Approaches to Predicative Possession: The View from Slavic and Finno-Ugric ed. by Gréte Dalmi, Jacek Witkoś, and Piotr Cegłowski (review)

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• Approaches to Predicative Possession: The View from Slavic and Finno-Ugric ed. by Gréte Dalmi, Jacek Witkoś, and Piotr Cegłowski
• Ljuba Veselinova

Gréte Dalmi, Jacek Witkoś, and Piotr Cegłowski, eds. Approaches to Predicative Possession: The View from Slavic and Finno-Ugric. London/New York/Oxford/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. viii + 228 pp. ISBN 978-1-3500-6246-7 (hardback), 978-1-3500-6249-8 (online), 978-1-3500-6247-4 (epdf)

It is widely acknowledged that possession is a universal domain in the sense that all known human languages have conventionalized expressions for it, such as (1) and (2) below (cf. Heine 1997: 2). Like most abstract notions, the domain of possession defies a generally accepted definition. Yet, as pointed out by Stassen (2009: 10–11), most linguists and laymen would agree that the expressions in (1) and (2) illustrate cases of "real"/prototypical possession, while intuitions and views would differ on whether sentences such as (3–6) would count as examples of possession.

(1) Tom has a car.

(2) his car

(3) Frank has a sister.

(4) A spider has six legs.

(5) Mandy has a basket on her lap.

(6) Bill has the flu.

The domain of possession has been construed in terms of judicial ownership, belonging, and spatial proximity. Perhaps one of the most accepted analyses sees possession as a relation between two entities, a possessor and a possessee (Langacker 1991; Stassen 2009; Heine 1997). There are authors, such as Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976), who see possession as a social construct; this understanding has been subject to debate. A number of scholars (Seiler 1973; Hagège 1993; Heine 1997; Evans 1995; Stassen 2009, among others) bring up the aspect of control¹ in the relation possessor-possessee. That is, in the prototypical case, the possessor controls the relation over the possessee. This, in turn, entails that a prototypical possessor is a high-ranking animate, usually [End Page 353] a human, and a prototypical possessee is an inanimate object, as is the case in the predication shown in (1). Analyses of kinship relations, as well as encodings of body parts versus the body they belong to, as in (3) and (4), bring out aspects of durability and part-whole relations that contribute to the semantic complexity of the domain of possession. Thus, possessees that can be detached from the possessor without any physical/other kind of damage instantiate alienable possession, while possessees whose detachment leads to permanent destruction, for instance, the removal of one's legs, are examples of inalienable possession. This distinction is marked to varying degrees in different languages. It is barely noticeable, or even completely absent, in many languages of Europe; the native/indigenous languages of the American continents are frequent examples of systematic marking of alienable vs. inalienable possession. The conceptual link between location, existence, and possession has been discussed in numerous publications, Lyons 1967 being one of the seminal articles. Based on the semantic parameters of control, alienability, and spatial proximity, Stassen (2009) offers a distinction between four types of possession: alienable, inalienable, temporary, and abstract.

As indicated by examples (1) and (2) on the previous page, possession can be encoded by means of an entire predication or by modifying a nominal. These two strategies are used in different contexts. It has been demonstrated that they have different discourse functions and obviously completely different structural characteristics. This, in turn, has led many scholars to focus either on predicative or adnominal possession, and two almost completely separate bodies of literature have evolved over time. In work dedicated to predicative possession, issues that have received a lot of attention include the semantic composition of the domain, as well as the structural properties of the strategies employed for its encoding.

This edited volume, Approaches to Predicative Possession: The View from Slavic and Finno-Ugric, is the offspring of a panel on predicative possession, part of the meeting of the British Association for Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEEES), held at Cambridge in March 2017. The book includes an introduction by Gréte Dalmi, nine chapters, and a conclusion by the editors. The introduction sets the scene by...