Editing Inalienable possession (section)

===Form function motivations===
Inalienable possession constructions often lack overt possessors.<ref name=Haspelmath/> There is a debate as to how to account for the [[linguistic universal|linguistically-universal]] difference in form. Iconicity explains the in terms of the relationship between the conceptual distance between the possessor and the possessee,<ref name=Haiman>{{cite journal|last1=Haiman|first1=John|title=Iconic and Economic Motivation|journal=Language|date=1983|volume=59|issue=4|pages=781–819|doi=10.2307/413373|jstor=413373}}</ref> and economy explains it by the frequency of possession.<ref name="Walter de Gruyter & Co">{{cite book|last1=Nichols|first1=Johanna|chapter=On Alienable and Inalienable Possession|title=In Honor of Mary Haas|date=1988|publisher=Walter de Gruyter & Co|location=Berlin|page=579}}</ref>

====Iconic motivation (Haiman 1983)====
Haiman describes iconic expression and conceptual distance and how both concepts are conceptually close if they share semantic properties, affect each other and cannot be separated from each other.<ref name=Haiman /> [[Joseph Greenberg]] hypothesizes that the distance between the possessor and possessee in a sentence with alienable possession is greater than in a sentence with inalienable constructions.<ref name=Heine3>{{cite book|last1=Greenberg|first1=Joseph|title=Universals of Human Language|date=1966|publisher=MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|edition=2nd}}</ref> Because the possessor and the possessee have a close conceptual relationship, their relative positions with a sentence reflect that, and there is little distance between them. Increasing the distance between both would in turn increase their conceptual independence.

That is demonstrated in [[Yagaria language|Yagaria]], a [[Papuan language]] that marks alienable possession by a free form pronoun as in (33a). In contrast, inalienable possession constructions use an inalienable possessor that is [[prefix]]ed on the possessee, as in (33b), a construction that has less linguistic distance between the possessor and possessee than the alienable construction has:

{{interlinear|lang=ygr|indent=5|number=(33) a.
 |top= '''Alienable'''
 |dgai' fu
 |my    pig
 |'my pig'
}}
{{interlinear|lang=ygr|indent=5|number={{hidden text|(33)}} b.
 |top= '''Inalienable''
 |d-za'
 |my-arm
 |'my arm'
 |bottom=(Haiman 1983: 793 (30a,b))
}}

However, there are cases of linguistic distance not necessarily reflecting conceptual distance. [[Mandarin Chinese]] has two ways to express the same type of possession: POSSESSOR + POSSESSEE and POSSESSOR + de + POSSESSEE. The latter has more linguistic distance between the possessor and the possessee, but it reflects the same conceptual distance.<ref name=hsu>{{cite journal|last1=Hsu|first1=Yu-Yin|title=Possessor extraction in Mandarin Chinese|journal=University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics|date=2009|volume=15|issue=1}}</ref> Both possessive expressions, with and without the marker '''''de''''', are found in the Mandarin phrase "my friend", which is seen in (34a) unlike (34b):<ref name="Li and Thompson">{{cite book|last1=Li|first1=Charles|last2=Thompson|first2=Sandra|title=Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar|date=1989|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley|page=169}}</ref>

{{interlinear|lang=zh|indent=5|number=(34) a.
 |top= '''POSSESSOR + de + POSSESSEE'''
 |wǒ '''DE''' péngyǒu
 |I '''de''' friend
 |'My friend'
}}
{{interlinear|lang=zh|indent=5|number={{hidden text|(34)}} b.
 |top= '''POSSESSOR + POSSESSEE'''
 |wǒ péngyǒu
 |I friend
 |'My friend'
 |bottom=(Hsu 2009: 101 (22a,b))
}}

In contrast to the previous example, the omission of the marker ''de'' is ungrammatical, as in example (35b). The linguistic distance between the possessor and the possessee is much smaller in (35b) than in (35a). It has been argued that the omission of ''de'' occurs only in kinship relationships, but phrasal constructions with a mandatory ''de'' encompasse other cases of inalienable possession, such as body parts.<ref name=Haiman />{{rp|783}} That contradicts the notion that inalienable possession is marked by less linguistic distance between the possessor and the possessee.

{{interlinear|lang=zh|indent=5|number=(35) a.
|wǒ xǐhuān nǐ '''DE''' tóufà
|I like you '''de''' hair
|'I like your hair'
}}
{{interlinear|lang=zh|indent=5|number={{hidden text|(35)}} b.
|* wǒ xǐhuān nǐ tóufà
|{} I like you hair
|'I like your hair'
|bottom=(Li & Thompson 1981: 169)
}}

====Economic motivation (Nichols 1988)====
Nichols notes that frequently-possessed nouns, such as body parts and kinship terms, almost always occur with possessors, and alienable nouns occur less often with possessors.<ref name="Walter de Gruyter & Co"/><ref name=Good>{{cite book|editor-last1=Good|editor-first1=Jeff|title=Linguistic Universals and Language Change|date=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|page=197}}</ref>

The following shows the frequency of possession between alienable and unalienable nouns in [[German language|German]].<ref name=Good/> The table below shows the number of times that each noun occurred with or without a possessor in texts from the German Goethe-Corpus of the works of [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]].
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Noun category !! Noun !! Unpossessed !! Possessed
|-
| Alienable || ''Gärtner''   'gardener' <br> ''Jäger''   'hunter' <br> ''Pfarrer''   'priest' || 24 <br> 48 <br> 12  || 0 <br> 2 <br> 0
|-
| Inalienable || ''Schwester''   'sister' <br> ''Tante''   'aunt' <br> ''Tochter''   'daughter' || 32 <br> 47 <br> 46 || 58 <br> 22 <br> 53
|}

The alienable nouns above are rarely possessed, but the inalienable kinship terms are frequently possessed.<ref name=Good/> Consequently, inalienable nouns are expected to be possessed even if they lack a distinct possessive marker. Therefore, overt markings on inalienable nouns are redundant, and for economical syntactic construction, languages often have zero-marking for their inalienable nouns.<ref name="Walter de Gruyter & Co"/>

That could be explained by [[Zipf's Law]] in which the familiarity or the frequency of an occurrence motivates the linguistic simplification of the concept.<ref name=Haiman /> A listener who hears an inalienable noun can predict that it will be possessed, which eliminates the need for an overt possessor.<ref name=Haspelmath/>