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Possession and Ownership brings together linguists and anthropologists in a series of cross-linguistic explorations of expressions used to denote possession and ownership, concepts central to most if not all the varied cultures and ideologies of humankind. Possessive noun phrases can be broadly divided into three categories - ownership of property, whole-part relations (such as body and plant parts), and blood and affinal kinship relations. As Professor
Aikhenvald shows in her extensive opening essay, the same possessive noun or pronoun phrase is used in English and in many other Indo-European languages to express possession of all three kinds - as in 'Ann and
her husband Henry live in the castle Henry's father built with his own hands' - but that this is by no means the case in all languages. In some, for example, the grammar expresses the inalienability of consanguineal kinship and sometimes also of treasured or sacred objects. Furthermore the degree to which possession and ownership are conceived as the same (when possession is 100% of the law) differs from one society to another, and this may be reflected in their linguistic expression. Like
others in the series this pioneering book will be welcomed equally by linguists and anthropologists.
Possession and Ownership brings together linguists and anthropologists in a series of cross-linguistic explorations of expressions used to denote possession and ownership, concepts central to most if not all the varied cultures and ideologies of humankind. Possessive noun phrases can be broadly divided into three categories - ownership of property, whole-part relations (such as body and plant parts), and blood and affinal kinship relations. As Professor
Aikhenvald shows in her extensive opening essay, the same possessive noun or pronoun phrase is used in English and in many other Indo-European languages to express possession of all three kinds - as in 'Ann and
her husband Henry live in the castle Henry's father built with his own hands' - but that this is by no means the case in all languages. In some, for example, the grammar expresses the inalienability of consanguineal kinship and sometimes also of treasured or sacred objects. Furthermore the degree to which possession and ownership are conceived as the same (when possession is 100% of the law) differs from one society to another, and this may be reflected in their linguistic expression. Like
others in the series this pioneering book will be welcomed equally by linguists and anthropologists.
1: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald: Possession and ownership: a
cross-linguistic perspective
2: Isabelle Bril: Ownership, part-whole and other
possessive-associated relations in Nêlêmwa
3: Gloria J. Gravelle: Possession in Moskona, an East Bird's Head
language
4: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald: Possession and ownership in Manambu, a
Ndu Language from the Sepik area, Papua New Guinea
5: Alan Dench: Possession in Martuthunira
6: Lev Michael: Possession in Nanti
7: Mark W. Post: Possession and association in Galo language and
culture
8: Yongxian Luo: Possessive constructions in Chinese
9: Anne Storch: Possession in Hone
10: Felix Ameka: Possession in Lipke
11: Zygmunt Frajzyngier: Possession in Wandala
12: Michael Wood: Spirits of the forest, the wind, and new wealth:
defining some of the possibilities, and limits, of Kamula
possession
13: Rosita Henry: Being and belonging: exchange, value, and land
ownership in the Western highlands of Papua New Guinea
14: R. M. W. Dixon: Possession and also ownership - vignettes
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Distinguished Professor, Australian
Laureate Fellow, and Director of the Language and Culture Research
Centre at James Cook University. She is a major authority on
languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has
written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar
of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge University Press,
2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal
features of South
American languages. Her other major publications, with OUP, include
Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (2000),
Language Contact in Amazonia(2002), Evidentiality (2004), The
Manambu
Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea, (2008), Imperatives and
Commands (2010), Languages of the Amazon (2012), and The Art of
Grammar (forthcoming). R. M. W. Dixon is Adjunct Professor and
Deputy Director of the Language and Culture Research Centre at
James Cook University. He has published grammars of a number of
Australian languages (including Dyirbal and Yidiñ), in addition to
A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian (University of Chicago Press, 1988), The
Jarawara Language of Southern
Amazonia (Oxford University Press, 2004;, paperback 2011) and A
Semantic Approach to English Grammar (Oxford University Press,
2005). He is also the author of the three volume work Basic
Linguistic Theory (Oxford
University Press, 2010-12) and of an academic autobiography I am a
linguist (Brill, 2011).
`This volume, the result of cooperation among eminent linguists and
anthropologists, is a significant intellectual achievement.'
Lars Johanson, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Project Muse
12/05/14
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