# Ambiguity in the use of possessives



## Hulalessar

In the sentence _Paul asked John to move his car_ we cannot be certain whose car it is Paul wants moving. More often than not context will tell us, but sometimes we have to say _Paul asked John to move his (Paul's) car _or_ Paul asked John to move his (John's) car. _Are their any languages which allow or require it to be made clear which person the possessive word refers to without resorting to repetition of the person's name?

In English the problem does of course disappear if the two persons are of different sexes: _Paul asked Mary to move his car _or_ Paul asked Mary to move her car._


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> Are their any languages which allow or require it to be made clear which person the possessive word refers to without resorting to repetition of the person's name?



As you just probably know, this is not possible in Romance languages, because possessive adjectives agree with the object (_suo/sua, son/sa, seu/sua_).



Hulalessar said:


> In English the problem does of course disappear if the two persons are of different sexes: _Paul asked Mary to move his car _or_ Paul asked Mary to move her car._



In Brazilian Portuguese it is possible, in this case:
_O Paulo pediu à Maria que movesse o carro dele (do Paulo)/dela (da Maria)_.


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## entangledbank

Many European languages use some variation of the IE _su-, sv-_ element to refer back to the subject. I don't know which ones unambiguously handle your example where there are two clauses and two subjects. Some North American languages have fourth-person pronouns, which would presumably handle this situation.


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## did concombre

The declensions (is it the right word?) in german or russian serve this purpose, don't they? Like in latin.


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## Dan2

An even simpler example of the ambiguity in English is "John moved his car".  Without context (sometimes even with) we don't know if the car is John's or someone else's.

Some languages that I know of that have different words for "his" referring back to subject and "his" not referring to subject  (similarly for "her" and "their") are Russian, Norwegian, and Swedish.  The English-like ambiguity is possible in German, but is often avoided by choosing an alternative possessive determiner.


Nino83 said:


> Hulalessar said:
> 
> 
> 
> Are their any languages which allow or require it to be made clear which person the possessive word refers to without resorting to repetition of the person's name_?_
> 
> 
> 
> As you just probably know, *this *is not possible in Romance languages, because possessive adjectives agree with the object (_suo/sua, son/sa, seu/sua_).
Click to expand...

"this" =  resolving the ambiguity?  Your point is not clear.  It _would _be possible if Romance had separate subject-referrinng and non-subject-referrinng possessives, like Russian, in spite of your point about agreement with the possessed.    Or did you mean that what's not possible in Romance is the disambiguation that occurs automatically in the OP's male/female example (because Italian, etc., don't have separate words for "his" and "her")?  OK, but that's not the part of the OP that you quoted.  (Actually, there's another case of automatic 3rd-person disambiguation in English that _does _work in Romance, singular vs plural:
"John asked the boys to move his car" vs "... to move their car".)


did concombre said:


> The declensions (is it the right word?) in german or russian serve this purpose, don't they? Like in latin.


I don't understand this comment.  Can you clarify what you mean?  Thanks.


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## Ben Jamin

Dan2 said:


> Some languages that I know of that have different words for "his" referring back to subject and "his" not referring to subject  (similarly for "her" and "their") are Russian, Norwegian, and Swedish.


This was true about Norwegian, but is not any longer. The reflexive pronoun "sin/sitt/sine" is nowadays used about any person in the sentence, most often the one closest to the pronoun, but you never can be sure. The confusion is total.
Example: "Politimannen kjørte ham til leiligheten sin". In "classical Norwegian" it meant "The policeman (person A) drove him (person B) to his own (Person's A) appartment. Now it can also mean "to person's B appartment".


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## bearded

Nino83 said:


> As you just probably know, this is not possible in Romance languages, because possessive adjectives agree with the object (_suo/sua, son/sa, seu/sua_).


Quite correct.  And as a consequence, in Romance languages the ambiguity is still greater, because in the case of Paul and Mary you never know if _suo/sua (Italian) _means his or her.


