Possession and ownership in Modern Uyghur

The article deals with the linguistic expression of possession and ownership in Modern Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken in Northern China. It describes the structure and semantics of Uyghur attributive and predicative possessive constructions and their interaction with the categories of inalienability, tense, aspect and mood. The paper distinguishes canonical and non-canonical possessive constructions, and shows their semantic and structural features. Special attention is paid to the structure of complex constructions with possessors and possessees as subjects of dependent clauses with the predicate in the -(i)p converb form. The relations of inalienability between the subjects of the dependent and main clauses license this use of the -(i)p converb.