Rafael Orozco
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 46] 2018
► pp. 61–93
This chapter explores the expression of nominal possession by determining the distribution of variants (possessive adjectives, definite articles, possessive periphrases) and the effects of linguistic predictors. Nominal possession is conditioned by eight linguistic predictors (including semantic category of the genitive noun, type of subject, and distance between referent and possessive). As with the expression of futurity, the same conditioning effects obtain in both speaker cohorts. Structurally and diachronically, findings suggest that the incursion of the possessive periphrasis may constitute a manifestation of the crosslinguistic evolutionary process known as diachronic cyclicity which triggers internal syntactic and morphological adjustments. The findings increase our understanding of language variation and change.