Coding splits in the adnominal possessive construction and alienability: the case of Mandinka (West Mande)

2.1 Nouns and verbs

Nominal lexemes are characterized by their ability to project NPs whose possible functions include those of subject and object. Verbal lexemes are typically found in the V slot of the verbal predication construction (see Section 2.2), but with the exception of sǎa ‘die’ (which nominalizes as sàayáa ‘death’), they can also be used as event-denoting nouns without any specific morphological marking, with modifiers representing their core arguments. However, as will be developed in Section 5, verbal lexemes used as event-denoting nouns do not behave exactly like ordinary nouns in the adnominal possession construction.

2.2 Verbal predication

A brief overview of verbal predication is in order for a proper understanding of the particularities of adnominal possessive constructions with verbal lexemes used as event-denoting nouns in the role of head (Section 5).

The most striking characteristic of clause structure in Mande languages is the extreme rigidity of the typologically unusual S-O-V-X constituent order in verbal clauses, and Mandinka is no exception. No operation, such as focalization or questioning, can trigger change in constituent order, and with the exception of some types of adjuncts, noun phrases or adpositional phrases cannot occur in topic position (on the left edge of the clause) without being resumed by a pronoun occupying the position they would occupy if they were not topicalized.

In transitive clauses, as illustrated in (2), both the subject and the object obligatorily precede the verb, and the subject obligatorily precedes the object. Assertive and interrogative transitive clauses always include an auxiliary-like element inserted between the subject and the object, called a predicative marker in the Mandeist tradition. Predicative markers are portmanteau morphemes encoding aspectual and modal distinctions and expressing polarity.^[4] Obliques follow the verb and are standardly encoded as postpositional phrases (2c)–(2d). The subject and the object bear no mark of their syntactic role and are not indexed on the verb (or elsewhere in the clause).^[5]

In intransitive clauses, exemplified in (3), the subject precedes the verb. Like transitive subjects, intransitive subjects bear no mark of their syntactic role and are not indexed. Obliques behave in exactly the same way in transitive and intransitive clauses. With the exception of the completive positive (encoded by the predicative marker yè in transitive clauses, and by the verbal suffix -tá ∼ -tà in intransitive clauses), aspect, modality, and polarity are encoded by the same predicative markers as in transitive clauses.

Pronouns occupy the same positions as NPs consisting of a nominal lexeme and its modifiers, and show no variation related to their syntactic roles.

2.3 Noun phrase structure

The structure of Mandinka noun phrases can be schematized as follows, with two possible positions for determiners. The position labeled ‘Det.₁’ is occupied by demonstratives, whereas all other types of determiners occupy the position labeled ‘Det.₂’:

• (Adnom.poss.) (Det.₁) N (Attr.) (Num.) (Det.₂)

Mandinka has no agreement mechanism between nouns and their modifiers, and apart from a classifying suffix -maa optionally found with kinship terms and a few other nouns denoting interpersonal relationships, Mandinka has nothing similar to the phenomena described cross-linguistically as classifiers, noun classes, or grammatical genders.

Mandinka has a determiner -ò, sometimes labeled ‘definite marker’, which is better characterized as a default determiner. It originates from the grammaticalization of a demonstrative, and at some stage in the history of Manding languages, it probably acted as a definite article. However, synchronically, in most contexts, it carries no particular semantic specification, and must simply be present if the speaker does not consider it useful to select a determiner with a more specific meaning. The combination of nouns with the default determiner tends to behave as the default form of nouns, whereas the absence of the default determiner must be licensed by grammatical features of the noun phrase or of the clause in which it occurs. In particular, Mandinka speakers invariably use the ò-form of nouns for citation.

2.4 Personal pronouns

The emphatic versus non-emphatic contrast distinguishes personal pronouns from all other nominals (Table 1).

As illustrated in (4), the third-person pronouns encode no gender or animacy distinction.

As also illustrated in (4), personal pronouns share with the other nominals the absence of any morphological encoding of their syntactic role, nor do they occupy positions distinct from those occupied by other nominals fulfilling the same functions. The only differences in the syntactic behavior of emphatic and non-emphatic forms are that non-emphatic forms (i) cannot be focalized, and (ii) are prosodically dependent on the following word, which prevents them from accessing positions in which they would necessarily be followed immediately by a pause (in particular, they cannot feature as left-dislocated topics, nor can they be used in the vocative function).

