Abstract
Oceanic languages typically make a grammatical contrast between expres-
sions of alienable and inalienable possession. Moreover, further distinctions
are made in the alienable category but not in the inalienable category. The
present research tests the hypothesis that there is a good motivation for such a
development in the former case. As English does not have a grammaticalized
distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, it provides a good
testing ground. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants were
asked to write down the first interpretation that came to mind for possessive
phrases, some of which contained inherently relational possessums, while
o thers contained possessums that are not inherently relational. Phrases with
non-relational possessums elicited a broader range of interpretations and a
lower consistency of a given interpretation across possessor modifiers than
those with relational possessums. Study 2 demonstrated that users assign a
default interpretation to a possessive phrase containing a relational possessum
even when another reading is plausible. Study 3, a corpus-based analysis of
possessive phrase use, showed that phrases with relational possessums have a
narrower range of interpretations than those with other possessums. Taken
together, the findings strongly suggest that grammatical distinctions between
different types of alienable possession are motivated.