Dimensions of Possession - elchacocomoarealinguistica

have in Nyulnyulan languages 75guishable from ordinary transitive clauses, with semantically “full’’ verbs orverbal constructions expressing meanings such as ‘hit’, ‘follow’, ‘leave’, ‘hear’,‘carry’, etc. Basically this means that a non-elliptical clause involving the verb‘have’ will show an NP that can be marked by the ergative postposition, andwhich is cross-referenced by the nominative pronominal prefix to the inflectingverb, and an unmarked NP that is cross-referenced by an accusativepronominal enclitic to the verb. Illustrative examples are (2), (4), (6)–(8), and(10) above.Two qualifications are in order. First, as the observant reader may havenoticed, not all subjects of ‘have’ clauses are marked by the ergative postposition,see (9), for instance. However, there is no direct link between thepresence vs. absence of the ergative postposition and the use of ‘have’ as a fullverb vs. its use as a putative copula. Thus, the ‘keep’ and ‘have’ senses do notconveniently separate from one another on this dimension. In more than oneinstance we find ergative marking of the subject where the ‘have’ sense ismanifest, and the ‘keep’ sense improbable: see examples (2) and (7).In fact, ergative marking of the subject of transitive clauses in Nyulnyulanlanguages is never obligatory (e.g. Stokes 1982: 132–135, McGregor 1996: 29,and McGregor 1999b). Omissibility of the ergative marker in clauses involvingthe ‘have’ sense of the ‘have’ verb cannot be marshalled as evidence in supportof the proposition that these clauses employ it as a copula. The motivations forpresence or absence of the ergative marker is not well understood for anyNyulnyulan language. This topic has been investigated in only one language,namely Warrwa, and somewhat superficially due to paucity of examples(McGregor 1999b). It seems that in Warrwa the ergative postposition may beomitted from the subject of a transitive clause only if the referent is: (i) low inagentivity (that is, is not particularly potent as an agent), and (ii) it is expectedas an agent of the clause, given the discourse environment.Unfortunately, clauses with -BA ‘have’ are fairly uncommon in Warrwatexts, and it is impossible to provide compelling independent evidence thatconditions (i) and (ii) motivate the omission of the ergative marker. Nevertheless,(15) and (16) do at least illustrate the proposed contrast. Both examples,it will be noted, manifest the ‘have’ sense of the verb -BA ‘have’, although theydiffer in terms of the degree of closeness between the possessor and possessum.Furthermore, (ii) is satisfied by the subjects of both examples: (15)comes from a mythological text about two snakes, and restates informationprovided in the two previous sentences; (16), on the other hand, was offeredin the description of a drawing depicting a knife with a patch of blood on it