3.1 Direct versus indirect adnominal possessors

NPs in adnominal possessor function invariably precede their head. Mandinka has a distinction between direct adnominal possessors, simply juxtaposed to their heads, and indirect adnominal possessors, flagged by the postposition lá. At first sight, one might think that this is a standard case of the alienability distinction at work, since with prototypical possessive constructions, the choice between the two variants of the adnominal possessive constructions is compatible with an explanation in terms of alienability (Nichols 1988; Rose and Van linden this issue). As illustrated in (5), the relationships between individuals and their body parts or blood relatives (prototypically inalienable) are among those requiring the direct construction (5a)–(5b), whereas the indirect construction is obligatory when the head noun refers to a concrete object that the referent of the possessor has at his/her disposal (5c).

However, as will be discussed in detail in Sections 4 and 5, the notion of alienability does not provide a global explanation of the choice between the two variants of the adnominal possessive construction.

Before turning to this question, several general properties of the adnominal possessive construction are worth mentioning: the lack of pronoun versus noun split, the lack of choice between flagged and unflagged possessors in some conditions, the distinction between the adnominal possessive construction and N + N compounds, and the fact that no Mandinka noun can be characterized as either obligatorily possessed or non-possessible.

3.2 No pronoun versus noun split

There is no pronoun versus noun split in the adnominal possessive construction of Mandinka. As mentioned above, in predicative constructions, pronouns occupy the same positions as noun phrases and show the same form in subject, object and oblique roles. The same applies to the adnominal possessive construction, in which pronouns fulfill the role of modifier exactly like noun phrases. For example, as illustrated in (6), the second person singular pronoun occurs as í (n.emph.)/ítè (emph.), not only in subject, object and oblique function, but also in modifier function in the adnominal possessive construction, and combines with the postposition lá in the same conditions as a noun fulfilling the same function.

3.3 Configurations with no possible choice between flagged and unflagged possessors

In the following three configurations, there is no possible choice between flagged and unflagged possessors.

1. When the role of head is fulfilled by the proprietive pronoun tâa ‘that of X’, ‘what belongs to X’ (exclusively used in the role of head in the adnominal possessive construction), the direct construction is invariably used, whatever the understood noun and its semantic relationship to the possessor – Example (7);

1. When the noun in the role of head in the adnominal possessive construction combines with fánsúŋ- or súndíŋ- ‘own’, the direct construction is invariably used, whatever the head noun and its semantic relationship to the modifier – Example (8);

1. When the noun in the role of head in the adnominal possessive construction is also modified by a demonstrative, the indirect construction is invariably used, whatever the head noun and its semantic relationship to the modifier – Example (9).

3.4 Adnominal possessive construction and N + N compounds

A brief mention of N + N compounds is in order here, since in some languages the distinction between N + N compounds and the adnominal possessive construction is problematic.

Generally speaking, compounding is a very productive type of word formation in Mandinka. In particular, nouns may be modified not only by noun phrases referring to specific entities in the role of modifier but also by bare nominal lexemes expressing generic reference to kinds, with which they form compounds. Moreover, contrary to the adnominal possessive construction, the formation of compounds involves specific tone rules that modify the tonal contour of the lexemes that combine into a compound. Example (10c) shows that the distinction is ensured by tone in cases where the segmental form is ambiguous. Moreover, N + N compounds show no coding split comparable to that found in the adnominal possessive construction: in general, the two terms of the compound are simply juxtaposed, and the same tone rules apply, whatever the semantic relationship underlying the formation of a compound.

In the perspective of the hypothesis according to which the original function of the indirect construction of adnominal possession was to specify the locational nature of the relationship between Possessor and Possessee (as developed in Section 6 below), it is interesting to mention that Mandinka also has N + Postposition + N compounds in which the postposition specifies the locational nature of the relationship between the two nouns, such as wúlá-kónó-séewòo /bush-in-pig/ ‘warthog’.

