Possessive constructions

Unlike written Hebrew, the analytic form of the possessive pronoun dominates in Modern Hebrew. The cases in which the synthetic form is used are described in this paper from three points of view: lexicosemantic, syntactic and sociolinguistic. The synthetic form is usually chosen with abstract nouns defining periods of time, opinions, feelings, social status and relations, while the analytic form is normally used with concrete nouns, especially names of objects and animals. The two exceptions are names of body parts and names of family relationship, which appear relatively often with synthetic possessive pronouns, especially in the speech of eldery people and Israelies from Yemenite families. Insertedclauses of various kinds, as well as direct address are always used with the synthetic pronoun.

This contribution deals with the linguistic expression of possession in Kukama-Kukamiria and examines potential correlations between possessive semantic relations (Heine 1997, Stassen 2009, Barker 2011) and construction types. Kukama-Kukamiria, a language spoken in the Amazon of Peru, does not have lexical verbs such as ‘have’, ‘belong,’ or a copula to predicate possession. Although the language does not have a dedicated possessive construction, possession can be inferred from several constructions, four of which are the focus of this paper.

This study examines number agreement within the noun phrase in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS), and shows evidence for the existence of a previously undocumented morphosyntactic feature. In PAS, the possessed noun does not necessarily agree in number with the possessor pronoun, yielding the following possibilities: singular concord: su canoa; plural concord: sus canoas; and, number mismatch: sus canoa. The fourth logical possibility, su canoas, has not been attested. A usage-based approach reveals two findings with respect to the innovative construction. First, its distribution is impacted by gender and place. Second, the possessor pronoun has semantic restrictions: its anaphoric referent is highly likely to be not only multiple entities but also human. These results place animacy as a key factor in the emergence of the innovative pattern.

This paper explores the syntax and semantics of the Romanian structure with a dative clitic which has possessive value. Romanian has a very broad use of this configuration, among Romance languages. The choice for the possessive dative construction, over the possessive adjective, is determined by semantic and pragmatic factors. The possibility for a verb which is not subcategorized for a dative argument to receive it is explained as a syntactic phenomenon, following the Construction theory. A typology of the possessive dative structure according to the capacity of doubling is suggested.

Questo libro presenta la lingua tunisina per chi parla l'italiano: grammatica, lessico, strutture linguistiche, modi di dire, dizionario essenziale. I testi sono scritti in trascrizione fonetica usando l'alfabeto italiano, per cui non è richiesta la conoscenza dell'alfabeto arabo. Oltre che il libro è una introduzione alla lingua tunisina per gli italiani che non hanno imparato a scrivere con le lettere arabe, il libro presenta per la prima volta della storia del tunisino le regole precise per la transcrizione degli numeri et degli aggettivi possessivi nella lingua tunisina.

The Ainu (Southern Hokkaido) relative clause construction is built on the model
of the nominal attributive construction, while the noun-complement construction is based on that of the nominal possessive construction in which the head
is marked with a possessive suffix. Also, relative and noun-complement clauses
behave differently with regard to island violation constraints: only the latter
allow such violations. However, there is a small number of noun-complement
clauses without possessive marking on the perception/relational head noun,
which makes them look like relative clauses; these are the so-called emergent
GNMCCs. I suggest that these head nouns appear in non-possessive form in order to dissociate themselves from the few homonymous possessive heads which
are grammaticalized as modal/evidential markers in the relevant constructions.

Does anything like 'Standard Sino-Tibetan nominalization' exist in Hmong-Mien languages? It has been suggested that Iu Mien nyei and Xong nangd/naond may be examples. Here it is suggested that White Hmong and Green Mong li/le may be examples as well.

