Prominent Inteal Possessors

by: András Bárány (Editor),Oliver Bond (Editor),Irina Nikolaeva (Editor)&0more

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Edition: Illustrated

Publication Date: 2019/5/28

Language: English

Print Length: 304 pages

ISBN-10: 0198812140

ISBN-13: 9780198812142

Book Description

This volume is the first to provide a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of an understudied typological phenomenon, the clause-level argument-like behavior of inteal possessors. In some languages, adnominal possessors - or a subset thereof - figure more prominently than expected in the phrase-exteal syntax, by controlling predicate agreement and/or acting as a switch-reference pivot in same-subject relations. There is no independent evidence that such possessors are exteal to the possessive phrase or that they assume head status within it. This creates a puzzle for virtually all syntactic theories, as it is generally believed that agreement and switch-reference target phrasal heads rather than dependents.Following an introduction to the typology of the phenomenon and an overview of possible syntactic analyses, chapters in the volume offer more focused case studies from a wide range of languages spoken in the Americas, Eurasia, South Asia, and Australia. The contributions are largely based on novel data collected by the authors and present thorough discussions of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of prominent inteal possessors in the relevant languages. The volume will be of interest to researchers and students from graduate level upwards in the fields of comparative linguistics, syntax, typology, and semantics.

About the Author

This volume is the first to provide a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of an understudied typological phenomenon, the clause-level argument-like behavior of inteal possessors. In some languages, adnominal possessors - or a subset thereof - figure more prominently than expected in the phrase-exteal syntax, by controlling predicate agreement and/or acting as a switch-reference pivot in same-subject relations. There is no independent evidence that such possessors are exteal to the possessive phrase or that they assume head status within it. This creates a puzzle for virtually all syntactic theories, as it is generally believed that agreement and switch-reference target phrasal heads rather than dependents.Following an introduction to the typology of the phenomenon and an overview of possible syntactic analyses, chapters in the volume offer more focused case studies from a wide range of languages spoken in the Americas, Eurasia, South Asia, and Australia. The contributions are largely based on novel data collected by the authors and present thorough discussions of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of prominent inteal possessors in the relevant languages. The volume will be of interest to researchers and students from graduate level upwards in the fields of comparative linguistics, syntax, typology, and semantics.