Linguistic Maps

Predicative possession

This map shows alternative ways of conveying the “to have” meaning found in English and most European langugages. Many languages express this through an existential clause, for example, for the sentence “I have a house” the literal translations in the four subtypes would be:

Locative/Dative possessive - At-me house is. OR To-me house there is. 

Genitive possessive - Mine house is. OR My house-mine there is. 

Topic possessive - As far as I am concerned, house there is. OR As for me, a house exists. 

Comitative/Conjunctional possessive - a house with-me exists. OR I house and/too/while (is)

Note: please ignore the word worder as it is extremely variable.

Partitive constructions

Occurs in French (de, du, de la, des), Catalan ( del, de l', de la dels ), Italian ( del, dello, della, dell', dei, degli, degl' , delle ), Albanian (disa), Kurdish (hendê, birrê), Luxembourgish ( däers/es, däer/er), Moroccan Arabic and as a case in Basque, Finnish, Estonian, Inari and Skolt Sámi, Haida, Xerente (Amazon), Yakut/Sakha and marginally in Russian as a subtype of the genitive. Also existed in old Portuguese and old Spanish.