Abstract: The study briefly summarizes the concept of case in traditional and generative frameworks concentrating on Pesetsky's (2013) theory, which takes case for a categorial feature spread by a locality restricted process (Feature Assignment). The study demonstrates that the Czech possessives represent a kind of rare overt case stacking containing a combination of a word-level case morpheme and a phrase-level case morpheme. In Modern English there are no equivalents of such a case morphology. Pronominals (including the possessives) represent only contextually determined allomorphs and the Saxon genitive morpheme ʼs is not a case on a DP but an agreement with the possessor DP on a functional head D (similar to Abney 1987). In traditional grammar the term ʻcaseʼ labels various aspects of the grammatical relation between a nominal constituent and its governing expression. Latin tradition concentrated on morphological paradigms, but already Hjelmslev (1935), Jakobson (1936) and Kurylowicz (1949) tried to define case in more complex and abstract way, pointing out the tension between form, function and interpretation. Thus, for discussing the concept of case in a theoretical framework, the literature distinguishes between (i) abstract Case-which denotes the relation between the two relevant participants (one of which is nominal); (ii) semantic case (deep case, semantic role)-which refers to standard interpretations expressed by the presumably predictable case relations; (iii) morphological case (surface case)-which describes the overt realization of the case relation in the form of a (usually bound) case morphology. While abstract Case is theoretically universal and semantic roles (cases) tend to be rather general across languages, too, the morphological realization (the surface case) of the abstract case is subject of wide cross-language variety. Still, most of the traditional frameworks assume a correlation between form and meaning and provide rather long and detailed lists of semantic roles (deep cases) and of pragmatic functions which correlate with

A major semantic distinction obtaining in phrases and clauses is that between modifiers and arguments. While arguments are inherent to the meaning of the head of the phrase or clause, modifiers merely supplement the head with additional information. Typical examples of argument-taking heads are verbs and adpositions, but also relational nouns such as kinship terms and body part terms. Typical examples of modifier-taking heads are non-relational nouns, such as those denoting concrete, inanimate objects, like ‘pot’ or ‘pen’.

This dissertation investigates to what extent the modifier/argument opposition constrains the morphosyntactic expression of possessive NPs, adpositional phrases and verbal main clauses. Using data of 64 different languages from all over the world, it is shown that the modifier/argument distinction strongly correlates with four typological parameters: locus of marking, the referentiality of person marking, the formal bondedness of person marking, and identity of marking. The first three parameters apply to possessive NPs: it is shown that possessive modifiers, as functionally optional enrichments of the head, are more likely to be the locus of morphosyntactic marking than possessive arguments. Also, possessive modifiers tend to be expressed by more referential and more formally independent person markers than possessive arguments. The final parameter applies beyond the domain of the NP: it is shown that if a language uses the same morphosyntactic form to mark modifiers in phrases and arguments in clauses, it also uses this form to mark arguments in phrases. Together, these findings demonstrate the typological relevance of the semantic opposition between modifiers and arguments, in the possessive NP and beyond.

Türkçenin en eski yazılı tanıklarından beri, üçüncü tekil şahıs iyelik ekinin üzerine bir çekim veya türetme eki getirildiğinde bu iki ek arasında “pronominal n” adı verilen bir /n/ sesi ortaya çıkmaktadır. Türkçede benzer bir /n/ sesi, kişi ve işaret zamirlerinin çekimli şekillerinde de görülür. Yakın zamandaki araştırmalar, pronominal /n/ sesinin bazı örneklerde yalın hâlde de görüldüğünü ortaya koymuştur. Bu çalışmanın amacı, bu bulgulara dayanarak üçüncü tekil şahıs iyelik ekinin ve pronominal /n/ sesinin kökünü araştırmaktır. Öncelikle, Türkçe iyelik eklerinin kökeni sorgulanmış ve bu eklerin Proto-Türkçede ilgi durumu eki görevinde olan *+(X)n ekini almış kişi zamirlerinin ekleşmesiyle oluştuğu ortaya konmuştur. Ardından, ikinci tekil şahıs iyelik ekinin tarihsel gelişiminde Yenisey dillerindeki iyelik ön eklerinin olası etkisi üzerinde durulmuştur. Pronominal /n/ sesinin üçüncü tekil şahıs iyelik ekine eklenmiş arkaik ilgi eki *+(X)n olduğu sonucuna varılmıştır. Aynı ek, Eski Türkçede isimler üzerinde araç durum ekine, iyelik ekleri üzerinde ise belirtme durumu ekine dönüşmüştür. Eski Türkçe +(n)Xŋ ilgi ekinin yardımcı ünsüzü de aynı ekin kalıntısıdır.

