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Article In:
Linguistic Constructions
Edited by Beata Trawiński, Marc Kupietz and Kristel Proost
[Languages in Contrast 24:2] 2024
► pp. 272–297

Contrasts in the Spanish and Korean external possession constructions

A Construction Grammar approach

ORCID logo | University of California DavisUSA
ORCID logo | Kyung Hee UniversityKorea
In many languages, an argument external to a nominal can be interpreted as a possessor of that nominal. Korean and Spanish both have such constructions, but the external possessors contrast in their case features, grammatical functions, distribution, and semantic properties (e.g. alienability). This paper develops a Construction Grammar account that treats external possessors as unselected arguments licensed through a conventional implicature.
Keywords: Possession, Construction Grammar, Alienability, Conventional implicature, Korean/Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The EPC in Korean and Spanish
    • 2.1Two case realization patterns in the EPC
    • 2.2Grammatical relations in the EPC
    • 2.3Inalienable possession and the EPC
    • 2.4Summary
  • 3.Additional facts, previous accounts
    • 3.1Syntactic accounts
    • 3.2The Union (Multipredicate) account
    • 3.3Semantic/pragmatic accounts
  • 4.Unselected arguments, the EPC, and Construction Grammar
    • 4.1Unselected arguments in Construction Grammar and external possessors
    • 4.2Assigning an interpretation to unselected arguments
  • 5.Consequences for typology
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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