Datapoint Diu Indo-Portuguese/Order of possessor and possessum

Possessum-Possessor is the overwhelming non-pronominal possessive construction in Diu Indo-Portuguese.

The marginal Possessor-Possessum construction is arguably the result of two factors: (a) analogy with the order of pronominal possessive phrases (in which the possessive pronoun precedes the head noun); and (b) adstratal pressure from Gujarati (in which the case-marked possessor precedes the possessum). In Diu Indo-Portuguese, there seems to be a weight constraint in that long possessor NPs do not occur in such a construction.

No example containing two full nouns (rather than a noun and a proper noun) and showing possessor-possessum order were found in the corpus. However, their occurrence in the languagge cannot yet be discarded, not only because this type of inversion is relatively rare (and therefore poorly represented in the corpus), but also on account of the fact that də-PPs with full nouns have been shown to precede the head noun in other constructions which are not prototypical possessives. Compare:

ɛl tə fik-a med də tud koyz / (də) tud koyz med.
3f IPFV.NPST become-INF fear də all thing / də all thing fear
'She's always scared of everything.' (Cardoso 2009: 184)

Values

Possessum-possessor Frequency: 90.0%

Example 39-5:
Dəpəy muyɛmuyɛr də Manu, muyɛmuyɛr də ɔrlãd.
Dəpəy
then
muyɛr~muyɛr
woman~woman
də
of
Manu,
Manu
muyɛr~muyɛr
woman~woman
də
of
ɔrlãd.
Orlando
then the women of Manu('s family), the women of Orlando('s family)

Source: Cardoso 2009: 175

Example 39-7:
Kurəsãw də makak dẽt del mem korp.
Kurəsãw
heart
də
of
makak
monkey
dẽt
inside
də-el
of-3sg
mem
emph
korp.
body
The monkey's heart is inside his own body.

Source: Cardoso 2009: 220

Confidence:
Very certain

Possessor-possessum Frequency: 10.0%

Example 39-6:
Də tɛtɛ kaz jə bẽzew?
Də
of
tɛtɛ
Tete
kaz
house
jə
already
bẽze-w?
bless-pst
Has [he] already blessed Tete's house?

Source: Cardoso 2009: 169

Confidence:
Certain