РЕЗИМЕ: Во овој труд се разгледуваат присвојните конструкции на ниво на именската синтагма што изразуваат прототипни присвојни релации (внатрешна присвојност) во конкуренција со присвојните конструкции на ниво на реченицата (надворешна присвојност). Прототипните присвојни значења се дефинираат како релации меѓу поседувачот - човек и објектите од неговиот ‘персонален домен’ (објекти на поседување, делови на телото, луѓе во блиски односи). Обично јазиците имаат повеќе од една јазична стратегија за изразување на вакви релации, што е случај и во македонскиот јазик. Секоја од овие стратегии ја прикажува релацијата од различен аспект. Целта на оваа студија е да ги прикаже структурно-функционалните особини на основните конструкции, користејќи ги теориските претпоставки на когнитивната граматика и некои сродни функционални лингвистички приоди. Истражувањето се базира на голем корпус на примери од литературни и новинарски текстови, и преку нив се испитуваат дискурсно-прагматските и стилските фактори што ја раководат нивната дистрибуција. Со анализата се појаснуваат нијансите што секоја од испитуваните конструкции ги внесува во значењето на исказот.


EXPRESSING POSSESSION ON THE NOUN PHRASE LEVEL
IN MACEDONIAN AND IN ENGLISH

ABSTRACT: In this work possession is analysed as a complex cognitive category. The prototype possessive meanings are defined as relations between the human possessor and the objects of his/her ‘personal domain’ (objects owned by the person, body parts and people in close relation). Typically, languages employ more than one technique on the noun phrase level for expressing such meaning, Macedonian and English being no exception. Each of these constructions presents the relationship from a different perspective. Furthermore, some of them are also used for coding peripheral possessive functions, which describe abstract structural meanings located in the textual situation, i.e. relations between the nominalized predicate and its participants. This creates conditions for further extension of these constructions to meanings considerably distanced from the prototypical ones, such as specification and predicative noun modification, whose basic purpose is to elaborate the language expression.
It has been shown that the ‘reference point’ model proposed by Langacker is an adequate explanatory mechanism for the unity of the category. As illustrated, it plays a crucial role at each phase, determining the possible candidates for participants in the relation (possessor and possessum), thus preserving the relevant asymmetry.

Chapter 4 of the thesis, in French. Linguistic vs extra-linguistic possession. Adnominal possession as a syntactic function, its formal types in various languages (Turkish, English, Colloquial French, Sumerian, Semitic...)  and their grammaticalization paths. The special case of a personal possessor. Relative clause and possession. Predicative possession. Possession and belonging. External possessor construction. Nota genitivi. Suffixaufnahme.

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.

This paper discusses some constructions in which, for various reasons, agreement does not involve all available features of the controller, targets some normally non-agreeing items, or is triggered by types of word that are normally not controllers. Fuzzy boundaries are shown to exist among word classes (nouns that are treated as adjectives and
adjectives that syntactically and semantically partly behave as nouns), as well as between morphological processes (derivation serving syntax), thus suggesting that fuzziness is a trademark of linguistic phenomena.
Issues discussed include agreement between head nouns and appositions, and the possible transcategorization of nouns that become adjectives starting from specific collocations (section 3); special characteristics of possessive adjectives in some Indo-European
languages (section 4), and case agreement in possessive constructions between head nouns and nominal modifiers (section 5). In section 2 I outline Corbett’s (2004) canonical approach to typology, especially regarding agreement.

Статья посвящена посессивным конструкциям в мокшанском языке (Финно-угорская группа уральской семьи ). Особое внимание уделено тому, каким образом позиция посессора в иерархии одушевлённости влияет на выбор той или иной из возможных конструкций. Предлагается набор критериев, которые помогают установить ступени иерархии, релевантные для мокшанского.

The paper deals with possessive constructions in Moksha (Finno-Ugric branch, Uralic family). Special attention is given to how the position of a possessor in the Silverstein hierarchy influences the choice of a construction. I suggest the set of criteria that determine the stages of the hierarchy relevant for Moksha.

