On nominal and verbal person marking

The existence and nature of formal correspondences between pronominal affixes or clitics marking possessors on nouns and the person affixes or clitics marking arguments on the verb has played a r öle in elaborations ofparallels between the structure of the noun phrase and the clause, in discussions of the nature of possession, in assessing genetic and areal connections between languages, and in diachronic explanations for current alignment Systems, particularly ergative alignment. The present investigation, basedon a sample of!57 languages manifesting both types of marking, is aimedat determining whether there indeed are cross-linguistic regularities with regard to the identity ofthe verbal argument which exhibits formal affinities with thepossessor and, ifso, to what extent these regularities can be attributed to (i) semantic similarities between possessor and possessed and the transitive subject in the case of alienable possession and the object in the case of inalienable possession, (H) doser discourse-pragmatic similarities between possessors and transitive subject s than possessors and object s, and (in) the alignment of the verbal person forms. The results suggest that while there is a relationship between the alienability Opposition and possessor affinities with the transitive subject and object, contrary to previous Claims, the markers of alienable possession cannot be taken to be necessarily derivedfrom those of inalienable possession. No absolute implicational universals are identified linking the nature of possessor affinities with alignment, though a discernable preference is observed for possessor affinities with the transitive subject when verbal forms are aligned ergatively, äs has sometimes been hypothesized.