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## Nino83

Dan2 said:


> "this" =  resolving the ambiguity?  Your point is not clear.  It _would _be possible if Romance had separate subject-referrinng and non-subject-referrinng possessives, like Russian, in spite of your point about agreement with the possessed.    Or did you mean that what's not possible in Romance is the disambiguation that occurs automatically in the OP's male/female example (because Italian, etc., don't have separate words for "his" and "her")?  OK, but that's not the part of the OP that you quoted.



I wanted to say that in Romance languages possessives agree (in gender and number) with the possessed and not with the possessor. I was referreing to the second example (male/female possessor, his/her). 



Dan2 said:


> (Actually, there's another case of automatic 3rd-person disambiguation in English that _does _work in Romance, singular vs plural: "John asked the boys to move his car" vs "... to move their car".)



It works only in Italian and French, which have _loro/leur < illōrum_ (Classical Latin genitive plural, of them/of those) but not in Spanish and European Portuguese, which have _su/seu < sŭum_ (his/her/their).

_Paolo ha chiesto ai ragazzi di spostare la *sua/loro* macchina (Italian)
Paul a demandé aux garçons de déplacer *sa/leur* voiture (French) 
Pablo pidió a los chicos que movieran su coche/carro (Spanish)
Paulo pediu aos rapazes que movessem o seu carro (European Portuguese)
Paulo pediu para os rapazes moverem o carro *dele/deles* (Brazilian Portuguese)_


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## did concombre

Dan2 said:


> I don't understand this comment.  Can you clarify what you mean?  Thanks.



I meant that at the end of german words, there are a suffix that indicates the "génitif" etc etc. I realize now that I didn't understand the initial question from hulalessar well.


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## Scholiast

Greetings all



Hulalessar said:


> Are their any languages which allow or require it to be made clear which person the possessive word refers to without resorting to repetition of the person's name?



This is always unambiguous in Latin and classical Greek. And, I might add (echoing Dan2), hardly ever in modern English problematic, because context defines sense.

Σ


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## Dan2

bearded man said:


> Nino83 said:
> 
> 
> 
> As you just probably know, this is not possible in Romance languages, because possessive adjectives agree with the object (_suo/sua, son/sa, seu/sua_).
> 
> 
> 
> Quite correct.
Click to expand...

Wait a minute... The problem is NOT that the Romance possessives DO agree with the "object" (the possessed) - the problem is that they DON'T agree with the possessor.  (As you well know as a German speaker, BM, it's possible for a language to require possessives to have gender agreement with BOTH the possessor AND the possessed.)  It was that mistatement, together with the inappropriate quoting of the OP, that made Post #2 so confusing.

In terms of a concrete example, in:
_Paolo ... Maria ... la sua macchina,_
the problem is NOT, as Post 2 implied, that "sua" shows agreement with "macchina"; the problem is that "sua" can refer to either male Paolo or female Maria!

@Ben Jamin: You're an astute observer of Norwegian and I don't doubt what you say.  But as we know from discussions in the Nordic forum, a lot of Norwegians claim to maintain the distinction, at least in the simpler cases.


Scholiast said:


> hardly ever in modern English problematic, because context defines sense.


Yes, _usually _not a problem, but as Hulalessar points out, it's not uncommon to see awkward disambiguations like _Paul asked John to move his (Paul's) car._


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## bearded

Dan2 said:


> Wait a minute... The problem is NOT that the Romance possessives DO agree with the "object" (the possessed) - the problem is that they DON'T agree with the possessor. (As you well know as a German speaker, BM, it's possible for a language to require possessives to have gender agreement with BOTH the possessor AND the possessed.) It was that mistatement, together with the inappropriate quoting of the OP, that made Post #2 so confusing


You are quite right, Dan2. I think that when he wrote ''agree with the object'', Nino implicitly meant ''and not with the possessor''.


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## Hulalessar

Scholiast said:


> This is always unambiguous in Latin.



