’Habere’ «po-ural'ski»
’Habere’ in Uralic

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the modes of expressing the habitive (or existential-possessive) structure ('somebody has something') and the possessive attributive construction ('somebody's something') in Uralic languages, their morphological structures and the conditions under which they evolved. The former is a full sentence, whereas the latter is frequently a syntagme. 1. In Uralic languages two types of constructions are used to express the idea of possession in a full sentence: a) The possessum is the subject, and the noun denominating the possessor carries a case ending, which can be either an adverbial one (lative, locative or ablative), or grammatical (genitive or dative), or it has no case ending (nominative), or the possessor is followed by a postposition with a locational function. b) The possession is the objective complement of a verb meaning 'habere'. 2. In the possessive adjectival structure the possessive adjective is a noun in nominative or with genitive suffix (or with a locational suffix or postposition). The possession either carries a possessive suffix or it doesn't. Uralian languages similarly to the Indo-European language family do not have an ancient verb such as 'habere', they still use the habitive construction with a verb meaning 'esse' or 'non esse'. Most Uralian languages indicate the possessive relation on the possessum (as well) of the possessive attributive construction in the case of a possessor expressed otherwise than by a personal pronoun. This is done by possessive suffix in the third person (this is the case compulsorily in Hungarian, the Baltic-Finnish languages and Lapp don't use possessive suffix in construction of this type, whereas in other languages of the family this mode of indication is optional). The Uralic structure indicated on the possessum (as well) and called by many as izafet, a term borrowed from turcology, has been explained by some as the impact of neighbouring Turkic languages. However, the author of this paper is of the opinion that this is likely to be the outcome of a spontaneous internal development from the age of the Uralic protolanguage. There have been attempts to establish genetic links between Uralic habitive constructions involving the verb 'esse' and Indo-European languages, between the Uralic languages using the so called izafet and Turkic languages, but these constructions evolved autonomously in the mentioned language families.

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