John Benjamins Publishing Company
Between predicative and attributive possession in Bashkir
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Abstract
Bashkir employs the genitive strategy for predicative possessive construction (‘he has a car’ literally is ‘his car exists’). However, in predicative possessive constructions the genitival possessor shows syntactic properties that are mostly indicative of its clause-level status. Some other uses with genitival possessors (as in e.g. ‘his leg hurts’) show mixed behaviour with respect to various constituency-related tests. The distribution of these properties directly reflects the degree of the relevance of the possessor. This semantics-to-syntax link is reminiscent of the external vs. internal possessor contrasts in other languages, although normally these contrasts are also manifested morphologically. The fact that constituency tests do not converge on identical results calls into question the applicability of the traditional notion of constituency to Bashkir possessive constructions.
Abstract
Bashkir employs the genitive strategy for predicative possessive construction (‘he has a car’ literally is ‘his car exists’). However, in predicative possessive constructions the genitival possessor shows syntactic properties that are mostly indicative of its clause-level status. Some other uses with genitival possessors (as in e.g. ‘his leg hurts’) show mixed behaviour with respect to various constituency-related tests. The distribution of these properties directly reflects the degree of the relevance of the possessor. This semantics-to-syntax link is reminiscent of the external vs. internal possessor contrasts in other languages, although normally these contrasts are also manifested morphologically. The fact that constituency tests do not converge on identical results calls into question the applicability of the traditional notion of constituency to Bashkir possessive constructions.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction xi
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I. Verbal Categories and Processes in Categorizations
- The tense-aspect system of Khorchin Mongolian 3
- Locational and directional relations and tense and aspect marking in Chalkan, a South Siberian Turkic language 67
- Conspiring motivations for causative and passive isomorphism: 91
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II. Syntactic Functions and Case-Marking
- Spatial semantics, case and relator nouns in Evenki 111
- A survey of alignment features in the Greater Hindukush with special references to Indo-Aryan 133
- Between predicative and attributive possession in Bashkir 175
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III. Clause Combining and Discourse
- Areal features of copula sentences in Karaim as spoken in Lithuania 205
- Non-past copular markers in Turkish 221
- On the distribution of the contrastive-concessive discourse connectives ama ‘but/yet’ and fakat ‘but’ in written Turkish 251
- Anaphora in Ossetic correlatives and the typology of clause combining 275
- Kinds of evidentiality in German complement clauses 311
- Evidentiality in Dzungar Tuvan 339
-
IV. Historical Issues
- On the evolution of Russian subject reference 381
- The development of negation in the Transeurasian languages 401
- List of Index 421
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction xi
-
I. Verbal Categories and Processes in Categorizations
- The tense-aspect system of Khorchin Mongolian 3
- Locational and directional relations and tense and aspect marking in Chalkan, a South Siberian Turkic language 67
- Conspiring motivations for causative and passive isomorphism: 91
-
II. Syntactic Functions and Case-Marking
- Spatial semantics, case and relator nouns in Evenki 111
- A survey of alignment features in the Greater Hindukush with special references to Indo-Aryan 133
- Between predicative and attributive possession in Bashkir 175
-
III. Clause Combining and Discourse
- Areal features of copula sentences in Karaim as spoken in Lithuania 205
- Non-past copular markers in Turkish 221
- On the distribution of the contrastive-concessive discourse connectives ama ‘but/yet’ and fakat ‘but’ in written Turkish 251
- Anaphora in Ossetic correlatives and the typology of clause combining 275
- Kinds of evidentiality in German complement clauses 311
- Evidentiality in Dzungar Tuvan 339
-
IV. Historical Issues
- On the evolution of Russian subject reference 381
- The development of negation in the Transeurasian languages 401
- List of Index 421