Inalienable possession

Inalienable possession (opposed to alienable possession) in linguistics is a relationship between two objects indicating that they are (possibly on a less-than-physical level) connected in some way that cannot be changed. Some languages, such as Dholuo, mark this distinction with different forms.

Both inalienable possession and alienable possession fall under a broader possessive category in most familiar languages, including English, Latin, and Arabic, where this distinction is not marked, and therefore not referred to.

In World Atlas of Language Structures, alienable vs. inalienable possession is considered as the most common nontrivial subcase of possessive classification. [http://www.livingreviews.org/wals/feature/description/59 Possessive Classification] It is found in many (roughly half of) African, American, Australian and Papuan languages, but very few languages from the mainland of Eurasia. [http://www.livingreviews.org/wals/feature/59?v1=cfff&v2=cff0&v3=cf60&v4=cd00&tg_format=map&lat=5.5&lng=152.58&z=2&t=m Map]

What counts as inalienable possession varies from one language to another. It may be used for family relationships, body parts, and authorship, among other things. It is therefore often impossible to say that a particular relationship is an example of inalienable possession without specifying the languages for which that holds true. Bernd Heine argues that the categories of inalienability are so variable because of processes of linguistic change: "rather than being a semantically defined category, inalienability is more likely to constitute a morpho-syntactic or morphophonological entity, one that owes its existence to the fact that certain nouns happened to be left out when a new pattern for marking attributive possession arose." [Bernd Heine "Possession: Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization". 1997:182] .

Examples

Dholuo

The first Dholuo example is a case of alienable possession, as the bone is not part of the dog.

:cogo guok :bone dog:'the dog's bone' (which it is eating)

The following is however an example of inalienable possession, the bone being part of the cow:

:cok dhiang' :bone (construct state) cow:'a cow bone' [A. N. Tucker "A Grammar of Kenya Luo (Dholuo)" 1984:198]

Mandarin

References