Some languages mark the object as some kind of oblique, though. English has a phrase that is somewhat similar to it:
She is with child.Now, that is a rather special case, but illustrates the kind of marking I am discussing here. wals.info informs that this type of construction actually appears. Personally, I find some kind of instrumental marking to be very suitable for this (except maybe in certain specific types of phrases or under some circumstances - restricting this to non-human objects seems rather reasonable, for one, or some similar cultural restriction).
is.1sg cup.instr - "I have a/the cup"
is.3pl dogs.instr = "they have dogs"Furthermore, I find it reasonable that the instrumental case could be the case marking for any possessed noun - the instrumental case doubling as head marking in possessive constructions. Why instrumental? Well, there seems to be a vague correlation between using a thing as a tool and owning it.
The idea by which it becomes evident that I am a one-trick pony is this: reflexive possession of objects marked by the noun object being marked by the instrumental case.
He drive.past.3sg car.instr = he drove his own car
He drive.past.3sg car.acc = he drove a/the carAlternatively, the distinction could work like this:
He drive.past.3sg his car.instr = he drove his own car
EDIT: reading through the earlier posts, seems this is fairly close to another post in content. Meh. It is an ok rephrasing that may be easier to understand for people not that familiar with ergativity and such. Well, I will leave it behind and try to avoid similar embarrassment in the future.
He drive.past.3sg his car.acc = he drove his (someone else's) car
English 'with' is a wide-ranging word. The with in "knock with a hammer" is not the same concept as the with in "she is with child". Therefore I don't think instrumental can be suitable. 'With' rather has a comitative sense in the possessional expression. If you don't have the comitative, you can use the locative like in Russian and Finnish, or the dative like in Icelandic if you don't have the locative.
ReplyDeleteDuly note that the way Russian and Finnish does this is quite the opposite of the way this sketch suggests - in Finnish and Russian, the possessor has an oblique case, in this the possessee has an oblique case. Yes, English with is a wide-ranging marker, but ... surprise surprise, so are cases in languages with case too!
DeleteHave you read any typology at all? There's a certain typological relation between instruments and possessums, with some languages for instance permitting constructions along the lines of 'I take hammer strike nail' or 'I have hammer strike nail' as a way of marking the instrumental. In case such a construction becomes grammaticalized as a case-marker, it may very well live on as primarily a case but secondarily a way of marking the actual having of a hammer.
Your complaint seems rather unfounded and unbased in genuine linguistics. Since writing this, I've read some articles in these books:
Dimensions of Possession - Typological Studies in Language (Baron, Herslund, Sorensen) and Predicative Possession (Leon Stassen, Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory). In fact, the latter gives explicit examples of the kind of construction I suggested, and the previous definitely gives a strong indication that there are strong connections between both possession and comitatives AND possession and instrumentals. (Of course, similar connections exist between instrumentals and comitatives as well.) If you want, I can type relevant bits of the text here?
Instrumental can indeed be suitable, and your argument is entirely based on the semantics of English. (Well, with a side helping of the assumption that an instrumental case must be semantically much more restricted than English 'with'. I do maintain, though, that an instrumental without comitative meaning can fill this role and more importantly, so does typological literature.