Prominent possessor indexing in Gurindji

Abstract

In Gurindji (Ngumpin-Yapa; Australia) bound forms that index the morphosyntactic features of predicate arguments can also index possessors. In prominent alienable possession constructions, internal possessors that are structural dependents of their possessive phrase are indexed for person and number when sufficiently discourse-prominent (e.g. when contrastively focussed), but otherwise do not trigger agreement. In contrast, possessors in inalienable possession constructions are always indexed by agreement clitics. This chapter proposes that examples of this type are not only semantically different from constructions with phrase-internal alienable possessors, but are also structurally differe..