A three times marked possessive structure in Hungarian

Abstract

The paper presents a unique construction of possessing, in which the fact of the possessing is marked three times. On the regent of the construction (which refers to the possessed thing) there is a possessive suffix, and two other linguistic elements refer to the possessor. Both are personal pronouns, the first is in nominative, the second is in dative case. The study looks through the role of this structure in the secondary grammaticalization of the suffix. The paper suggests that the grammaticalization is not a one way, linear path. First, because there can be junctions in the grammaticalizational paths. Second, because in the semantic extension, the newly appearing functions may have an effect on the already existing system. The paper offers a corpus based analysis on how emphasizing the possessor can be related to the ethical dative function. The ethical dative usually occurs on the personal pronoun in the first or second persons (me, you) and
refers to a figure that is highly involved in the communicative situation. Thus, both structure types (the three times marked possessing and the ethical dative) elaborate emphasizing personal relations in the communicative situation.