Split possession an areal-linguistic study of the alienability correlation and related phenomena in the languages of Europe (John Benjamins, 2008)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Split Possession; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; Preface; List of abbreviations; Categories; Superscripts; Glossonym; Part A. What needs to be known beforehand; Chapter 1. Introduction; Chapter 2. Prerequisites; Chapter 3. Split possession; Part B. Tour d'Europe; Chapter 4. Grammatical possession splits; Chapter 5. Further evidence of possession splits in Europe; Part C. On European misfits and their commonalities; Chapter 6. Results; Notes; Sources; References; Additional background literature; Index of languages; Index of authors; Index of subjects
This book is a functional-typological study of possession splits in European languages. It shows that genetically and structurally diverse languages such as Icelandic, Welsh, and Maltese display possessive systems which are sensitive to semantically based distinctions reminiscent of the alienability correlation. These distinctions are grammatically relevant in many European languages because they require dedicated constructions. What makes these split possessive systems interesting for the linguist is the interaction of semantic criteria with pragmatics and syntax. Neutralisation of distinctio