘This man is house-owning.’) b. Yaqui (Estrada-Fernández & Álvarez González 2026: 492) Chu’u-ka =ne. dog-have =1SG.SBJ ‘I have a dog.’ (Lit. ‘I am dog-owning.’) (18) no-marking strategy: Tagalog May pera ang bata. exist money NOM child ‘The child has money.’ 16 16 Even English have is treated as the copula in an existential construction, by means of a transformation: is a-book (at-)Tom → Tom (at-)is a-book (= ‘Tom has a book’) Freeze (1992: 592) concludes: “A large amount of superficial variation was thus reduced to a simple and single Dstructure and a simple movement analysis. … The outcome is a sparse yet comprehensive theory of locative expressions in UG. This is, in sum, the sort of 'least effort' analysis in the best traditions of the theory.” 17 17 That existential and predpossessive constructions are in some sense “based on” locative constructions has long been observed (e.g. Lyons 1967), and diachronically, there is little doubt that these three types of patterns are closely related in many languages. So could it be that Russian has an existential-like possessive construction (u menja byla sestra ((lit.) at me there was a sister’) because of an innate syntactic structure? Yes, this is possible – but only if we assume a massive amount of innateness! Most linguists would think that a process of semantic change (a kind of metaphor) is at play here. How could one tell whether the syntax follows the semantic change, or the semantic change is determined by the syntax? Few linguists seem to have asked this question. 6. The diachronic approach In an important article, Bybee (1988) has claimed that all functional explanations need to have a diachronic dimension: “in language universals, causal factors are linguistic changes that create particular synchronic states, and the existence of massive cross-language similarity in synchronic states implies powerful parallels in linguistic change. ... the validity of a principle as explanatory can only be maintained if it can be shown that the same principle that generalizes over the data also plays a role in the establishment of the conventions described by the generalization” (Bybee 1988: 352) Later she formulates it even more radically: “the true universals of language are the mechanisms of change that propel the constant creation and recreation of grammar” (Bybee 2006: 179-180) For alienability splits, Cristofaro (2023) has recently made a similar argument: She says that functional explanations such as those by Haiman (1983) and Haspelmath (2017) are convincing only if it can be shown that the functional factors actually play a role in the changes leading to the synchronic patterns. “The development of such markers, however, is a result of metonymization processes triggered by the contextual co-occurrence of the source element and the possessive meaning, independently of the assumed optimization principles. The distribution of individual markers across alienable and inalienable possession ultimately reflects the distribution of the source construction, also independently of such principles.” (Cristofaro 2023: 1636) Cristofaro calls her approach “source-oriented”, and the basic idea is that one needs to look at recurrent diachronic sources and paths of change in order to understand synchronic typological patterns. 18 18 However, how well do we understand the “mechanisms of change” (such as metonymization, and changes due to contextual cooccurrence)? It seems to me that language change is poorly understood, and that we understand the outcomes of changes (= the synchronic distributions) better than the changes themselves (which can almost never be observed). However, it may well be that some synchronic universals are best explained by constraints on change (cf. Haspelmath 2019). The alienability universal is probably best explained by an engineering perspective (predictability and efficiency of coding), but the possible coexpression universal may be best explained by the diachronic perspective. 7. Conclusion There are various approaches to understanding languages, which have different potentials, and which have often been considered in isolation from each other. Ideally, linguists would compare them and try to determine what each has to offer. In this presentation, I was not optimistic about the semiotic approach and the generative approach in terms of innate building blocks (natural kinds), but it cannot be excluded that these approaches have something to offer after all. One important point that comes up repeatedly is that language-particular analysis needs to be kept separate from general and universal claims. 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