Pattern

Alienability

Do “my hand” and “my house” use the same grammar?

Hands and mothers come with a possessor built in; houses and books change hands. Grammars pick this up: some force a possessive onto body-part and kin nouns or give them special possessed forms, some route acquired things through a classifier, Mandarin lets its linker drop exactly with kin, and much of Europe moves the body-part possessor onto the verb as a dative.

Domain: Possession Alienability
Structure: Oblique marking

Strategies

Obligatory possession

[I=] [hand-POSS]

Body-part and kin nouns carry a possessed form or never appear without their possessor. Ainu tek “hand” has the possessed form teke(he); Navajo kin terms are bound stems, with ʼa- “someone’s” standing in when no possessor is named.

Ainu · tek → teke(he) Navajo · shimá, shílaʼ

Possessive classifier

[the] [CLF-my] [house]

Inalienable nouns take the possessive suffix directly; the rest reach it through a classifier. Fijian keeps a general, an edible and a drinkable class; the Polynesian a/o split works the same way with two.

Fijian · liga-qu vs no-qu vale Hawaiian · koʻu lima vs kaʻu puke

Marker drop

[my] (LINK) [mom]

One construction serves everywhere, and its linker weakens where the bond is closest. Mandarin 的 drops freely with kin — 我妈 “my mom” — and stays with belongings — 我的书 “my book”.

Mandarin Chinese · 我妈 vs 我的书 wǒ mā vs wǒ de shū

External possessor

[me.DAT] [wash] [the hand]

The split shows in the clause. A body part takes a definite article and its possessor climbs onto the verb as a dative — German mir die Hände — across a Western and Central European area.

German · mir die Hände French · me … les mains Spanish · me … las manos

No split

[my] [hand] = [my] [house]

One possessive for everything. English my, Japanese の and the Turkish suffixes treat hands, mothers and houses alike.

English · my hand / my house Japanese · 私の手 / 私の家 watashi no te / watashi no ieTurkish · elim / evim

Geographic distribution

Each dot is one attested language, coloured by the strategy it uses. Click a dot for the surface form.

Obligatory possession Possessive classifier Marker drop External possessor No split

Marker positions are approximate cultural centres — they are not territorial claims. Tiles: OpenFreeMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Dark tiles: © CARTO.

Language comparison

Language	Strategy	Expression	Note
Ainu Ainu (isolate, critically endangered)	Obligatory possession	tek → teke(he)	concept form against possessed form: sapa “head” → sapaha; a house is alienable and takes attributive kor instead: ku=kor cise “my house” Tamura 2000 Bugaeva 2012
Navajo Athabaskan	Obligatory possession	shimá, shílaʼ	kin and body-part nouns are bound stems; the indefinite prefix ʼa- stands in when no possessor is named: ʼamá “someone’s mother” Young & Morgan 1987
Fijian Austronesian › Oceanic	Possessive classifier	liga-qu vs no-qu vale	the suffix sits on body parts and kin directly; other nouns take it on a classifier — no- general, ke- edible, me- drinkable Dixon 1988
Hawaiian Austronesian › Polynesian	Possessive classifier	koʻu lima vs kaʻu puke	o-class for body parts, elder kin, clothing and shelter; a-class for acquired things — the split runs on control as much as on alienability Elbert & Pukui 1979
Mandarin Chinese Sino-Tibetan › Sinitic	Marker drop	我妈 vs 我的书 wǒ mā vs wǒ de shū	的 drops most readily with kin and other close relations Li & Thompson 1981
German Indo-European › Germanic	External possessor	mir die Hände	dative possessor with a definite article on the body part: sie wäscht mir die Hände “she washes my hands” Haspelmath 1999
French Indo-European › Romance	External possessor	me … les mains	dative clitic plus definite article Haspelmath 1999
Spanish Indo-European › Romance	External possessor	me … las manos	Haspelmath 1999
English Indo-European › Germanic	No split	my hand / my house	one possessive throughout; even body-part washing keeps my where its neighbours use a dative Nichols & Bickel 2013 Haspelmath 1999
Japanese Japonic	No split	私の手 / 私の家 watashi no te / watashi no ie	の throughout
Turkish Turkic › Oghuz	No split	elim / evim	the same possessive suffix on every noun

Examples

Toggle between Natural / Literal / Gloss to see how each language conceptualises the same idea.

“my hand”

The inalienable test. Ainu switches to the possessed form teke(he), Navajo and Fijian attach the person marker straight to the noun, Hawaiian picks its o-class, and English, Japanese and Turkish use their ordinary possessive.

Ainu · アイヌ・イタㇰ aynu itak

ku=tekehe

クテケヘ

Natural: my hand

Navajo · Diné Bizaad

shílaʼ

Natural: my hand

Fijian · Na vosa vaka-Viti

na ligaqu

Natural: my hand

Hawaiian · ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi

koʻu lima

Natural: my hand

English

my hand

Natural: my hand

Japanese · 日本語

私の手

watashi no te

Natural: my hand

Turkish · Türkçe

elim

Natural: my hand

References

Bugaeva 2012 01

Bugaeva, Anna (2012).

Southern Hokkaido Ainu.

In Tranter, Nicolas (eds.), The Languages of Japan and Korea. Routledge. 461–509.
Chappell & McGregor 1996 02

Chappell, Hilary; McGregor, William (1996).

The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part-Whole Relation.

Mouton de Gruyter.
Dixon 1988 03

Dixon, R. M. W. (1988).

A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian.

University of Chicago Press.
Elbert & Pukui 1979 04

Elbert, Samuel H.; Pukui, Mary Kawena (1979).

Hawaiian Grammar.

University Press of Hawaii.
Haspelmath 1999 05

Haspelmath, Martin (1999).

External possession in a European areal perspective.

In Payne, Doris L.; Barshi, Immanuel (eds.), External Possession. John Benjamins. 109–135.
Haspelmath 2017 06

Haspelmath, Martin (2017).

Explaining alienability contrasts in adpossessive constructions: Predictability vs. iconicity.

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft. 36(2): 193–231. doi:10.1515/zfs-2017-0009
Heine 1997 07

Heine, Bernd (1997).

Possession: Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization.

Cambridge University Press.
Li & Thompson 1981 08

Li, Charles N.; Thompson, Sandra A. (1981).

Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar.

University of California Press.
Nichols 1988 09

Nichols, Johanna (1988).

On alienable and inalienable possession.

In Shipley, William (eds.), In Honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics. Mouton de Gruyter. 557–609.
Nichols & Bickel 2013 10

Nichols, Johanna; Bickel, Balthasar (2013).

Possessive Classification.

In Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), WALS Online (v2020.4), Chapter 59. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://wals.info/chapter/59
Tamura 2000 11

Tamura, Suzuko (2000).

The Ainu Language.

ICHEL Linguistic Studies, Vol. 2. Sanseido, Tokyo.
Young & Morgan 1987 12

Young, Robert W.; Morgan, William (1987).

The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary.

Revised edition. University of New Mexico Press.

Related patterns

Corrections

Any of this can be wrong. Dispute what the page says, add a language it is missing, or edit the file it was rendered from.

Dispute a claim Add a language Citation problem

Written in src/lib/data/patterns/alienability.ts Edit ↗ History ↗ How corrections work →