ALEUT
SUMMARY
Topical possessors are only coded by a possessive suffix in Aleut, while overt possessor phrases that co-occur with a possessive suffix are non-topical. Topical, unpronounced possessors of the subject or the object can control number agreement on the predicate, overriding the number of the possessed noun. This agreement is indexed as object agreement on the verb. Topical possessors can also participate in switch-reference so that a same-subject marker tracks the identity of the possessor of one subject and another subject, or the identity of possessors across two disjoint subjects.
See also Greenlandic (West), Haida.
LANGUAGE PROFILE
EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF PIPS
- Since prominent internal possessors are topical, they cannot be expressed by an overt noun phrase; they are only ever coded by a possessive suffix in Aleut, and thus their only expression forms part of the morphology of the possessed item.
- Non-topical internal possessors simultaneously expressed by both relative case-marked noun and a possessive suffix cannot control agreement.
KEY SOURCES
Bergsland, Knut and Moses Dirks. 1981. Atkan Aleut school grammar. Anchorage: National Bilingual Materials Development Center.
Golovko, Evgenij. 2009. Aleutskij jazyk v Rossijskoj Federacii. PhD dissertation, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg.
Leer, Jeff. 1991. Evidence for a Northern Northwest Coast Language Area. International Journal of American Linguistics 57(2): 158–193.
