User:CottageBetty/sandbox

Possessor suppression with kin and body part nouns (Lødrup 2014)
Norwegian language (Norwegian: norsk) is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Norwegian expresses inalienability with possessor suppression. Possessor suppression takes place when noun phrases referring to inalienable possessions have definite form and contain no possessive determiner.

In sentence (27a), "haken", the syntactic object, contains a suppressed possessor in its definite form. It does not contain an explicit possessive marker. In contrast, sentence (27b) contains an explicit possessive determiner, "her", to denote possession. Possessive determiners are obligatory in English in the case of subject-controlled body part terms.

Norwegian treats kinship nouns and body part nouns similarly in relation to bound variable interpretations. When a definite noun is present, it usually has a referential reading. In (28a), the referential reading is present. However, the presence of definite kinship or body part nouns may also bring about the bound variable reading. In this reading, a kinship or body part noun contains a variable bound by the quantifier in the subject. (28b) may produce both the referential and bound variable readings. With the referential reading, the professors washed a face or father that has been mentioned earlier. With the bound variable reading, the professors washed their own face or father. Additionally, both kinship and body part nouns behave similarly in sentences with VP pronominalization. VP pronominalization involving both nouns allow for both a referential reading and a “sloppy reading”, which involves variable binding. In (28c), in the referential reading, John and Mari will wash a face or a mother that has been mentioned earlier. In the “sloppy reading”, John will was his face or mother, and Mari will wash hers.

Lastly, both kinship and body part nouns bear similarities in locality. Both behave so that the definite form of the noun is bound by the closest subject. In (31), the possessor must be the subordinate clause subject, not the main clause subject. Likewise, in (32), the father mentioned is preferably the father of the subordinate clause subject referent, and not of the main clause subject referent.

On the other hand, definite kinship and body part nouns in Norwegian hold a syntactic difference. Definite body part nouns allow a 1st or 2nd person possessor whereas some definite kinship nouns do not. For instance, the sentence in (33) is not allowed as it contains a 1st person possessor and kinship term. This kinship term can only be used with a 3rd person possessor, such as in (34).

However, body part nouns do not have this restriction on 1st or 2nd person possessors, such as in (35).