possessednoun

Possessednoun is a hypothetical linguistic category used to describe nouns that encode possession directly on the noun form, rather than through a separate possessor phrase or a genitive dependent. In theories of morphology and syntax, possessednouns are nouns whose form includes a possessive marking that agrees with or encodes the possessor’s person or number. This marking can appear as an affix, a clitic, or a fused suffix in various morpho- logical systems, particularly in languages with rich nominal morphology.

In such systems, the possessed noun may be the head of a noun phrase and carry the possessive information itself. The possessor phrase may be absent or reduced to a pronoun or clitic that attaches to the noun via the same morphological process that marks possession. This contrasts with more familiar patterns where possession is expressed by a separate determiner, a possessor noun, or a genitive construction.

Example: in a prototypical language Aran, the root nara meaning “book” takes possessive suffixes to form possessednouns: nara-mu for “my book” (1st person singular), nara-tu for “your book” (2nd person), and nara-li for “his/her book” (3rd person). The possessor is thus encoded directly on the noun head.

Cross-linguistically, possessednoun analyses intersect with questions about noun incorporation, genitive marking, and agreement. Some theories view possessednouns as a special case of possession marked on the noun, while others see them as part of a broader system of possessor-marked noun heads within noun phrases. See also possessive, genitive, and noun incorporation.