Possessives in Context

Is there anything interesting to be said about the semantics of possessives? Consider the English Saxon genitive DP John’s dog. The meaning conveyed by this DP depends on the meaning of the nouns John and dog: the actual denotation of John’s dog cannot be determined unless the denotations of John and dog are known. Still, knowing the meaning of John’s dog does not amount simply to knowing who John is and what kind of animal a dog is, but even to knowing that the individual denoted by John’s dog is a dog that stands in a certain relation to the individual called John. Thus three semantic pieces contribute to the meaning of John’s dog: (i) the meaning of John, (ii) the meaning of dog, and (iii) a relation holding between the two. This conclusion can be generalized to all possessive constructions. The semantics of possessives involves three components: (i) the denotation of the possessor, (ii) the denotation of the possessum, and (iii) the possessive relation holding between the two. Intuitively, out of the three semantic pieces listed above, it is the possessive relation that constitutes the semantic contribution of the possessive construction. Thus, the answer to the question stated above seems to depend in great part on the answer to the more specific question: is there anything interesting to be said about the semantics of the possessive relation? A cursory look at the interpretation of possessives raises the suspicion that this might not be the case. Possessives license a variety of interpretations that seem hard to reduce to a single possessive relation with a well-defined semantic content. Furthermore — as in e.g. John’s picture — it is often the case that the same possessive seems to license distinct alternative interpretations involving very different possessive relations. Carrying these observations to an extreme, it could be concluded that the semantics of the possessive relation is completely unrestricted. This, in effect, amounts to concluding that there is not much interesting to be said about the semantics of possessives in general, and about the possessive relation in particular: possessives entail the existence of a relation holding between possessor and possessum, but do not impose any restriction on the semantics of this relation. However, many authors have pointed out that this conclusion is too hasty: the interpretation of possessives seems to be subject to certain grammatical constraints. In substantiating this conclusion, most authors have focused on the fact