Weird linguistic behavior with family member words

[vorog]

This question comes from the observation that both in Italian and Hebrew nouns for family members behave a bit differently from other nouns. More specifically, in Italian, the normal way to express possession is through definite article + possessive adjective + noun (e.g: il mio cane, literally "the my dog") but when it comes to family members, the definite article is dropped (e.g: mia madre). Whereas in Hebrew, possessive suffixes are pretty much dead and replaced by the free forms (sheli, shelakh, shelkha, shelo etc) when it comes to the spoken language, but this is not true for nouns for family members. So for example whereas "my dog" would be "kelev sheli" and nobody would say "kalbi", it's still quite common to say "ishti" (my wife) instead of "isha sheli".

I know full well that a sample of n=2 doesn't really allow for any generalization but I was wondering if you know other languages where words related to the family behave in an unusual way (not necessarily when it comes to possession).

[WeepingElf]

This question comes from the observation that both in Italian and Hebrew nouns for family members behave a bit differently from other nouns. More specifically, in Italian, the normal way to express possession is through definite article + possessive adjective + noun (e.g: il mio cane, literally "the my dog") but when it comes to family members, the definite article is dropped (e.g: mia madre). Whereas in Hebrew, possessive suffixes are pretty much dead and replaced by the free forms (sheli, shelakh, shelkha, shelo etc) when it comes to the spoken language, but this is not true for nouns for family members. So for example whereas "my dog" would be "kelev sheli" and nobody would say "kalbi", it's still quite common to say "ishti" (my wife) instead of "isha sheli".

I know full well that a sample of n=2 doesn't really allow for any generalization but I was wondering if you know other languages where words related to the family behave in an unusual way (not necessarily when it comes to possession).

I think the point here is the difference between alienable (i.e., things you could give away) and inalienable (i.e., things you could not give away) possession. Plenty of languages encode these differently. "My dog" is an example of alienable possession: you could sell or give away that dog to someone else. "My mother" is an example of inalienable possession: she will always be your mother, no matter what you do.

[vorog]

This question comes from the observation that both in Italian and Hebrew nouns for family members behave a bit differently from other nouns. More specifically, in Italian, the normal way to express possession is through definite article + possessive adjective + noun (e.g: il mio cane, literally "the my dog") but when it comes to family members, the definite article is dropped (e.g: mia madre). Whereas in Hebrew, possessive suffixes are pretty much dead and replaced by the free forms (sheli, shelakh, shelkha, shelo etc) when it comes to the spoken language, but this is not true for nouns for family members. So for example whereas "my dog" would be "kelev sheli" and nobody would say "kalbi", it's still quite common to say "ishti" (my wife) instead of "isha sheli".

I know full well that a sample of n=2 doesn't really allow for any generalization but I was wondering if you know other languages where words related to the family behave in an unusual way (not necessarily when it comes to possession).

I think the point here is the difference between alienable (i.e., things you could give away) and inalienable (i.e., things you could not give away) possession. Plenty of languages encode these differently. "My dog" is an example of alienable possession: you could sell or give away that dog to someone else. "My mother" is an example of inalienable possession: she will always be your mother, no matter what you do.

Neither language has an alienable vs inalienable distinction. This sort of odd behavior only occurs with words related to the family.

[Travis B.]

Neither language has an alienable vs inalienable distinction. This sort of odd behavior only occurs with words related to the family.

Oftentimes family members and body parts specifically have special behavior due to being inalienable which are not shared with other nouns, even in languages without seemingly obvious alienable vs. inalienable distinctions. E.g. German has this with body parts, e.g. one says "die Hände" (lit. "the hands") rather than *"meine Hände" (lit. *"my hands").

[Raphael]

E.g. German has this with body parts, e.g. one says "die Hände" (lit. "the hands") rather than *"meine Hände" (lit. *"my hands").

Huh? I have no problem with saying "meine Hände".

[vorog]

Neither language has an alienable vs inalienable distinction. This sort of odd behavior only occurs with words related to the family.

Oftentimes family members and body parts specifically have special behavior due to being inalienable which are not shared with other nouns, even in languages without seemingly obvious alienable vs. inalienable distinctions. E.g. German has this with body parts, e.g. one says "die Hände" (lit. "the hands") rather than *"meine Hände" (lit. *"my hands").

