Advances in the Syntax of DPs - Structure, agreement, and case

Possessives within and beyond NP 217

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D′

DP

PossP D^0

PossP Poss′

bala-lar

child-

kitab-

book

NumP Poss^0

Ø

-ı

ezafe-2

In this structure the null D^0 introduces a referential index, making the whole phrase
referential. Under these circumstances, referentiality spread (not unlike definiteness
spread, see Dobrovie-Sorin 2000 and the references cited therein) guarantees a seem-
ingly referential interpretation of the possessor. Note that the same thing applies to
Russian adjectives such as sosedskij ‘neighbour-like’, starušečij ‘old woman-like’, košačij
‘feline’. Although their normal interpretation is non-referential, they can be interpreted
in a seemingly referential fashion: for example, košačij ‘feline’ can describe a woman’s
eyes, yet V temnote ja uvidel košačji glaza (lit. ‘in darkness I saw feline eyes’) is most
readily interpreted as stating the speaker saw eyes that actually belong to a cat. Unfor-
tunately, space limitations prevent us from discussing this issue in more detail here.^16

6. Conclusions and significance

In this paper, we have considered two possessive constructions in Tatar, building on
Trugman (2005, 2007 ). Unlike Russian, Tatar has two formally distinct possessive
constructions. Moreover, unlike their Russian counterparts, Tatar nouns are not able
to inherently Case-mark other nouns. However, the similarities between the two
languages are even more striking: in both languages two structures are available in

16. This sort of referentiality spread is possible in direct object ezafe-2 nominals which are
    marked with the accusative case and impossible in direct object ezafe-2 nominals which are
    unmarked, exactly as predicted by our analysis (cf. Lyutikova & Pereltsvaig 2013) whereby
    accusative-marked direct objects are DPs, whereas unmarked objects are Small Nominals.