Possession and Perspective: Subjectivity in the Encoding of Alienability

This study investigates the role of subjectivity in the encoding of possession, with an emphasis on external possession with body-part nouns, across a range of typologically diverse languages. In previous research, predicative possession has been suggested as one of the indices of subjectivity (Ikegami, 1981, 1991). However, the link between subjectivity and inalienability remains underexplored. The aim of this study is to answer the following question: Is there a correlation between subjectivity and the encoding of typically inalienable body-part nouns across languages?

English and Japanese in particular have been extensively examined in the context of subjectivity (Ikegami, 1981; Hirose, 2014; Uehara, 2006; Nakamura, 2016). According to Ikegami (2008), in a subjective expression, a conceptualizer is immersed in or is projecting themselves onto a scene, perceiving it from their own “experiencer” viewpoint; in an objective expression, a conceptualizer is detached from the scene and perceives it from an external, “neutral” position (cf. Langacker, 2008). Moreover, subjectivity has been linked to indices such as pronoun omission, degree of agentivity or definiteness and preference for intransitive rather than transitive (Ikegami, 1991), which may also be considered relevant to possession.

Existing studies have primarily focused on predicative possession, categorized through the BE/HAVE typology (Isačenko, 1974), leaving attributive possession and inalienable nouns relatively understudied. It has been proposed that languages that lack morphological distinctions for inalienability still may employ distinct strategies to encode possession (Seiler, 2001; Thunes, 2013).

To assess the correlation between subjectivity and the encoding of inalienable possession, this study examines eight typologically distinct languages (English, French, Czech, Russian, Ainu, Turkish, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese). First, we evaluated each language's overall general degree of subjectivity based on morphosyntactic indices such as pronoun omission, transitivity preferences, definiteness marking, and predicative possession type based on Heine (1997). As a result, we proposed a preliminary subjectivity scale from least to most objective: 1) English, French; 2) Czech; 3) Russian, Ainu, Turkish; 4) Japanese, Mandarin Chinese.

Second, we conducted a cross-linguistic comparison using a controlled set of sentences adapted from Moriya (2018), originally designed to contrast English and Japanese subjective expressions with other Eurasian languages. Third, we carried out a corpus-based analysis focused on body-part nouns in external possession. The corpus data was drawn primarily from InterCorp v. 16ud (Čermák & Rosen, 2012) and supplemented by SketchEngine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014), with additional material for Ainu (e.g. Nakagawa et al., 2016–2024).

We focused on the aforementioned subjectivity indices, as well as the mode of expression of the conceptualizer. Based on preliminary results, we have identified five distinct types of expressions based on the treatment of the conceptualizer and the possessor. We suggest that the two entities are treated as separate categories and that their presence, or lack thereof, in the on-stage region, suggest a possible subjectivity scale in external possession constructions; languages with overt conceptualizer and possessor encoding (e.g., English) show more objective tendency, while languages with implicit or omitted elements (e.g., Japanese, Mandarin Chinese) reflect stronger subjective tendency. 

By integrating typological, experimental, and corpus-based approaches, this study proposes a possible link between subjectivity and the encoding of inalienable possession. We aim to refine the concept of subjectivity as a tool for crosslinguistic comparison, and contribute to a deeper understanding of how cognitive factors like subjectivity influence linguistic encoding and grammatical structure across languages.