I cannot recall how Latin does this. How does it establish whether the chariot belongs to Marcus or Lucius in _Marcus asked Lucius to move his chariot?_


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> I cannot recall how Latin does this. How does it establish whether the chariot belongs to Marcus or Lucius in _Marcus asked Lucius to move his chariot?_



Probably a Latin speaker would use _is, ea, id_ but the genitive _eius_ is equal for both males and females (of him, of her).  
In the case of _suus, sua, suum_, it is equal to the possessive adjective in Romance languages.


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## Scholiast

Salvete!

(a) _Marcus Lucium rogat ut aurigam emoveat_ = "M. asks L. to move a/the chariot" - the proprietorship of the chariot unspecified.

(b) _Marcus Lucium rogat ut aurigam eius emoveat_ = (usually) "M. asks L. to move his [L.'s] chariot" - but agreed, this could be "M. asks L. to move his [i.e. Quintus'] chariot".

(c)_ Marcus Lucium rogat ut aurigam suam emoveat_ unambiguously declares the chariot to be Marcus'.

Only in (b) is there ever any ambiguity. And the context would always determine the sense.

Σ


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## Ben Jamin

Dan2 said:


> @Ben Jamin: You're an astute observer of Norwegian and I don't doubt what you say.  But as we know from discussions in the Nordic forum, a lot of Norwegians claim to maintain the distinction, at least in the simpler cases.


Hi! I guess that there are many Norwegian speakers, especially of the older generation that still use the language they learned many years ago, a language that maintains the reflexive role of sin/sitt/sine. They maybe ignore how "common/younger" people speak and write, and think that their way of speaking is much wider used than it actually is.

Use google, and search "sin" "sitt" or "sine" and find out how many sentences comply with the correct reflexive use. I have already written about this, but the situation is not easier as many people in Norway use the so called "garpegenitiv" (Johan sin bil). This construction probably gave the "coup de grace" for the reflexive use of "sin".
Read comments to web articles, and find out what the language actually is. There are few people that speak and write like Per Egil Hegge nowadays.


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## Askadia

In Italian:
_Paul ha chiesto a John di spostar*gli* la macchina - _is understood as_ "Paul asked John to move Paul's car"_, since the particle *gli* can be roughly translate with "_for himself_ (as the beneficiary)".

Thus:
_Paul ha chiesto a John di spostare la *sua* macchina - _is often understood as _"Paul asked John to move John's car", _since the other meaning would be worded as above.


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## fdb

Modern Persian still has the reflexive pronoun xud (classical Perisan xwaδ), which is actually cognate with Latin suus. Thus you say:

Ahmad pisar i xud rā zad “A. hit his own son”, but
Ahmad pisar i ō rā zad “A. hit his (someone else’s) son”.

But if you use a pronominal suffix, the result is ambiguous:
Ahmad pisar-aš-rā zad “A. hit his (his own? someone else’s?) son”’

The postposition –rā marks the direct object.


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## bearded

Scholiast said:


> _Marcus Lucium rogat ut aurigam emoveat_ = "M. asks L. to move a/the chariot" - the proprietorship of the chariot unspecified.


Actually, in Latin _auriga _is che charioteer/driver, not the chariot.  I would suggest ..._ut vehiculum _(for car) _emoveat._


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## Scholiast

Greetings



bearded man said:


> Actually, in Latin _auriga _is che charioteer/driver



Of course bearded man is right about this. Hasty oversight on my part. _carrus_ (rather, _carrum_) would have served.

Σ


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## robbie_SWE

Nino83 said:


> _Paolo ha chiesto ai ragazzi di spostare la *sua/loro* macchina (Italian)
> Paul a demandé aux garçons de déplacer *sa/leur* voiture (French)
> Pablo pidió a los chicos que movieran su coche/carro (Spanish)
> Paulo pediu aos rapazes que movessem o seu carro (European Portuguese)
> Paulo pediu para os rapazes moverem o carro *dele/deles* (Brazilian Portuguese)_
> _Paul a cerut/rugat băiețiilor să mute mașina *sa/lor* (Romanian)_



Just for the sake of comparison.


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