Cover not available
Article published In:
Into adpositions: New formal perspectives on the structure of the PP and its variation
Edited by Víctor Acedo-Matellán, Theresa Biberauer, Jaume Mateu and Anna Pineda
[Linguistic Variation 21:1] 2021
► pp. 174–213

Intersecting location and possession

| SFL - CNRS/Université Paris-8/SFL | UiL OTS - Utrecht University
The focus of this paper is the possessive relation arising in several configurations between the complement of a locative preposition (u ‘at/by’ and k(o) ‘towards’ in Russian, bij ‘by’ in Dutch and la ‘to/at’ in Romanian, henceforth, u-preposition, heading a u-PP) and another NP in the same clause. I will show that u-PPs can introduce a number of distinct possessive relations in function of the syntactic context and that languages differ subtly in the matter of which such relations are available in which contexts. I will attribute this variation to the different semantic domains of these possessive PPs (locus-modifiers as opposed to event-modifiers) arising from the lexical specification of the possessive relators lexicalized by these prepositions.
Keywords: locative, possession, (in)alienable, part-whole, possessive control
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The syntax of the possessive PP complex
    • 2.1Headedness
    • 2.2Extraction from the possessive PP complex
    • 2.3Adjunct or specifier?
  • 3.The configuration of possession in possessive PP complexes
    • 3.1Small-clause structure
    • 3.2ApplP as the locus of possessive semantics
    • 3.3The possessive PP complex as an intersection of locations
  • 4.The semantics of locative possession
    • 4.1Flavors of locative possession
    • 4.2The spectrum of possessive relations arising with u-PPs
    • 4.3Potential reasons for variation in the use of u-PPs
  • 5.Conclusion and further questions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 24 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00036.mat
References (100)
Bibliography
Anderson, Mona. 2017. Affectedness. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, ed. by Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk. Available at DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arylova, Aysa. 2013. Possession in the Russian Clause: Towards Dynamicity in Syntax, Doctoral dissertation, Universiteit Groningen.Google Scholar
Authier, Gilles. 2012. Grammaire juhuri, ou judéo-tat, langue iranienne des Juifs du Caucase de l’est. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
Bally, Charles. 1926. L’expression des idées de sphère personnelle et de solidarité dans les langues indo-européennes. In Festschrift Louis Gauchat, ed. by Franz Frankhauser and Jakob Jud, pp. 68–78. Aarau: Sauerländer.Google Scholar
Belk, Russell W. 1988. Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research 151, pp. 139–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belvin, Robert. 1996. Inside Events: The Non-possessive Meanings of Possessive Predicates and the Semantic Conceptualization of Events, Doctoral dissertation, USC.Google Scholar
Belvin, Robert and Marcel den Dikken. 1997. There, happens, to, be, have. Lingua 1011, pp. 151–183.Google Scholar
Berman, Ruth A. 1981. Dative marking of the affected in Modern Hebrew. In Theoretical Issues in the Grammar of Semitic Languages ed. by Hagit Borer and Youssef Aoun. MITWPL 31, pp. 150–179. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MITWPL.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, Manfred. 1988. On the grammar of local prepositions. In Syntax, Semantik und Lexikon, ed. by Manfred Bierwisch, Wolfgang Motsch, and Ilse Zimmermann. Studia Grammatica XXIX1, pp. 1–65. Berlin: Akademie.Google Scholar
Boneh, Nora and Ivy Sichel. 2010. Deconstructing possession. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 281, pp. 1–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Broekhuis, Hans and Leonie Cornips. 1997. Inalienable possession in locational constructions. Lingua 1011, pp. 185–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Broekhuis, Hans, Leonie Cornips, and Maarten de Wind. 1996. Inalienable possession in locational constructions: an apparent problem. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1996, ed. by Crit Cremers and Marcel den Dikken, pp. 31–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brugman, Claudia Marlea. 1988. The Syntax and Semantics of ‘have’ and its Complements, Doctoral dissertation, UC Berkeley.Google Scholar
Caha, Pavel. 2007. Case Movement in PPs. Nordlyd: Tromsø Working Papers on Language & Linguistics 34.2. Special Issue on Space, Motion, and Result, ed. by Monika Bašić, Marina Pantcheva, Minjeong Son, and Peter Svenonius, pp. 239–299.Google Scholar
. 2010. The German locative-directional alternation. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 131, pp. 179–223. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chappell, Hilary and William McGregor. 1996a. Prolegomena to a theory of inalienability. In The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part-whole Relation, ed. by Hilary Chappell and William McGregor, pp. 3–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
