Title
The Event Semantic Root of Inalienable Possession

Satoshi Tomioka, University of Delaware

Date:  03.05.2006

Time:  19:15

Venue:  E010 1

Description
Satoshi Tomioka (with Chang-yong Sim)

In many languages, the inalienable possession
construction takes the form of External Possession,
where the possessor and the possessed do not make up a
constituent. Since inalienable possession relations
are regarded to be more semantically ‘intimate’ than
ordinary possession relations, it is puzzling why this
semantic intimacy is not reflected onto syntax. In
this presentation, we argue that, at least in some
languages, the inalienable possession structure has a
complex event semantic root. The crucial ingredient is
a ‘material’ part-whole relation between eventualities
(cf. Brisson 1998). In our analysis, the possessor and
the possessed never form a constituent at any level of
representation nor do they have any thematic relations
between them. Their possession relation is a
by-product of the material part-whole relation between
the two events in which the whole and the part NPs are
included. The main data come from Korean with
occasional comparison with other languages, such as
Swahili, Sotho and Haya.