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Inalienable possession

Inalienable possession is a type of possession in linguistics in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently of their possessor; that is, they cannot be "alienated" from their possessor. Inalienable nouns include body parts (e.g. leg, which is necessarily someone's leg), kinship terms (e.g. mother), and part-whole relations (e.g. top). Languages vary in the way they mark inalienable possession, and inalienability correlates with many morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties.

Comparison to alienable possession

The following relationships often fall under inalienable possession:

Type of relationship	Examples
kinship	father, mother, aunt
social relationship	trading partner, business partner
body parts	eye, leg
part-whole relationship	tabletop, side
possessed noun originates from the possessor	sweat, voice
mental states and processes	fear, mind
attributes of a known possessor	name, age

In any of these above relationships, the possessee is integrally linked to its possessor. For example, hand implies (someone's) hand, even if it is severed from the whole body. An example in French highlights this distinction:

Il m’a cassé le bras
MORPHEME GLOSS
‘he broke my arm’
(Author year: page number (example number))

The arm only exists in relation to the body and is thus marked accordingly with the reflexive pronoun 'me'. By comparison, alienable possession involves a relationship in which the possessee can exist independently, for example my book. As a result, it would be ungrammatical to mark book the same way as someone's arm. Instead, there is no reflexive pronoun for these cases in French.

∗Il m'a volé mon livre
MORPHEME GLOSS
'he stole my book'
(Author year: page number (example number))

Il a volé mon livre
MORPHEME GLOSS
'he stole my book'
(Author year: page number (example number))

By contrast, in English there are cases where it is not mandatory to syntactically mark inalienable possessions to make a grammatical sentence. In fact, the distinction between these two possessions is optional in the following case:

a. He looked me straight in the eye
b. He looked straight into my eye

Linguistic properties

Morphosyntactic properties

South American languages

In South American languages, the distinction between alienable and inalienable possession may be marked in many different ways, including with select morphological markers, tonal patterns, and word order. Generally, there is a strong pattern for inalienable possession requires fewer morphological markers than alienable possession constructions. In her typological study, Krasnoukhova discovered that in 78% of languages that do make a distinction between inalienable and alienable possession, inalienable possession was associated with less morphology than its alienable counterpart.

For example, the South American language Dâw uses a special possessive morpheme (bolded) to indicate alienable possession:

tɔp Tũk-ɛ̃̀ɟ 
house Tũk-poss 
‘Tũk’s house’ 
(Martins 2004: 546)

tih-ɛ̃̀ɟ cɤ̀g
house Tũk-poss 3sg-poss arrow
‘his arrow’
(Martins 2004: 546)

This possessive marker does not occur in inalienable possession constructions. Thus, the absence of ɛ̃̀ɟ indicates the relationship between the possessor and possessee is one of inalienable possession.

tih nũh
3sg head
‘his head’
(Martins 2004: 547)

Hawaiian

(info taken from original article and edited) Hawaiian is commonly cited as an example of a language with an alienability difference, because it uses a different preposition to mark possession depending on alienability.

nā iwi a Pua
the bones of Pua 
'Pua's bones' (as the chicken bones she is eating)
(Author year: page number (example number))

nā iwi o Pua 
the bones of Pua
'Pua's [own] bones'
(Author year: page number (example number))

However, the distinction between a '(alienable) of' and o '(inalienable) of' is used for other semantic distinctions less clearly attributable to common alienability relationships except in metaphorical ways.

ke kanaka a ke ali‘i 
the man of the king
'the subject [controlled or appointed by] the chief'
(Author year: page number (example number))

ke kanaka o ke ali‘i 
the man of the king
'the [hereditary] subject of the chief'
(Author year: page number (example number))

ka lei a Pua 
the lei of Pua
'Pua's lei [to sell]'
(Author year: page number (example number))

ka lei o Pua 
the lei of Pua
'Pua's lei [to wear]'
(Author year: page number (example number))

Igbo

In Igbo, inalienable possession can be realised through identical possessor deletion if an antecedent possessor is in the same sentence.

∗ó sàrà áká ya
MORPHEME GLOSS
‘he washed hands his own’
(Author year: page number (example number))

This sentence is only grammatical if it is understood as the áká (arm) belonging to someone besides the subject ó (he). For the inalienable interpretation, the áká is seen as belonging to the subject ó, adding the pronoun ya would make the sentence ungrammatical; therefore, the identical possessor is deleted in the following grammatical sentence:

ó sàrà áká
MORPHEME GLOSS
‘he washed his hands’
(Author year: page number (example number))

Q'eqchi'-Maya (K'ekchi')

In Q'eqchi'-Maya, inalienable possessions make a morphosyntactic distinction between possessed and unpossessed nouns. This is shown in a small subset of nouns, by taking the suffix -(b')ej when unpossessed. The following examples demonstrate the differences in morphological patterns between possessed and unpossessed nouns.

