On the Structure of Indefinite Possessives

Abstract

I present evidence that indefinite possessives display some peculiar semantic properties distinguishing them from other types of possessive DPs. In particular, indefinite possessives do not license contextual interpretations, which are instead available for the corresponding definite possessives and possessive partitives. This semantic asymmetry argues against existing theories according to which indefinite possessives are structurally equivalent to definite possessives (Kayne (1994)) or to possessive partitives (Barker (1998); Zamparelli (1998)).

The unavailability of contextual interpretations for indefinite possessives is accounted for in Storto ([to appear]) in terms of the discourse semantics of these DPs: indefinite possessives cannot be interpreted as discourse-specific DPs. This semantic peculiarity is due to the interaction between their partitive structure and the indefiniteness of the nominal embedded under of The implementation of this idea proposed in Storto ([to appear]), however, is not compatible with the "classic" formulation of the Partitive Constraint. I show that this proposal can be maintained under a reformulation of the Partitive Constraint along the lines of de Hoop (1997), and draw some conclusions on the structural complxity of indefinite possessives in a crosslinguistic perspective.