Predicative possession in South Saami

Sammanfattning:

The goal of this work is to describe the domain of predicative possession in South Saami, a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Sweden and Norway. Data has been elicited from native speakers of South Saami, and the analysis has been carried out within a general functional-typological framework.

In South Saami, four different predicative possessive constructions are used: (1) a habeo-verb construc­tion, (2a) a genitive possessive without copula, (2b) a genitive possessive with copula, and (3) a locational possessive. The latter is not described in the grammars. The have-possessive and the genitive possessives occur frequently and are used to encode all notions of possession. The use of the locational possessive is restricted to inanimate possessors. Distri­bution of the constructions varies among the speakers. Examples for the have-possessive construction present the greatest structural variation. The four possessive constructions are set within a typological context.