Do you have any articles to share to learn more about this phenomenon?

[Travis B.]

E.g. German has this with body parts, e.g. one says "die Hände" (lit. "the hands") rather than *"meine Hände" (lit. *"my hands").

Huh? I have no problem with saying "meine Hände".

Okay, apparently you can say both "ich wasche mir die Hände" and "ich wasche meine Hände". I stand corrected.

[Creyeditor]

Crucially, you cannot say *"Ich wasche mir das Auto" for 'I wash my car.'. So bodyparts are special.

[Travis B.]

Crucially, you cannot say *"Ich wasche mir das Auto" for 'I wash my car.'. So bodyparts are special.

However, apparently you can say things like "ich habe mir die Hose zerrissen.".

[vorog]

E.g. German has this with body parts, e.g. one says "die Hände" (lit. "the hands") rather than *"meine Hände" (lit. *"my hands").

Huh? I have no problem with saying "meine Hände".

Okay, apparently you can say both "ich wasche mir die Hände" and "ich wasche meine Hände". I stand corrected.

The use of the dative to indicate possession is one of the features of the Standard Average European Sprachbund as described by Martin Haspelmath, but I struggle to see how this relates to an alienable vs inalienable distinction. And notably, it's just a thing of a bunch of European languages.

[WeepingElf]

E.g. German has this with body parts, e.g. one says "die Hände" (lit. "the hands") rather than *"meine Hände" (lit. *"my hands").

Huh? I have no problem with saying "meine Hände".

Travis refers to the construction with what is called the dative external possessor, as in Ich wasche mir die Hände 'I wash my hands'. It would be weird to say Ich wasche mir meine Hände (but Ich wasche meine Hände is OK). But it would also be weird to say Ich wasche mir das Auto; you say Ich wasche mein Auto.

[Linguoboy]

If I'm not much mistaken, in Standard Chinese it's idiomatic to omit the possessive particle de (的) before kinship terms but not before other nouns.

Irish has a form of alienable/inalienable possession expressed by means of prepositions. The normal means of expressing "I have" is tá X agam (lit. "is X at-me"). Ownership, by contrast, is expressed by means of the copula and liom "to-me". E.g.:

Tá carr agam i gcomhair an turais. Is le'm chomrádaí tí é.
"I have a car for the trip. It belongs to my housemate."

Relationships, however, are expressed by means of the latter construction, not the former. E.g.:

Is dlúthchara liom é. "He's a very good friend of mine."

So this usage isn't exclusive to kinship terms, but (in traditional Irish at least) kinship terms require it in contrast to the vast majority of nouns, which do not. I seem to recall that Arabic works similarly.

Scottish-Gaelic doesn't have the same distinction (so Ulster may not either); it allows aig to show relationships. But whereas periphrastic expressions with aig have mostly displaced the use of possessive pronouns in contemporary Gaelic, AFAIK it's still common to use them with kinship terms.

[Richard W]

I think the point here is the difference between alienable (i.e., things you could give away) and inalienable (i.e., things you could not give away) possession. Plenty of languages encode these differently. "My dog" is an example of alienable possession: you could sell or give away that dog to someone else. "My mother" is an example of inalienable possession: she will always be your mother, no matter what you do.

Aren't the alienability of dogs and wives culturally dependent?

[zompist]

If I'm not much mistaken, in Standard Chinese it's idiomatic to omit the possessive particle de (的) before kinship terms but not before other nouns.

I was going to post that, but looking at it further, it gets complex, and it's not limited to family members.

The general rule seems to be that if the relationship is close, you can omit 的. This can include bosses, colleagues, fellow students, organizations, and even closely identified items, e.g. wǒ jiā 我家 "my home".

One Redditor even says that you can say wǒ chē 我车 "my car", but only in subject position or as a locative. As a predicative you need de: Zhè shì wǒde chē 这是我的车 "this is my car".