В настоящей книге описываются все главные способы выражения посессивных отношений (за исключением предикативной посессивности) в среднечакавском говоре села Куклица на острове Углян.
В вводной, теоретической части даются краткие определения основных способов выражения посессивных отношений, а также основные сведения о неотчуждаемой и отчуждаемой принадлежности. Кроме того, делается попытка частично пересмотреть систематизацию способов выражения посессивности. Предлагается посессивность сначала разделять на эксплицитную и имплицитную, потом же эксплицитную посессивность разделять на атрибутивную и предикативную, а имплицитную соответственно на внешнюю, конситуативную и интралексематическую. Вслед за Веласкез-Кастильо во внешнюю посессивность мы включаем также то, что традиционно называется стиранием посессора. Конситуативная же посессивность – это придуманный нами термин, обозначающий имплицитную посессивность, в случае которой посессор вычисляется из более широкого контекста и/или ситуации.
В последующих главах рассматриваются по отдельности эксплицитная посессивность (притяжательные местоимения, притяжательные прилагательные, родительный принадлежности, посессивная конструкция с предлогом od и посессивное употребление предлога u с родительным падежом), дательный принадлежности (как явление, объединяющее эксплицитную и имплицитную посессивность) и имплицитная посессивность (внешняя и конситуативная) в куклицком говоре.
В рамках темы «притяжательные местоимения» уделяется больше всего внимания: употреблению ПМ при звательном падеже, возвратному употреблению возвратных и невозвратных ПМ, синтаксической функции ПМ, опущению ПМ и личного местоимения в посессивном дательном кореферентных одному из членов той же клаузы (имеется также опущение кореферентного непосессивного дательного).
В связи с притяжательными прилагательными, родительным принадлежности и посессивной конструкцией с предлогом od обнаруживается несколько интересных фактов: схожесть всех трёх типов посессоров в функции атрибута в линейном порядке, очень редкое употребление посессора с предлогом od при названиях недвижимого имущества и расхождение между неодушевлёнными посессорами в родительном падеже и с предлогом od.
В случае куклицкого дательного принадлежности особенно подробно разбираются два основных пункта: широта употребления (ДП употребляется как внешний посессор и атрибутивно; как внешний посесор он употребляется в том числе при статальных глаголах и может обозначать даже неодушевлённого посессора (только безударные местоимения)) и отношение к типичным атрибутивным посессорам (определяется многочисленными факторами, важнейшие из которых — заинтересованность, одушевлённость и степень эмпатии посессора, а также тип посессума.
При разборе прочих случаев внешней посессивности интерес вызывают лишь несколько примеров с посессором и посессумом в винительном падеже.
В случае конситуативной посессивности посессором в куклицком почти всегда выступает говорящий, а посессумом — родственник старшего поколения выражен реляционным именем. Употребление конситуативного «нулевого» посессора определяется синтаксическими, дискурсивными и прагматическими факторами. Две последние (более важные) группы факторов в основном охвачены теорией доступности: конситуативные посессоры — это самые доступные посессоры.

Learning and talking about their own possessions and the possessions of their peers and caretakers plays a central role in children’s daily life. It is unsurprising then that relationships between possessors and their possessions are amongst the first relationships that children encode when they start to
string words together (see e.g. Brown 1973); and it is no wonder that many psycholinguists have made use of this rich data source to address questions about the mechanisms that drive children’s linguistic development.
However, most of the available studies of the acquisition of possessive constructions that we will discuss have investigated only one or two possession-encoding constructions in an individual language. Moreover, the focus
has typically not been on the encoding of the possessive relation itself, but on other aspects of the respective possessive construction. For instance, possessive -s markers in German and English (e.g. Susi-s Huhn ‘Sue’s chicken’) were analysed in studies that investigated whether the syntactic
categories of the target language were already present in early child grammars (e.g. Eisenbeiß 2000; Marinis 2002, 2003; Radford 1990). In these studies, possessive markers were simply treated as morpho-syntactic realisations
of syntactic categories; and semantic aspects were largely ignored. Similarly, possessive constructions with two-place verbs like "have" and "belong" were investigated in studies of the acquisition of syntax-semantic mappings, but these constructions were just treated as one type of twoargument
construction and not compared to other constructions encoding
possession (see e.g. Bowerman 1990, Pinker 1984). To our knowledge, no study has yet provided a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview that focuses on the different ways in which possessive relationships are encoded linguistically.
In order to fill this gap, we will provide a cross-linguistic overview of studies of children’s acquisition of the constructions that their target language employs to encode possession. In addition, we will present new data from German child language and child-directed speech, and discuss the implications for theoretical linguistics and language acquisition research. Our focus will be on three ways of encoding relationships between PRs and possessed entities (see Heine 1997; Baron, Herslund and Sørensen 2001 for
overviews):
– adnominal possession: Both Possessor (PR) and Possessum (PM) are
encoded within the same noun phrase (e.g. my/daddy’s chickens, the
chickens of our neighbours, …);
– predicative possession: The possessive relationship is encoded by a twoplace
predicate such as have, own or belong or by be (e.g. I have a dog.
The dog belongs to me. This dog is mine);
– “external possession”: the PR and the PM are realised as arguments of
a verb whose lexical meaning does not involve the notion of possession
(e.g. I tapped him-PR on the shoulder-PM).
We will first show how studies of children’s possession constructions can help us to evaluate models of children’s linguistic development. Against this background, we will present studies of the acquisition of adnominal, predicative and external possession constructions (EPCs). For each of these construction types, we will provide a brief overview of possession constructions in adult German and contrast them with possessive constructions in other languages for which acquisition studies are available. This will allow us to discuss empirical findings from earlier studies and our own analysis of German child data. Finally, we will compare the development of the three types of possession constructions and discuss the implications of our findings for theoretical linguistics and models of children’s linguistic development. In particular, we will show how the available empirical findings about the acquisition of possession constructions can be captured in
approaches that try to integrate core insights from current generative and usage-based approaches.

