Nominal possession in the mochica language

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the strategies of coding nominal possession in Mochica, as described by Carrera (1644). Some languages present possessive systems that treat certain groups of nouns in different manners, this phenomenon being known as ‘possessive split’. Mochica exhibits a special inalienability split that cannot be identified as a strict bipartite system, but rather as a formal continuum which corresponds iconically to the relational distance (con-ceptual) between the possessor and the possessed. This way, on one end of the continuum we have the most archaic possessive construction, which corresponds to inalienable possession, while the most innovative possessive constructions, which correspond to alienable posses-sion, are located on the other end.