[Ares Land]

This seems common enough that there's a chapter in WALS on this phenomenon: https://wals.info/chapter/59

IIRC in Nahuatl kinship terms almost always occur with a possessive prefix (you don't talk about 'a father', it's almost always 'someone's father'). Some kinship terms in Seneca occur with irregular possessive markers.

Crucially, you cannot say *"Ich wasche mir das Auto" for 'I wash my car.'. So bodyparts are special.

Same in French. Je me lave les mains / Je lave ma voiture. not *Je me lave la voiture.

[WeepingElf]

This is just one "exotic" linguistic feature that occasionally shines up in this or that major European language. Another is ergatiity - just look at the English suffix -ee: an escapee is someone who escapes, but an employee is not someone who employs, rather someone who is employed. Ergativity in English! Yet another example of an "exotic" linguistic feature in a major European language is the German verb prefix be- which essentially behaves like an applicative (as far as I understand applicatives) - it promotes an oblique argument to a direct object.

[Linguoboy]

IIRC in Nahuatl kinship terms almost always occur with a possessive prefix (you don't talk about 'a father', it's almost always 'someone's father'). Some kinship terms in Seneca occur with irregular possessive markers.

This is quite common in North American languages generally. It's found in both Navajo and Osage, for instance.

I'm not sure about the situation in contemporary Catalan, but here's an excerpt from a usage note on mon in the Alcover-Moll dictionary:

Mon i ma, com els altres possessius ton ta i son sa, eren usats normalment i amb freqüència en la literatura antiga i en la Renaixença; actualment s'usen poc en el llenguatge literari, substituïts amb preferència pels possessius el meu, la meva, el teu, etc. En el llenguatge parlat, l'ús de mon, ton i son, és encara més restringit que en el llenguatge literari. Podem dir que han desaparegut completament de quasi tot el Principat, i sols es conserven seguits de certs noms de parentesc al País Valencià, a les Balears i a part de Catalunya occidental i meridional.

In summary, already nearly a century ago the short forms mon, ton, and son were restricted to peripheral varieties (Balearic, Valencian, and certain varieties of Western Catalan) and to certain kinship terms. Alcover and Moll then helpfully go on to list the kinship terms by locality, e.g. on Mallorca and Menorca, mon only occurs before pare "father" whereas in Tortosa it can still occur before such terms as cunyat "brother-in-law" and padrí "godfather". In Central Catalan, and with all other masculine nouns, the usual form would be meu preceded by the usual form of the article (e.g. el meu, es meu, lo meu).

If anyone's curious about the details of the distribution, here's a map: https://aldc.espais.iec.cat/files/2022/ ... n-pare.pdf

[Raphael]

Travis refers to the construction with what is called the dative external possessor, as in Ich wasche mir die Hände 'I wash my hands'. It would be weird to say Ich wasche mir meine Hände (but Ich wasche meine Hände is OK). But it would also be weird to say Ich wasche mir das Auto; you say Ich wasche mein Auto.

Ah, thank you, I hadn't thought of that. Not sure if the distinction there is purely between body parts and everything else. For instance, I might also say "Ich habe mir das T-Shirt eingesaut" "I got my t-shirt dirty/messed up".

And in some contexts, both constructions work about equally well. For instance, when reporting pain to a doctor, I might either say "Mir tun die Hände weh" or "Meine Hände tun weh".

[Linguoboy]

Travis refers to the construction with what is called the dative external possessor, as in Ich wasche mir die Hände 'I wash my hands'. It would be weird to say Ich wasche mir meine Hände (but Ich wasche meine Hände is OK). But it would also be weird to say Ich wasche mir das Auto; you say Ich wasche mein Auto.

Ah, thank you, I hadn't thought of that. Not sure if the distinction there is purely between body parts and everything else. For instance, I might also say "Ich habe mir das T-Shirt eingesaut" "I got my t-shirt dirty/messed up".

Can you use this with positive developments too or only negative ones? (I ask because this sort of usage is reminiscent of the Irish adversative construction with ar).

[Raphael]

Can you use this with positive developments too or only negative ones? (I ask because this sort of usage is reminiscent of the Irish adversative construction with ar).

I'm not at all sure about that. I can't think of any concrete examples right now, but that doesn't necessarily tell us much - there might be examples that I'm simply not thinking of right now.