Possession (Linguistics)

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 sacred or treasured objects. Furthermore the degree to which possess...

Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum, and has only one class of alienables. The Japanese language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inali...

This paper investigates the role of the particles  māl,  ḥāl,  ḥagg  and  ḥaqq  in the Arabic dialects of Oman. These particles have often been described as markers of possession in Omani Arabic: however, the data
presented in this article seem to indicate that these elements are employed to express a wide variety of NP internal specifications that go well beyond the realm of linguistic possession, and that they can also be used predicatively outside the boundaries of a NP. ḥāl and ḥagg, in particular, should probably not be described as genitive markers at all. The syntactic and pragmatic contexts in which the aforementioned markers can be used will be discussed, along with the range of meanings and semantic categories they can express.

During the Bronze Age, in many Western Mediterranean areas (Spain, France, Italian peninsula, islands), we can observe the development of a series of fortified centers and structures, often on high places, aimed to the defense of strategic locations and resources. These fortifications, which began to be built from the Copper Age, are the answer to a need for possession and control of the territory linked to a greater degree of social complexity, with an ever-increasing hierarchy and the rise to power of persons or groups who very often show the possession of weapons and, consequently, can be related to warlike activities. In Sardinia, Nuragic phenomenon developed during Protohistoy: an extraordinary culture ranging from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (XVIII-XII centuries BC), some of whose features could last from Final Bronze Age until the beginnings of Iron Age (XI-VIII centuries BC), characterized by the building of great monuments, especially nuraghi, cyclopean-type constructions...

Apoptosis, one of the major regulated cell death pathways, is a highly regulated suicide mechanism used for the elimination of damaged and unwanted cells in multicellular organisms. Derailed apoptosis has been observed in two extremes of the disease spectrum, for example, cancer (too little apoptosis) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI; too much apoptosis). Using human cellular models and patient samples, we have previously shown that human apolipoprotein L6 (ApoL6), when overexpressed intracellularly, induces mitochondria-and reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated apoptosis. ApoL6 also blocks Beclin 1-initiated autophagy in both human colorectal cancer cells (DLD-1) and atherosclerotic lesion-derived cells. We speculated that small compounds enhancing ApoL6-induced apoptosis are candidate drugs to treat cancer. In the present study, we use our established human cellular models, high throughput and targeted screening strategies, and well-defined assays to identify nifedipine, L-proline, L-tryptophan, and picolinic acid as antiapoptotic agents, which would be candidate drugs for treating diseases such as AMI. We also identified fulvestrant and L-lysine, two compounds that can further enhance ApoL6-induced apoptosis in cancer cells.

The category of inalienable possession in Russian can be discovered in models with a zero-suffix that describe the structure of compound Adjectives and Adjectives with prefix без-. These models have restricted productiveness in Russian. Some semantic and phonetic restrictions on their functioning are discussed. It is supposed that thr model in question was developed in determining the most important components of the human image.

Although possession has long been intimately linked to labor, recent historical work on land claims during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suggests that the clash of divergent legal cultures of possession drove the two apart. This clash yielded an American concept of possession much more deeply connected to industrialization than the traditional understanding of labor. By providing evidence of how our concept of labor was industrialized, this article questions the outcomes in modem possession cases, particularly as they impact development and environmental preservation in rural areas. II. INTRODUCTION Within the common law, our theoretical justifications for private property tend to assume an initial blank slate and, from there, elaborate a defensible rule of first possession.' This primacy of possession has been justified on a number of grounds from economic efficiency to self

Résumé/Abstract Pour décrire la pratique de possession par l'esprit telle qu'elle est pratiquée à Mahikari, l'A. procède en cinq étapes. Il aborde le système de croyance qui génère l'attitude de possession, puis la psyche individuelle (le substrat sociopsychologique qui rend possible l'attitude de possession), l'induction (pratique qui encourage la possession), l'autorisation (attribution du contrôle de soi à une entité possédante), et la trance (état psychosociologique de possession). Après avoir expliqué ces croyances, il ...

Let Σ 2n be the set of all partitions of the even integers from the interval (4, 2n], n > 2, into two odd prime parts. We show that | Σ 2n |∼ 2n 2 / log 2 n as n → ∞. We also assume that a partition is selected uniformly at random from the set Σ 2n. Let 2X n ∈ (4, 2n] be the size of this partition. We prove a limit theorem which establishes that X n /n converges weakly to the maximum of two random variables which are independent copies of a uniformly distributed random variable in the interval (0, 1). Our method of proof is based on a classical Tauberian theorem due to Hardy, Littlewood and Karamata. We also show that the same asymptotic approach can be applied to partitions of integers into an arbitrary and fixed number of odd prime parts.

Bakairi, a language spoken in southern Amazonia, has a gamut of marking devices of possession and ownership. Whether the possessed entity is of the animate or inanimate class, the employed mechanism is different. Hypernyms are often used to help determine if the possessed noun is an object, a meat meal, a vegetarian meal, or even a fruit meal. Affixes can help determine if the possessed item is still connected to its whole or if it has been detached. Different affixes can help distinguish if the family member is consanguineal or affinal. Finally, if a body part is used in a predicative sentence, it becomes incorporated in the verb, somewhat like the backformation of the English verbs to babysit, to housekeep, or to bookkeep. These mechanisms are quite relevant in the culture. There are very few people to choose from to be a spouse, so it is vital to know who is not consanguineal. Animacy is also very important because humans are included with animals in the animate class. Intrinsically possessed nouns must be incorporated, otherwise, they appear as detached objects. Being a qualitative study, this article sheds light on an undocumented language in order to help corroborate linguistic theory, propose hypotheses, and further understand world languages. The primary aim of the article is to provide a description of mechanisms of the expression of possession and ownership in Bakairi.