2 Responses to “Possessive Classification”

1. Hilda Koopman Says:
   December 26th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

   it is unclear to me why Samaon is not classified under “two classes”. (the choice of a vs o is at least partially determined by the possessed noun (le lima o le tama ‘the boys head’ vs le ta’avale a le tama’ the boy’s car’)

2. Matthew S. Dryer Says:
   February 25th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

   The authors regarded this Polynesian phenomenon not as classification of possessed nouns but as a semantic difference in prepositions. The semantic difference of course has some co-distribution with different lexicosemantic head nouns in adnominal constructions, but the authors weren’t convinced it is classification of the head nouns.

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