Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity

This paper argues that alienability contrasts in adnominal possessive constructions should not be explained by iconicity of distance, but by predictability due to the higher relative frequency of possessed occurrences of inalienable nouns. While it is true that when there is an alienability split,...

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Bibliographic Details

Published in:	Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
Main Author:	Haspelmath Martin
Format:	Article
Language:	German
Published:	De Gruyter 2017-11-01
Subjects:	inalienable possession coding asymmetry functional explanation iconicity
Online Access:	https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2017-0009