Alienable nouns
Unpossessed:

tz'i'
MORPHEME GLOSS               
'dog'
(Author year: page number (example number))                   

Possessed:

in-tz'i'
MORPHEME GLOSS
'my dog'
(Author year: page number (example number))

Inalienable nouns Unpossessed:

na'b'ej
MORPHEME GLOSS
'mother'
(Author year: page number (example number))

Possessed:

in-na'
MORPHEME GLOSS
'my mother'
(Author year: page number (example number))

Spanish

The inner structures of alienable and inalienable possession in Spanish elucidates how possession is realized in the language. By way of an antecedent-anaphor relation, the possessor is caused to c-command the possessee within the same clause .

[DP [DP [D' [D su] ] ] [D' [D e] [NP casa] ] ]
GLOSS
'his/her house'
(Kempchinsky 1992: 698 (8b))

[DP [D' [D la] [NP casa] ] [PP (de) mis suegros] ]
GLOSS
'my in-law's house'
(Kempchinsky 1992: 698 (7a))

In fact, previous research have shown that this relation is applicable to other Romance languages . French shows the same antecedent-anaphor relation.

[DP [DP [D' [D leur] ] ] [D' [D e] [NP gorges] ] ]
GLOSS
'their throats'
(Kempchinsky 1992: 698 (segment of 26a))

However, if the body-part NP is modified by a non-restrictive descriptive adjective (eg. beautiful), inalienable possession is blocked. The opposite holds true: if the body-part NP is modified by a restrictive descriptive adjective, inalienable possession is not blocked. This applies to both French and Spanish (and perhaps, to most Romance languages).

Semantic properties

The inalienable possession is semantically dependent and is defined in reference to another object, to which it belongs to.

Les enfants ont levé la main
MORPHEME GLOSS
'The children raised the hand'
(Author year: page number (example number))

The French example is ambiguous and contains two possible meaning. In the inalienable possessive interpretation, la main belongs to the subject, les enfants. The second interpretation sees la main as an alienable object and does not belong to the subject. English only has the latter alienable possessive reading. As a result, the hand can only be seen as an object that does not belong the children. “An inalienable noun, but not an alienable one, takes a possessor argument.” Syntactic structure reflects the semantic reading of a sentence.

Theories

Since the possessor is crucially linked to an inalienable noun's meaning, inalienable nouns are assumed to take their possessors as a semantic argument. Possessors (whether to alienable or inalienable nouns) can be expressed with different constructions. Possessors in the genitive case (such as the friend of Mary) appear as complements to the possessed noun. This is an example of internal possession because the possessor of the noun is outside of the noun phrase.

Inalienable possession can also be marked with external possession where the possessor appears outside of the noun phrase. An example of this is possessors in the dative case:

Hebrew

Gil higdil le-Rina et ha-tmuna 
Gil enlarged to-Rina Act the-picture 
‘Gil enlarged Rina’s picture’ [Rina ≠ theme]
(Landau 1999: 5 (5b)) 

Spanish

Les revisé los informes a los estudiantes 
to-them I-revised the reports to the students 
‘I revised the students’ reports’ 
(Kempchinsky 1992: 136 (2a)) 

However, these type of possessors are problematic. There is a discrepancy between where the possessor appears syntactically in an inalienable possession construction and what its semantic relationship to the inalienable noun seems to be. Semantically, the possessor of an inalienable noun is intrinsic to its meaning and acts like a semantic argument. In the surface syntactic structure, however, the possessor appears in a position that marks it as an argument of the verb. Thus, there are different views on how these types of inalienable possession constructions should be represented in the syntactic structure. The binding hypothesis argues that the possessor is an argument of the verb. Conversely, the possessor-raising hypothesis argues that the possessor originates as an argument of the possessed noun and then moves to a position where on the surface it looks like it is an argument of the verb.

Possessor-raising hypothesis

Possessor-raising is a syntactic hypothesis that attempts to explain the structures of inalienable DPs. Landau argues that the possessor is initially introduced in the specifier position of DP (Spec-DP), but it later raises to the specifier of VP.

[insert tree diagram here]

According to Guéron, a benefit of this hypothesis is that it is consistent with principles of syntactic movement such as locality of selection and c-command.

Possessive markers are etymologically older

Possessive markers on inalienable nouns can been seen as more "archaic" than possessive markers on alienable nouns. For example, in the Native American language Diegueño, the alienable possessive marker (?-ən^y) appears to originate from the inalienable possessive marker (?-ə), suggesting the latter is older.