Give (some) nouns a default possessor (say, 1sg for terms of immediate family; 1sg for 'wife' if 1sg is a married man, else, 2sg if 2sg is married, etc). Have two markers - the direct and the inverse marker.
The direct marker means the noun is possessed by the expected pronoun or noun; the inverse marker moves it to the second rung in the hierarchy. Any move downwards in the hierarchy requires an explicit noun or pronoun somewhere close by in the clause.
Inalienably possessed nouns take either an empty marker or the inverse marker.
Explicit topics are actually ranked higher than other third person nouns or pronouns, but lower than 1st and 2nd person pronouns, no matter what the noun is, so the inverse possession is also somewhat reflexive with regards to topic.
Finally, of course certain nouns whose possible possessor is restricted by biology or social context will vary by speaker - wife being an example I previously gave - whereby depending on who makes the utterance, the interpretation will be different. To make a written language make sense then, the language also will need to have other grammatical cues as to gender and social standing of the speaker, or some learnt assumptions about how to express possession in writing even when the speaker's identity is unknown.
Hi Miekko! This is nice. I am thinking about reconstructing a system like this for Proto-Indo-European. Direct indexing is coded by -t- on the verb, inverse by -s-. The same suffixes are found as later noun stem suffixes, especially in body terms. Looks like fun! Best, Roland
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