eds. 1996b. The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part-whole Relation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chodova, K. I. 1966. Sintaksis predloga s roditel’nym padežom v staroslavjanskom jazyke. Scando-Slavica 121, pp. 96–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chvany, Catherine V. 1975. On the Syntax of BE-Sentences in Russian. Ann Arbor: Slavica.Google Scholar
Cienki, Alan. 1995. The semantics of possessive and spatial constructions in Russian and Bulgarian: a comparative analysis in cognitive grammar. The Slavic and East European Journal 391, pp. 73–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1999. Spatial cases in Daghestanian languages. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 521, pp. 108–117.Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra, Anca Dinu, and Alina Tigӑu. 2017. Romanian dative configurations: Ditransitive verbs, a tentative analysis. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 621, pp. 179–206.Google Scholar
Corver, Norbert. 1992a. “Bij Marie in de nek”. Interne structuur en extractiegedrag. Gramma/JTT 11, pp. 21–40.Google Scholar
. 1992b. Left branch extraction. In Proceedings of NELS 22, ed. by Kimberley Broderick, pp. 67–84. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts, GLSA.Google Scholar
Creissels, Denis. 2009. Spatial cases. In The Oxford Handbook of Case, ed. by Andrej Malchukov and Andrew Spencer, pp. 609–625. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. 1998. Alienability splits and the grammaticalization of possessive constructions. In Papers from the 16th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, ed. by Timo Haukioja. Publications of the Department of Finnish and General Linguistics of the University of Turku 601, pp. 38–49. Turku: University of Turku.Google Scholar
. 2001. Kinship in grammar. In Dimensions of Possession, ed. by Irène Baron, Michael Herslund, and Finn Sørensen, pp. 201–225. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deal, Amy Rose. 2013. Possessor raising. Linguistic Inquiry 441, pp. 391–432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. External possession and possessor raising. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, ed. by Martin Everaert and Henk C. van Riemsdijk. Available at DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diffloth, Gérard. 1974. Body moves in Semai and French. In Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, April 19–21, 1974, ed. by Michael W. La Galy, Robert Allen Fox, and Anthony Bruck, pp. 128–138. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
den Dikken, Marcel. 2003. On the syntax of locative and directional adpositional phrases. Ms., CUNY.Google Scholar
. 2006. Relators and linkers: The syntax of predication, Predicate Inversion, and copulas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. On the functional structure of locative and directional PPs. In The Cartography of Syntactic Structure, vol. 61, ed. by Guglielmo Cinque and Luigi Rizzi, pp. 74–126. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dowty, David and Chris Barker. 1992. Non-verbal thematic proto-roles. In Proceedings of NELS 23, vol. 11, ed. by Amy J. Schafer, pp. 49–62. Amherst, Massachusetts: GSLA.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas. 1995. A Grammar of Kayardild. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gönczöl-Davies, Ramona. 2008. Romanian: an Essential Grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grashchenkov, Pavel and Vita G. Markman. 2008. Non-core arguments in verbal and nominal predication: high and low applicatives and possessor raising. In Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. by Natasha Abner and Jason Bishop, pp. 185–193. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1976. Lexical Structures in Syntax and Semantics. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Guéron, Jacqueline. 2006. Inalienable possession. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ed. by Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, pp. 589–638. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2017. Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 361, pp. 193–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heim, Irene and Angelika Kratzer. 1998. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Possession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herslund, Michael and Irène Baron. 2001. Semantics of the verb HAVE. In Dimensions of possession, ed. by Michael Herslund, Irène Baron, and Finn Sørensen, pp. 85–98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Iordanskaja, Lidija and Igor Mel’čuk. 1995. *Glaza Maši golubye vs. Glaza u Maši golubye: Choosing between two Russian constructions in the domain of body parts. In The Language and Verse of Russia. In Honor of Dean S. Worth on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. by Henryk Birnbaum and Michael S. Flier, pp. 147–171. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura.Google Scholar