3.5 Obligatorily possessed nouns, non-possessible nouns

Mandinka has neither obligatorily possessed nouns nor non-possessible nouns, in the sense defined and commented on in Rose and Van linden (this issue). On the one hand, relational nouns (i.e., nouns that are prototypically possessed) can be used without any modifier, and are then interpreted as expressing reference to unspecified possessors, as ‘foot’ in (11) and ‘mother’ in (12), or to specific possessors whose identity can be retrieved from the context.

On the other hand, in Mandinka, the nouns that are not prototypically possessible are found quite commonly as heads of adnominal possessive constructions expressing relationships other than prototypical possession, for example, í là lúŋò ‘your day’ in the sense of ‘the day that has a special significance for you’, í lá sàâ ‘your snake’ in the sense of ‘the snake that frightened you’, í lá nìŋkínànkôo ‘your dragon’ in the sense of ‘the dragon you mention in the story you are telling’, etc.

4.1 Factors determining the variation between direct and indirect adnominal possessive constructions

The following three types of relationships are commonly considered prototypical for possessive constructions (see Rose and Van linden, this issue, and references therein):

1. the relationships between human individuals and their body parts;

2. the relationship between human individuals and their blood relatives;

3. the relationship between human individuals and the objects they possess according to the rules that regulate individual property in a given society.

Within the limits of these three types of relationships, as shown by Example (5) above, the notion of alienability correctly predicts the distribution of direct and indirect adnominal possessive constructions. However, the adnominal possessive construction is far from being limited to the expression of prototypical possession. In fact, it encodes nothing more than the existence of a privileged relationship of any kind between the referents of the head noun and of the NP in the role of modifier. The point is that, for the relationships other than those commonly considered as constituting the semantic core of the linguistic notion of possession, it immediately turns out that alienability cannot explain the distribution of flagged and unflagged possessors in the adnominal possessive construction of Mandinka.

For example, it is difficult to imagine how the notion of alienability could explain the contrast in (13).

Conversely, if the notion of alienability were crucial in the distribution of direct and indirect adnominal possessive constructions, it should not be possible to use the same construction for ‘the country where he was born’ (unbreakable relationship) and ‘the country over which he reigns’ (breakable relationship), as in (14).

Similarly, with léetáròo ‘letter’, à lá léetáròo (where à is the third person singular pronoun) can refer to any conceivable relationship between a person and a letter: ‘the letter s/he wrote’, ‘the letter s/he asked me to write for her/him’, ‘the letter s/he received’, ‘the letter s/he is holding in her/his hands’, ‘the letter s/he delivered’, ‘the letter s/he is waiting for’, etc. In fact, with léetáròo ‘letter’, the direct construction is only possible with an inanimate modifier: à léetáròo ‘the letter that goes with it’.

Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely. A crucial observation is that, regarding the productivity of the two variants of the adnominal possessive construction, there is a striking contrast between Mandinka and most of the languages that code, for example, ‘my bicycle’ differently from ‘my head’ and ‘my brother’. In most of the languages in which such a contrast can be observed, as a rule, the nouns that can fulfill the role of head in the construction used for ‘my head’ and ‘my brother’ constitute a small closed class. By contrast, in Mandinka, both variants of the adnominal possessive construction are productive. In fact, any noun can fulfill the role of head in the direct adnominal possessive construction, depending on the nature of the modifier.

In Mandinka, the best predictor of the choice between direct and indirect adnominal possessive constructions is animacy of the modifier. With some exceptions that will be examined in Sections 4.2 and 4.3, the default rule is that inanimate possessors require the direct construction, whereas animate possessors (including non-human animates) require the indirect construction. What creates the illusion of an alienability contrast is that, for reasons that will be discussed in Section 4.3, the default rule does not apply to constructions referring to body parts or kinship terms.

4.2 The adnominal possessive construction with inanimate possessors

When an ordinary noun in the role of head of the adnominal possessive construction combines with an inanimate modifier, the general rule is that irrespective of the head noun and the semantic nature of the relationship between the two terms of the construction, the direct construction is the only possible option. The only exception to this rule is that the presence of a demonstrative determiner invariably triggers the use of the indirect construction, as in (15b).

4.3 The adnominal possessive construction with animate possessors

When an ordinary noun in the role of head of the adnominal possessive construction combines with an animate modifier, the default choice is the indirect construction. There are, however, two important groups of exceptions to this rule. Possible explanations will be discussed in Section 6.