To Possess and to Experience in Tamil

An oblique subject is a shared feature of Tamil expressions of possession & feelings. (1) Sentences expressing inalienable possession, including part-whole relationships involving inanimates, mark the possessor subject with dative case; the copula is optional in certain subtypes of this sentence type but (2) obligatory in all alienable possession constructions, which code the possessor as locative. Substitution of locative for dative in (1) renders a possession alienable, ie, separate from the possessor; substitution of dative for locative in (2) indicates a high degree of possessiveness, not inalienability. (3) Verbal & nominal sentences expressing bodily sensations & emotions place the experiencer in the dative case; it is argued that involuntary sensations are treated as inalienable possessions, whereas emotions are less intrinsic. J. Hitchcock