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.

Although the term alignment is typically associated with morphosyntactic expression of arguments of the Clause, alignment is also relevant to units of the Phrase. In Functional Discourse Grammar a basic distinction is made between two kinds of dependency relations obtaining both within Phrases and within Clauses: head-modifier relations and nucleus-dependent relations. This paper investigates the alignment of nominal units within different types of Phrases and Clauses on the basis of this distinction in a sample of twenty-six languages. It is demonstrated that of the six logically possible main alignment types, five are observed in the data. One alignment pattern is not attested, as there is no language which aligns modifiers within Phrases in the same way as arguments within Clauses, while aligning arguments within Phrases in a different way. In other words, if modifiers within Phrases are aligned in the same way as arguments within Clauses, arguments within Phrases also receive the same treatment. This outcome strongly supports the unique distinction in dependency relations made by Functional Discourse Grammar and the relevance of this distinction in Phrasal alignment across the world’s languages.

Типология морфосинтаксических параметров. Материалы международной конференции. /Ред.: М.Б. Коношенко, Е.А. Лютикова, А.В. Циммерлинг.Выпуск 3. М.: МПГУ, 2016. -- с. 96-112.

Tupí-Guaraní (and a few other Tupí) languages manifest a distinctive construction of predicative possession, minimally consisting of the possessee noun marked with a pronominal prefix cross-referencing the possessor. Some authors suggested analyzing such structures as existential clauses containing a zero copula. In this paper, I attempt to show that such an analysis is not viable for Paraguayan Guaraní. After a brief summary of the modern typology of predicative possession (§1) and the distinctive Tupí-Guaraní pattern (§2), I outline basic facts of predicative possession in Paraguayan Guaraní (§3), and provide arguments against the zero copula hypothesis (§4), drawing evidence from distribution of cross-reference markers, locus of predicative inflection, and possessor accessibility for questioning and relativization. Some of these arguments have not previously brought into discussion of predicative possession in Tupí-Guaraní and thus open new avenues for further comparative and language-specific research.

В языках тупи-гуарани (и некоторых других тупи) имена, маркированные посессивным префиксом, могут употребляться в предикативной позиции для выражения значения обладания. Некоторыми исследователями предлагалось трактовать такие конструкции как экзистенциальные, содержащие невыраженную связку. В настоящей статье оспаривается адекватность подобного анализа для парагвайского гуарани. После краткого обзора современной типологии посессивной предикации (§1) и обсуждения специфической стратегии, представленной в языках тупи-гуарани (§2), мы очерчиваем главные особенности посессивной предикации в парагвайском гуарани (§3), а затем предлагаем ряд аргументов против гипотезы о нулевой связке (§4), опираясь на дистрибуцию прономинальных показателей, локус маркирования предикативных категорий и доступность посессора в качестве мишени wh-вопросов и релятивизации. Некоторые из этих аргументов ранее не привлекались к дискуссии о посессивной предикации в языках тупи-гуарани; тем самым, наши данные открывают новые направления для сравнительных и конкретно-языковых исследований.

Scandinavian languages and their dialects boast a wide array of posses-sive constructions, both prenominal and postnominal (see e.g. Delsing 2003a-b; Julien 2005). This paper focuses on the so-called possessor doubling construction in Norwegian, in which the possessor is fol-lowed by a ‘pleonastic’ reflexive possessive pronoun, as in "Kari sitt hus" 'Kari her (REFL) house'. The purpose of this paper will be to assess earlier claims about the emergence of possessor doubling in Norwegian, both as a single-source development (either external or internal) and as a multiple-source development, building on theoretical analyses of various per-suasions (e.g. Fiva 1987, Lødrup 1989, Julien 2005), as well as current theorizing about contact-induced grammatical change (e.g. Heine & Kuteva 2005).

