Possession and Ownership: a cross linguistic perspective

[Extract] Every language has a mechanism for expressing posession, within a noun phrase and with a clause. Some languages have a dedicated, possessive, construction. Others express possessive meanings through a more general, 'associative', noun phrase. The nature of the Possessor (Pr), of the Possessee (Pe), and of the Relationship between them (PRel) underlies the gamut of cross-linguistic variation. These are intertwined. The meanings, and forms, of possessive noun phrases are addressed in δ2.