The grammatical life of property concept roots in Malayalam

Abstract

We provide an account of the morpho-syntax and semantics of property concept denoting expressions in Malayalam. We suggest that property concepts are lexicalized as uncategorized roots. Depending on the category of the functional heads they merge with, they participate in two types of predication. Both types are based on possession, overtly or covertly expressed. Our results add to recent work by Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2013) concerning variation in the lexicalization and grammar of property concepts cross-linguistically.