Talk:Possession (linguistics)

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It's not clear to me that the possessable/not possessable category is correct, or at least that it is different from inalienable/alienable. One doesn't possess a brother (for one thing), but more importantly one *does* possess the farm or land, although the *way* in which one expresses that possession is different. Can someone help me understand this better? Stevemarlett 18:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is simply a grammatical distinction between some nouns that can occur with genitive constructions and others that can. Apparently in Maasai one can grammatically own a brother but not land - simply because land cannot occur with a genitive construction. Inalienable/alienable is the opposite because inalienaby possessed nouns cannot occur without a genitive construction. Maunus 12:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that it's a morphological distinction (not semantic--- therefore no "possessable vs. not possessable"--- and that it (appears to be) just the flip side of the same thing. So if it's the same, said in reverse, then it's odd to present it this way.... I think. Stevemarlett 13:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it does make sense to distingish the two because a language may have a grammatical category of "inalienably possessed nouns" without having the reverse category of "unpossessable nouns". Maunus 15:24, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where features are used is not an explanation

It doesn't suffice for sections on "greater and lesser possession" and "locative possession" to tell us what languages have those features without telling us what those features are. Also, the section on obligatory possession doesn't tell us what it is, and distinguishes it from inalienable possession only in terms of semantics versus morphemes, still without saying what the difference is. Largoplazo (talk) 16:54, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]