Possession

The linguistic encoding of possession in AGk can be regarded as a constellation of structures. Possession and a range of related meanings could be expressed in AGk not only by attributive constructions characterized by an inflectional marker on the Pr item, but also by predicative constructions of verbs with highly specialised possessive meanings, e.g. ékhō, and by constructions of copular/existential verbs with accompanying morphosyntactic encoding (genitive and dative) on the Pr. The predicative constructions evidence different pragmatic profiles given that a specific marker may reflect a different possessive category at the semantic level, but they do not seem to distinguish definitively between alienable and inalienable possession. Constructions with the verb ‘to have’ and with the verb ‘to be’ plus dative express an ascription of possession and can cover an extremely broad range of meaning(s) (possession, ownership, kinship and so on). A structure with a genitive possessor is a predication of belonging involving a strong bond between Pr and Pe, to the extent that an interpretation of legal ownership is very often required in addition to membership or part/whole readings.