La posesión en las lenguas americanas

Abstract

American languages distinguish generally between inalienable and alienable possession (always or contextually), by means of different marks (juxtaposition, affixation, possessive pronouns, noun incorporation, possessor ascension...). In these language families, cognitive mappings can give account of how possession can be expressed by metaphoric extensions of other semantic relations, such as transitive or locative links. However, we can find also cases that seem to fit into the inverse mechanism: possession as a source domain (pseudo-possession), mapped onto other conceptual spheres, including transitive and locative relations (though bi-directional transfers would contradict the asymmetric conceptual path assumed by cognitive grammar postulates).