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This chapter introduces the two major puzzles posed by possession sentences: the too-many-meanings puzzle and the too-many-(surface)-structures puzzle. The too-many-meanings puzzle is that languages often use the same construction to speak of having a car, having a sister, and having brown eyes, amongst other things, despite these relations being notionally distinct. The too-many-surface-structures puzzle is that languages differ radically in the argument structure used to convey the same possessive meanings. The chapter goes on to lay out the theory of the architecture of the grammar assumed in the main body of the book, and sketches how that architecture gives rise to a solution to both puzzles. A particularly important facet of this solution is the idea that a head which introduces a thematic role in the semantics might fail to take a specifier in the syntax, causing the relevant role to be saturated higher in the structure (Wood 2015)—a circumstance this book refers to as delayed gratification, and which turns out to be commonly attested in the typology of possession sentences. The core predictions of the present approach are presented. A concluding section summarizes the structure of the rest of the book.

Stassen (2009) points out a set of possession constructions in which the possessee appears as the predicate in a copular construction. In these constructions, the possessee appears to be marked by a derivational morpheme, often an adjectivalizer or nominalizer. An example is the English –ed in contexts like John is blue-eyed. Stassen dubs this phenomenon Predicativization. In this chapter, I show that Predicativization cannot be related to more familiar types of HAVE or BE construction by movement, further undermining the Freeze/Kayne tradition. This is shown via a detailed analysis of the –yoq suffix in Cochabamba Quechua, in which Delayed Gratification plays a key role. Drawing on and amending ideas from Nevins and Myler (2014, submitted), the chapter then lays out a detailed typology of Predicativization structures cross-linguistically. The main parameters of variation in this typology are (i) the category of the Predicativizing morpheme itself, (ii) the size of the nominal substructure it selects, (iii) whether it requires modifier, and (iv) whether or not the modifier can be phrasal.

The approach of this book makes two important predictions different from those of the Freeze/Kayne tradition: (a.) possession constructions can vary in the place in the structure where the possessor is introduced, (b.) the different ways of building possession sentences permitted by (a.) could have somewhat different meanings, depending on the semantic contributions of the pieces that make them up. This chapter provides existence proofs that these predictions are correct, drawn from new fieldwork data on two understudied Quechua dialects. Prediction (a.) is supported by an analysis of two possession constructions in Cochabamba Quechua, dubbed the BE construction and the BE-APPL construction, which differ precisely in where the possessor is introduced into the structure. Prediction (b.) is supported via a comparison of the BE-APPL construction in Cochabamba Quechua with a similar construction in Santiago del Estero Quechua. Both case studies suggest that the applicative morpheme does not introduce a thematic role of its own, a fact that has important implications for applicative theory. The chapter closes with some preliminary remarks on why Quechua languages vary with respect to whether or not they have HAVE.

This chapter extends the analysis to HAVE sentences, arguing that HAVE is the form that BE takes when it is combined with a transitive Voice head. This approach correctly predicts the various readings exhibited by have in English and by HAVE verbs in other languages, including non-possessive uses such as causer HAVE, experiencer HAVE, and engineer HAVE. Cross-linguistic variation in the availability of such readings is discussed in terms of variation in how BE is spelled out. The analysis successfully extends to languages with more than one transitive HAVE verb, as is shown by a case study from Icelandic (based on Myler, Sigurðsson, and Wood 2014).

This chapter compares the analysis of HAVE from chapter 4 with the standard analysis of HAVE found in the Freeze/Kayne tradition. Whereas the present approach takes HAVE to be BE plus a transitive Voice head, the Freeze/Kayne tradition proposes that HAVE is BE plus an incorporated adposition. After examining the Freeze/Kayne tradition on its own terms and pointing out a number of empirical and technical problems with it, this chapter goes on to compare the predictions made by the two approaches with respect to the structure of HAVE sentences. The Freeze/Kayne approach predicts that definiteness effects in HAVE sentences should match up with those in existential sentences. It also predicts that HAVE sentences should show signs that their subject has raised from below, and that they should pass tests for unaccusativity. In contrast, the present approach assigns a different explanation for definiteness effects in HAVE sentences, and predicts that HAVE should fail unaccusativity and raising tests. It is shown that the predictions of the present approach are correct, and that traditional arguments in favour of HAVE’s being unaccusative (such as its alleged inability to passivize) do not go through.