Predicative Possession in Shahmirzadi Language:A typological Survey

Document Type : Research

Authors

Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism

Abstract

 1.      Introduction
Possession is one of the universals in linguistics; it can be encoded in nominative and predicative forms. Stassen (2009) proposed four types of predicative possession: locative possession, ‘with’ possession, topic possession and 'have' possession. Present article studies predicative possession construction in Shahmirzadi language based on typological-functional approach; it tries to answer this question: “which types of predicative possession strategies are used in Shahmirzadi language? A questionnaire was prepared for this survey and data was gathered by interviewing native speakers of Shahmirzadi. The questionnaire contains 53 sentences which are positive and includes predicative possessions with “be” and “have”.
Types of predicative possession in Shahmirzadi
As mentioned previously, Stassen (2009) proposed four types of predicative possession:
1-Locative possession:         At/ to   PR (there) is/exist a PE
     2-“with” possession:               PR   is/exist       with     a    PE  
 
     3-Topic possession:             (As  for) PR, PE   is/exist
 
     4- “have” possession:          PR   has   a    PE
 
Analysis of the collected data  and examination of Stassen’s proposed classification pertaining to predicative possession, indicate that Shahmirzadi language chooses three types of predicative possession construction which are provided in theoretical framework of the article; there is no topic possession in Shahmirzadi language and according to the statistical analysis of the results, the speakers tend to use ‘have’ possession more than locative and ‘with’ possession, therefore the frequency of 'have' possession is more than other types. Some data in Shahmirzadi possession predicative are as follows:
Table 1- Shahmirzadi data




Types of predicative possession


Shahmirzadi


English




Locative


ʔæme  xune  dælæ  yæk    xürde       ʔ ötaq  dæræ


We have a small room in our house.




With


yæk           piremærd    dæræ   ba    sæfəd-ə     mi  ö   dæraz-e           riš


The old man has white hair and long beard.




Topic


-


-




have


ʔin šæhr  čæn-ta  mædrəsə  dan-æ


This city has some schools.




 

Conclusion and discussion

     Having studied different aspects of examples and data in corpus, we came up with the following results:
1-Locative possession is used in Shahmirzadi language but the speakers tend to convert locative possession to “have” possession. They convert 84% of locative possession data to “have” possession. The Possessee is the subject of the sentence and the possessor is oblique. The oblique case is shown by the postposition in this language.
2-Although the frequency of “with” possession in this language is very low, this type of predicative possession is present in Shahmirzadi anyway. The speakers tend to convert 70% 0f “with” possession data to “have” possession; in this type the possessor is the subject of the sentence and the possessee has oblique case.
3-There is no topic possession in Shahmirzadi language.
4- Statistical analysis of “have” possession in corpus shows that the frequency of this type of possession is high in Shahmirzadi and the speakers tend to convert other types to this type of predicative possession; in this type the possessor is the subject/agent and the possessee is object/patient of the sentence.
Table 2- The semantic map of predicative in Shahmirzadi Language
 





 
Have


 
Topic


 
With (commitive)


 
Locative





 

Keywords

References

 
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ZABANPAZHUHI (Journal of Language Research)
Volume 10, Issue 27
September 2018
Pages 171-199

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