Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Determiners: articles and pronouns 743
possessee is part of a locational PP and there is a PP-external noun phrase that may
act as an inalienable possessor, there is a free alternation between the possessive
pronoun and the definite determiner; cf. Broekhuis & Cornips (1997). A typical
example is given in (186a). The PPs in inalienable possession constructions of this
sort function as °complementives, which is clear from the fact, illustrated in (186b),
that they cannot undergo PP-over-V. Another typical property of these examples,
which is illustrated in (186c), is that the possessor at least marginally alternates with
a bij-PP; cf. Corver (1992).
(186) a. Marie heeft Jani het kind in zijni/dei armen geduwd.
she has Jan the child into his/the arms pushed
‘Marie has pushed the child into Jan’s arms.’
b. *Marie heeft Jani het kind geduwd in zijni/dei armen
c. (?) Marie heeft het kind bij Jani in zijni/dei armen geduwd.
Example (186a) shows that the inalienable possessor is the object Jan. This
exhausts the possibilities: the subject Marie cannot function as the possessor. The
following discussion addresses the question of when a noun phrase may function as
an inalienable possessor, and with a brief note on the argument that the
complementive PP containing the possessee is predicated of.
A. Dative possessors
In German, inalienable possessors are typically dative phrases (which holds both for
locational and non-locational inalienable possession constructions). Although Dutch
does not show morphological case distinctions, the same thing is arguably true for
locational constructions like (186a). In order to see this, consider the structurally
similar example in (187a). That the possessor is not accusative but dative is clear
from °passive formation: example (187b) shows that in the regular passive, it is not
the possessor Jan that gets promoted to subject, but the noun phrase de boeken ‘the
books’; (187c) shows that in the so-called krijgen-passive the possessor is promoted
to subject. This is sufficient to conclude that the possessor is an indirect object, and
is hence assigned (abstract) dative case.
(187) a. Marie heeft Jani de boeken in dei armen geduwd.
Marie has Jan the books into the arms pushed
‘Marie has pushed the books in Jan’s arms.’
b. De boeken werden Jani in dei armen geduwd.
c. Jani kreeg de boeken in dei armen geduwd.
Note that example (187c) shows that inalienable possessors may function as
subjects when they correspond to an “underlying” indirect object. We will discuss
this more extensively in the next subsection.
B. Nominative possessors
The previous subsection has shown that a subject may function as inalienable
possessor when it corresponds to an underlying indirect object. Now consider the
examples in (188) with the verb geven ‘to give’. Example (188b) is excluded due to
the fact that krijgen-passivization of the verb geven is impossible. Broekhuis &