On the concept of possession and possessive constructions: a preliminary insight

This topic became central to typological linguistics in the second half of the 1990s. Since then quite a few articles and monographs dealing with different aspects of possession and its formal codification in different languages have been published.In this introductory account on the concept of possession and possessive constructions we are mainly drawing on our own unpublished materials dating back to the second half of the 1990s. We are aware that since then a lot has been written on this subject and that in this paper some claims may appear axiomatic for those typologists working on this and related fields. Nonetheless we intend with this contribution to revise our initial work with the aim of extending in future contributions its original scope and research aim. In this article we are primarily going to introduce the concept of Possession as a philosophical-linguistic category and the terminological question related to it. Some basic grammatical characteristics of possessive constructions and the way languages such as English, German, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian express the Possessor – Possessum relation (cf. internal vs. external Possessor constructions) will be also discussed.