Possessors and (in)definiteness

In this paper I focus on the relation between the definiteness status of a DP and the definiteness status of its subparts across languages. I show that contrary to what has been assumed in e.g., Longobardi (1996) possessive constructions across languages do not show a uniform behaviour with respect to (in)definiteness spread and thus, it is questionable whether a unified treatment of possessive patterns is desirable. Rather possessive constructions are subject to several, language specific constraints. This leads to a fine-grained picture of expressions of possession.