On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> I already have inherent-possession in Boreanesian. Some nouns are
> such that they must be obligatorily possessed by something. These
> include body parts, kinship terms, and personal adornment. So it'd
> be incorrect to just say "hand" in Boreanesian. One must specify
> whose "hand" e.g., "my hand".

[snip examples]

> All of the above are possessable in the sense that it is not
> incorrect for these nouns to be possessed. In addition, I have
> 'discovered' that Boreanesian has a class of nouns that simply
> cannot be possessed, just like in Tupi. These include heavenly
> bodies, various natural objects, and natural phenomenons. So in
> these words, it'd be incorrect to say "my cloud" for clouds cannot
> be possessed by anyone.

[snip other examples]

> What do you guys think? I have heard of languages that combine
> in/alienable possession with non/inherent possesssion in a similar
> fashion. But I'm wondering if the system outlined above occurs in
> natlangs - it seems natural enough although I don't know any
> languages that have such a system.

I'll answer your question with another question, preceded by a
comment:  In English and other languages, possessive constructions
can be used to denote other kinds of relations besides 'true'
possession (whether alienable or inalienable).  Depending on context,
"John's book" could refer to the book that John possesses, the book that
John wrote, the book that was written about John, the book that John was
assigned to read, the book that John just mentioned in our conversation,
John's favourite book, etc. etc..  As far as I can tell, the expression
"John's book" merely denotes that the book bears some relation to John,
while the exact nature of that relation is pragmatically determined.

How does this fact play into the question of possessibility in
Boreanesian?  In English (as in Boreanesian) it is not possible to
say "my cloud" with the meaning "the cloud that I possess", but this
is a product of our real-world knowledge about clouds, rather than
the result of some grammatical constraint.  It *is* possible to say "my
cloud" in English if some relation other than possession is intended:
Imagine two children lying on the ground watching clouds.  Each child
picks a cloud to watch and reports on its shape:  "My cloud looks like a
duck" "My cloud just turned into dog" etc..  Can you do the same thing in
Boreanesian?

I suspect that whereas the phenomenon of obligatorily possessed nouns
is clearly grammatical (in the narrow sense of the word), the phenomenon
of obligatorily non-possessed nouns is more a function of pragmatics.
Any thoughts?

Matt.