External possession - what is it?

[Das Baron]

I'm having trouble grasping the concept of "external possession". For example, the German Tim hat der Nachbarin das Auto gewaschen "Tim washed the neighbour's car" (lit. "Tim washed the car to the neighbour"). How does this differ from regular possession, using something like the genitive case or a preposition meaning "of"?

[gach]

In my understanding external possession or possessor raising often has to do with the focus of the action being on the possessor of the object rather than on the object itself. In the German example the more relevant information is that the neighbour gets her car washed, not just that someone's car has been washed.

The form external possession takes can be very different from direct attributive possession and the act or possessor raising doesn't have to resemble switching a genitive like case or adposition to a dative like case or adposition at all. In Yimas external possession is an available strategy for marking possessors of body parts. The marking is done by dative person/number inflection on the main verb,

yampaŋ kɨ-mpu-ŋa-kra-t
head(CL6) CL6.O-PL3.S-SG1.DAT-cut-PERF
"They cut my hair."

Compare this to the standard way of indicating possession by suffixing the possessor with -na and using it as an attribute,

patn waykɨ-k ama-na-kɨn wa-n
betelnut(CL5) buy-IRR SG1-POSS-CL5 go-PRES
"Go buy my betelnut."

[Cedh]

Polysynthetic languages often use noun incorporation to indicate external possession, as in this example from Guaraní:

a-johei-ta

1.ACC-wash-FUT

pe-mitã

that-child

rova

face

"I'll wash that child's face" (internal possessor, focus on "face")

a-hova-hei-ta

1.ACC-face-wash-FUT

pe-mitã

that-child

"I'll wash that child's face" (lit. "I'll face-wash that child"; external possessor, focus on "that child")

[Das Baron]

In my understanding external possession or possessor raising often has to do with the focus of the action being on the possessor of the object rather than on the object itself. In the German example the more relevant information is that the neighbour gets her car washed, not just that someone's car has been washed.

The form external possession takes can be very different from direct attributive possession and the act or possessor raising doesn't have to resemble switching a genitive like case or adposition to a dative like case or adposition at all. In Yimas external possession is an available strategy for marking possessors of body parts. The marking is done by dative person/number inflection on the main verb,

yampaŋ kɨ-mpu-ŋa-kra-t
head(CL6) CL6.O-PL3.S-SG1.DAT-cut-PERF
"They cut my hair."

Compare this to the standard way of indicating possession by suffixing the possessor with -na and using it as an attribute,

patn waykɨ-k ama-na-kɨn wa-n
betelnut(CL5) buy-IRR SG1-POSS-CL5 go-PRES
"Go buy my betelnut."

Is there a different meaning that goes along with external possession besides just emphasis? For example, I assume external possession could be limited in a language to only indicating "inalienable" possession (e.g. "My book [that I wrote]" vs. "My book [that I bought]"). In Germanic languages, though, I take it that external possession is used much more broadly than just inalienably.

[gach]

I guess it depends entirely on the language in question. External possession is just a mechanism to raise the possessor to a more central syntactic position within the clause (from an attribute into a recipient in the German and Yimas examples and into a patient in the Guaraní example). It's up to the language how this shift gets used.

In the examples I'm aware of, external possession reflects the relative focality of the possessor and possessee. I wouldn't call it "emphasis" since there doesn't have to be any extra emphasis (or added contrastiveness) on the possessor. There's simply a hierarchy in the perceived information content between the possessor and possessee and the possessor being sufficiently much higher than the possessee happens to trigger a different strategy of possession marking.

It would be nice to know if there are languages where the primary feature correlating with external possession is inalienability. I can't remember if any Romance language uses external possession for anything else than body parts but even in this case the real correlator isn't alienability but bodypartness. In Yimas nouns that can trigger external possession include mainly body parts but also personal characteristics such as the name or voice of a person (another subset of semantically inalienable possessions) and insects on the skin (as an extension of body parts but not inalienable).

[Das Baron]

I guess it depends entirely on the language in question. External possession is just a mechanism to raise the possessor to a more central syntactic position within the clause (from an attribute into a recipient in the German and Yimas examples and into a patient in the Guaraní example). It's up to the language how this shift gets used.

In the examples I'm aware of, external possession reflects the relative focality of the possessor and possessee. I wouldn't call it "emphasis" since there doesn't have to be any extra emphasis (or added contrastiveness) on the possessor. There's simply a hierarchy in the perceived information content between the possessor and possessee and the possessor being sufficiently much higher than the possessee happens to trigger a different strategy of possession marking.

It would be nice to know if there are languages where the primary feature correlating with external possession is inalienability. I can't remember if any Romance language uses external possession for anything else than body parts but even in this case the real correlator isn't alienability but bodypartness. In Yimas nouns that can trigger external possession include mainly body parts but also personal characteristics such as the name or voice of a person (another subset of semantically inalienable possessions) and insects on the skin (as an extension of body parts but not inalienable).

Thanks, that's what I needed to know.