This study reports on Yami existential, possessive and locative constructions, regarding the issues on (i) two 'HAVE' structures, (ii) Definiteness Effect (DE) and (iii) an analysis of small clause, in terms of a formal syntactic approach. Compared with Formosan languages, Yami syntactically shows the differences based on two 'HAVE' structures. Besides, it is also proved that Definiteness Effect in Yami differs from that in other Formosan languages, such as Bunun language. Finally, this study also argues that the existential verb amian/abo 'exist/not exist' in Yami selects a small clause as its complement, representing a relative clause.

By now, the choice between pronominal and reflexive bound possessives in Russian has been subject to prolonged investigation, but some aspects of the phenomenon have not been scrutinised by quantitative methods or given an interpretation in terms of a formal model of syntax and semantics. The present paper deals with pronominal possessives situated in direct object noun phrases and bound by a 1st- or 2nd-person pronominal subject (including zero subjects in imperatives). We focus on the factors that have to do with the availability of the collective interpretation of the verb phrase and of the possession relation itself.

Using data from the Russian National Corpus and from the Araneum Russicum Maximum web corpus, we demonstrate a significant effect of the subject number on the choice of the possessive pronoun. To investigate the effects of collectivity, we designed a questionnaire, which showed that with plural  the preference for pronominal possessives over the reflexive possessive increases as the collective interpretation becomes more salient. Moreover, both types of possessives are degraded to a certain extent within singular (but not singulare tantum) object NPs when the collective reading is unavailable. We suggest that the observed distribution can be explained if we assume that (a) the cardinality of the possessor is an interpretable feature of Russian possessives and is therefore able to cause interpretational conflicts, and (b) the possessive layer of the nominal domain precludes an object to be re-analysed as part of the predicate, which is required for a distributive interpretation.

Please be informed that the paper contains a crucial typo: the axes are wrongly attributed in Figure 1. The horizontal axis in fact corresponds to the singular, and the vertical axis to the plural.

Marketers frequently use individual names as part of their brand-naming strategy. This research investigates how the use of a possessive (indicated by an apostrophe -s) versus non-possessive form in a brand name (Mrs. Smith’s vs. Mrs. Smith) affects consumer brand preferences and choice for less familiar brands. Building on the theory of possessions, this work demonstrates that consumers infer a brand as being under control of an owner implied in a possessive brand name. Eight studies using real-world data and field and lab experiments show that this inference results in enhanced brand purchase intentions and money spent on a brand’s product. This research also establishes that the focal effect occurs for consumers less familiar with the brand and for those with high desire to relinquish control. The core effect reverses in co-creation contexts because this process enhances consumers’ own desire for control and thus conflicts with the inferred sense of an owner’s control over the brand. Additionally, the current work shows that the positive effect of brand-name possessiveness applies only when no brand longevity information is mentioned; the effect is attenuated when brand longevity is communicated, because older brands are generally seen as largely in control of their performance. Beyond informing theory on the effects of a possessive form in brand names, the findings aid marketers in identifying specific marketplace outcomes for possessive-form brand-naming strategies.

El uso de las construcciones de adverbio locativo con pronombre posesivo en el español peninsular: un primer acercamiento diatópico Abstract: This diatopic study examines the characteristics of the locative adverb constructions that select possessive pronouns as complements in Peninsular Spanish oral corpora. Firstly, the range of locative adverbs that take part in this construction are scrutinised, as well as their frequency of use with respect to that of their counterparts, in which a prepositional phrase appears as a complement to the locative adverb. Secondly, the geographic spread within Spain and the diatopic differences between the various autonomous communities are discussed. Thirdly, this paper also explores the variation in use between the possessive affixes-o and-a and the motivations traditionally given for this variation: to wit, the analogy with the final vowel of the locative adverb and the agreement with the referent of the possessive pronoun. Finally, it is proposed that diatopy, not previously considered in the literature, might be an influencing factor in said variation, given that there appears to be a strong link between the region and the use of one or another desinence of the possessive. This is, for instance, the case for Andalusia, where the vast majority of the locative adverb cases with posses-sives exhibit the suffix-a.

***The findings presented in this draft have now been published in Constructions and Frames 11(2). The paper "Possessive interpretation at the semantics-pragmatics interface" (2019) is available in the Papers section above.***

In this (more questions than answers) paper, I provide new data from English attributive possession to partially question and simultaneously lend  evidence to a recent claim made by Korta & Perry (forthcoming), according to which pragmatic saturation is optional for utterance comprehension.