Isačenko, Alexandr V. 1974. On ‘have’ and ‘be’ languages (a typological sketch). In Slavic Forum: Essays in Linguistics and Literature, ed. by Michael S. Flier. Slavistic Printings and Reprintings 2771, pp. 43–77. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karvovskaya, Lena. 2018. The Typology and Formal Semantics of Adnominal Possession, Doctoral dissertation, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Kondrashova, Natalia. 1996. The Syntax of Existential Quantification, Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison.Google Scholar
Koopman, Hilda. 2000. Prepositions, postpositions, circumpositions, and particles. In The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads, ed. by Hilda Koopman, pp. 204–260. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kracht, Marcus. 2002. On the semantics of locatives. Linguistics and Philosophy 251, pp. 157–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Bruyn, Bert, Henriëtte de Swart, and Joost Zwarts. 2016. From HAVE to HAVE-verbs: Relations and incorporation. Lingua 1821, pp. 49–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leont’ev, A. P. 2005. Влияние типа генитивного отношения на конструкции с внешним посессором в русском языке Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии 51, pp. 364–368.Google Scholar
Lestrade, Sander. 2006. Adpositional case, MA thesis: Radboud University Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Livitz, Inna. 2012. Modal possessive constructions: Evidence from Russian. Lingua 1221, pp. 714–747. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 2009. External and internal possessors with body part nouns: the case of Norwegian. SKY Journal of Linguistics 221, pp. 221–250.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. Formal syntax, diachronic minimalism, and etymology: the history of French chez . Linguistic Inquiry 321, pp. 275–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luraghi, Silvia, Erica Pinelli, and Chiara Naccarato. 2018. The preposition u in Modern Standard Russian. Ms., University of Padua.Google Scholar
Markman, Vita. 2009. Applicatives TO, FROM, and AT: On dative and locative possessors in Russian. In Proceedings of the 38th Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, vol. 21, ed. by Anisa Schardl, Martin Walkow, and Muhammad Abdurrahman, pp. 123–134. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Matushansky, Ora. 2008. A case study of predication. In Studies in Formal Slavic Linguistics. Contributions from Formal Description of Slavic Languages 6.5, ed. by Franc Marušič and Rok Žaucer, pp. 213–239. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2010. Russian predicate case, encore . In Proceedings of FDSL 7.5, ed. by Gerhild Zybatow, Philip Dudchuk, Serge Minor, and Ekaterina Pshehotskaya, pp. 117–135. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2012. On the internal structure of case in Finno-Ugric small clauses. Finno-Ugric Languages and Linguistics 11, pp. 3–43.Google Scholar
. 2016. Case as a complex of features. Paper presented at TIN-dag 2016 , Utrecht, February 6, 2016.
. [to appear]. The case of restricted locatives. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 231.
Matushansky, Ora, Nora Boneh, Léa Nash, and Natalia Slioussar. [to appear]. To PPs in their proper place. In Proceedings of FASL 26, ed. by Tania Ionin and Jonathan MacDonald. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Michigan Slavic Publications.
Nam, Hye Hyun. 2013. Конструкции с внешним посессором в русском языке как диатетическое явление и их семантико-дискурсивные функции. Russian Linguistics 371, pp. 175–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neumann, Dorothea. 1996. The dative and the grammar of body parts in German. In The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part-Whole Relation, ed. by Hilary Chappell and William McGregor, pp. 745–779. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Johanna. 1988. On alienable and inalienable possession. In Honor of Mary Haas, ed. by William Shipley, pp. 475–521. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Padučeva, E. V. 2004. Splitting of possessive NPs and external possessor in Russian. In Possessives and Beyond: Semantics and Syntax, ed. by Ji-yung Kim, Yury A. Lander, and Barbara H. Partee. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 291, pp. 351–363. Amherst, Massachussetts: GLSA Publications.Google Scholar
Paykin, Katia and Marleen van Peteghem. 2003. External vs. internal possessor structures and inalienability in Russian. Russian Linguistics 271, pp. 329–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2008. Split phrases in colloquial Russian. Studia Linguistica 621, pp. 5–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 2013. Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Philippova, Tatiana. [to appear]. Ambivalent adpositions and “P-stranding” in Russian. Linguistic Inquiry.
