In linguistics, inalienable possession (abbreviated inal) is a type of possession in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "alienated" from their possessor. Inalienable nouns include body parts (such as leg, which is necessarily "someone's leg" even if it is severed from the body), kinship terms (such as mother), and part-whole relations (such as top). Many languages reflect the distinction but vary in how they mark inalienable possession. Cross-linguistically, inalienability correlates with many morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. In general, the alienable–inalienable distinction is an example of a binary possessive class system in which a language distinguishes two kinds of possession (alienable and inalienable). The alienability distinction is the most common kind of binary possessive class system, but it is not the only one. Some languages have more than two possessive classes. In Papua New Guinea, for example, Anêm has at least 20 classes, and Amele has 32. Statistically, 15–20% of the world's languages have obligatory possession.
Comparison to alienable possession With inalienable possession, the two entities have a permanent association in which the possessed has little control over their possessor. For instance, body parts (under normal circumstances) do not change and cannot be removed from their possessor. The following real-world relationships often fall under inalienable possession:
Alienable possession, on the other hand, has a less permanent association between the two entities. For instance, most objects may or may not be possessed. When such types of objects are possessed, the possession is alienable. Alienable possession is used generally for tangible items that one might cease to own at some point (such as my money), but inalienable possession generally refers to a perpetual relationship that cannot be readily severed (such as my mother or my arm). The table above just outlines the most common types of inalienable nouns. Languages with an alienable/inalienable possession distinction differ in which classes fall under each type of possession. However, if a language has such a distinction, kinship roles or body parts (or both) make up some of the entities that are inalienably possessed. Also, languages may make different distinctions within the categories on how many and which entities are treated as inalienable. Moreover, some languages allow the same noun to be either alienable or inalienable. Thus, trying to determine if a noun is alienable or inalienable based on its meaning or its affiliation to a specific noun category (for instance, body parts) can be difficult.
Variation by languages Although the relationships listed above are likely to be instances of inalienable possession, those that are ultimately classified as inalienable depend on conventions that are specific by language and culture. It is impossible to say that a particular relationship is an example of inalienable possession without specifying the languages for which that holds true. For example, neighbor may be an inalienable noun in one language but alienable in another. Additionally, in some languages, one entity can be both alienably possessed and inalienably possessed, and its type of possession is influenced by other properties of the sentence. Thus, whether a certain type of relationship is described as alienable or inalienable can be arbitrary. In that respect, alienability is similar to other types of noun classes such as grammatical gender. The examples below illustrate that the same phrase, the table's legs, is regarded as inalienable possession in Italian but alienable possession in French: (1b) is ungrammatical (as indicated by the asterisk). French cannot use the inalienable possession construction for a relationship that is alienable.
Bernd Heine argues that language change is responsible for the observed cross-linguistic variation in the categorization of (in)alienable nouns. He states that "rather than being a semantically defined category, inalienability is more likely to constitute a morphosyntactic or morphophonological entity, one that owes its existence to the fact that certain nouns happened to be left out when a new pattern for marking attributive possession arose." He considers that nouns that are "ignored" by a new marking pattern come to form a separate noun class.
Morphosyntactic strategies for marking distinction The distinction between alienable and inalienable possession is often marked by various morphosyntactic properties such as morphological markers and word order. The morphosyntactic differences are often referred to as possession split or split possession, which refer to instances of a language making a grammatical distinction between different types of possession. In a language with possession split, grammatical constructions with alienable nouns will differ from constructions with inalienable nouns. There is a strong typological pattern for inalienable possession to require fewer morphological markers than alienable possession constructions. Inalienable possession constructions involve two nouns or nominals: the possessor and the possessee. Together, they form a unit, the determiner phrase (DP), in which the possessor nominal may occur either before the possessee (prenominal) or after its possessee (postnominal), depending on the language. French, for example, can use a postnominal possessor (the possessor (of) Jean occurs after the possessee the arm):
In contrast, English generally uses a prenominal possessor (John's brother). However, in some situations, it may also use a postnominal possessor, as in the brother of John.
Morphological markers
No overt possessive markers The South American language Dâw uses a special possessive morpheme (bold in the examples below) to indicate alienable possession. The possessive morpheme ɛ̃̀ɟ in examples (3a) and (3b) indicates an alienable relationship between the possessor and the possessee.
The possessive marker does not occur in inalienable possession constructions. Thus, the absence of ɛ̃̀ɟ, as in example (4), indicates that the relationship between the possessor and the possessee is inalienable possession.
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