Linguistics babble

[flexagon]

On the train today I was pondering how the English language could really use two different words for two usages of the word "my". There's the possessive my (my purse, my bagel), and then there's the "associated with me" my (my company, my train, my husband) where I definitely don't own or control the thing in question. There are more, but these seem like the two that are most in need of separation.

I have no idea how my hypothetical language change would handle things that one partly owns or partly controls.

My cat: I own her under the law, but she also has legal rights to humane treatment, and I think of her as more than a possession.
My condo: I own half of it at most, and that's joint ownership with heisenbug involved, the bank owns the rest.

Is this even interesting? It seems kind of unactionable. There are ways to protest the use of a word, or the misuse, but there's not much people can practically do to promote a pair of new words to replace one word. :P Also, I love wordplay... I am exactly the kind of person who's interested enough in ideas about clarity of language (computer languages, Esperanto, even E-prime) but then goes home to do cryptic crosswords.

Maybe I'll do some constrained writing soon.

Comments

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

I bet cats have a lot of words for possession.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

i think a lot of languages have ambiguities like that; though often the clumps are slightly different...

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I was recently thinking about "my" versus "our" in terms of a shared apartment, so you're not the only one. :)

[soong.livejournal.com]

I have at various times thought about this, uneasy with the 'my girlfriend' construction or others where ownership of the subject of 'my' was inappropriate, and then stopped worrying about it and gone back to the common usage.
On the one hand, 'everyone knows' that 'my' doesn't always imply ownership, but on the other hand there's probably some interesting progressive word play to be had in explicitly breaking those patterns.