Pshekhotskaya, Ekaterina A. 2012. Косвенное дополнение как субкатегоризованный и несубкатегоризованный актант (на материале русского языка), Doctoral dissertation, Moscow State University.Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2002. Introducing arguments, Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MITWPL.Google Scholar
Ritter, Elisabeth and Sara Thomas Rosen. 1997. The function of have . Lingua 1011, pp. 295–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rooryck, Johan. 2017. Reconsidering inalienable possession in French. Ms., Leiden University.Google Scholar
Sæbø, Kjell Johan. 2009. Possession and pertinence: the meaning of have . Natural Language Semantics 171, pp. 369–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Šatunovskij, I. B. 2000. Predloženija naličija vs. bytijnye i lokativnye predloženija v russkom jazyke (Presence-sentences vs. existential and locative sentences in Russian). In Logičeskij analiz jazyka: jazyki prostranstv (Logical Analysis of Language: Languages of Space), ed. by N. D. Arutjunova and I. B. Levontina, pp. 189–197. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kultury.Google Scholar
Scholten, Jolien. 2018. The Ins and Outs of External Possession – A Micro-comparative Perspective, Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Seiler, Hansjakob. 1973. Zum Problem der sprachlichen Possessivität. Folia Linguistica 61, pp. 231–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1983. Possession as an Operational Dimension of Language. Tubingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Seliverstova, O. N. 1973. Semantičeskii analiz predikativnyx pritiažatel’nykh konstruktsij s glagolom byt’ . Voprosy jazykoznanija 221, pp. 95–105.Google Scholar
2004. Труды по семантике (Trudy po semantike). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.Google Scholar
Stassen, Leon. 2009. Predicative Possession. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Storto, Gianluca. 2003. Possessives in context: Issues in the semantics of possessive constructions, Doctoral dissertation, UCLA.Google Scholar
Svenonius, Peter. 2008. Projections of P. In Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P, ed. by Anna Asbury, Jakub Dotlacil, Berit Gehrke, and Rick Nouwen, pp. 63–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Spatial P in English. In The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 61, ed. by Guglielmo Cinque and Luigi Rizzi, pp. 127–160. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tham, Shiao Wei. 2006. The Definiteness Effect in English have sentences. In Proceedings of the 2004 Texas Linguistics Society Conference, ed. by Pascal Denis, Eric McCready, Alexis Palmer, and Brian Reese, pp. 137–149. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Timberlake, Alan. 2004. A Reference Grammar of Russian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tsedryk, Egor. 2008. Possesseurs datifs devant syntagmes prépositionnels. In Actes du congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne de linguistique 2008/Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, ed. by Susie Jones. Available at [URL]
. 2017. Locatives and datives in Russian: to be AT or to be TO, and how high can they be? Paper presented at Workshop “Datives and beyond”, UAB, January 26–27, 2017.
Tsunoda, Tasaku. 1996. The possession cline in Japanese and other languages. In The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part-whole Relation, ed. by Hilary Chappell and William McGregor, pp. 565–630. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vikner, Carl and Per Anker Jensen. 2002. A semantic analysis of the English genitive: Interaction of lexical and formal semantics. Studia Linguistica 561, pp. 191–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waltke, Bruce K. and Michael Patrick O’Connor. 1990. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1988. The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yanko, T. E. 2000. Bytovanie i obladanie: konstrukcii s glagolom byt’ (Being and possession: constructions with the verb byt’ ‘be’). In Logičeskij analiz jazyka: jazyki prostranstv (Logical Analysis of Language: Languages of Space), ed. by N. D. Arutjunova and I. B. Levontina, pp. 198–211. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kultury.Google Scholar
Zimmerling, A. V. 2000. Обладать и быть рядом. In Логический анализ языка. Языки пространств, ed. by N. D. Arutjunova and I. B. Levontina, pp. 179–188. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.Google Scholar
Zwarts, Joost. 2005. The case of prepositions: Government and compositionality in German PPs. Paper presented at Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics 21, The Technion , Haifa, June 22–23, 2005.
. 2006. Case marking direction: The accusative in German PPs. Paper presented at CLS 42 , Chicago, April 6–8, 2006.
Zwarts, Joost and Yoad Winter. 2000. Vector space semantics: a model-theoretic analysis of locative prepositions. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 91, pp. 169–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar