Possession and Ownership

Abstract Every language has a way of expressing possessive relationships. The marking and the conceptualization of these vary across languages and cultures. This volume aims at investigating the varied facets of possession and associated notions, including association and modification. We focus on correlations between language and culture in the ways in which possessive relationships can have their linguistic correlates. The volume starts with a typological introduction outlining the marking, and the meaning, of possession within a noun phrase, a clause, and a sentence, focusing on correlations between possessive structures, and cultural and social aspects of its conceptualization by the speakers. It is followed by revised versions of fourteen of the fifteen presentations from the International Workshop ‘Possession and Ownership’, held at the Language and Culture Research Group, the Cairns Institute, James Cook University, 27 September - 2 October 2010.