Representing possessive predication: Semantic dimensions and pragmatic bases

The linguistic encoding of possessive predication (i.e., the clausal (versus nominal) expression of a possessive relation) shares many surface characteristics with locative and existential predication sentences, reflected by the crosslinguistically frequent marking of possessor-denoting nominals with locative morphology, and further suggested by the Mandarin examples in (1). (1a) woˇ yoˇu shu 'I have (a) book.' (possessive); (1b) zhuo-shang yoˇu shu 'table-upon have book' (i.e. There is a book on the table.) (existential); (1c) shu zai zhuo-shang '(the) book be at table-upon' (locative).; Despite these similarities, I argue that possessive predication should not be structurally unified with either locative or existential predication. My proposal consists of three parts.; First, I distinguish the arguments of locative and possessive verbs based on their linking patterns. I argue, contrary to previous works that treat possessors as animate locations, that the possessor role is the higher argument of a possessive predicate relative to the possessed role, whereas the location role of a locative predicate is the lower role relative to the theme/located role.; Second, I differentiate the structure of light verb possessive sentences (those headed by BE or HAVE, e.g. (1a)) from that of existential sentences (e.g. (1b)), despite their surface similarity. For example, I show that although the same verb form HAVE heads both existential and light verb possessive sentences in Mandarin, a different meaning is encoded by the verb in each. I also show that although BE possessive sentences in Finnish may look surface-identical to existential sentences, they should also be distinguished structurally.; Finally, I argue that existential and light verb possessive sentences share a discourse-pragmatic function. Possessive HAVE sentences have been observed to exhibit a definiteness effect (DE) reminiscent of that in existential sentences. Following proposals attributing the DE of existential sentences to a presentational function, I argue that English have is a presentational verb, functioning to introduce new information into discourse. Evidence for this proposal is based on the behaviour of have sentences allowing definite complements, and on the informational lightness of have, a property shared with other verbs in presentational sentences.