<p>This study examines the interpretation and production of inalienable possession among heritage speakers and L2 learners of Spanish. Inalienable possession lies at the syntax-semantics interface and has previously been found to be challenging among bilingual populations (Giancaspro & Sánchez, 2019; Montrul & Ionin, 2010, 2012; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2002). In particular, this study explores the extent to which Spanish heritage speakers and L2 learners exhibit knowledge of Spanish inalienable possession with pronominal verbs requiring the use of the clitic <i>se</i>. Results from an Elicited Production Task and a Contextualized Preference Task administered online showed that the L2 learners followed a distinct pattern of response compared to the native speakers in the production and interpretation of inalienable possession. This pattern was characterized by the preference of possessive determiners over definite determiners. Heritage speakers, on the contrary, were not found to differ from the native speakers of Spanish. They behaved similarly to the control group as they followed the continuum that emerged for inalienable possession. That is, both groups were more accepting of definite determiners, while they showed less preference for structures with possessive determiners. The findings are discussed in terms of current debates on the role of factors involved in language acquisition such as maturational issues, learning experience, patterns of language exposure and usage, cross-linguistic influence, and the grammatical structure itself.</p>

Attributive absolute constructions in contemporary French The aim of this master thesis is a detailed analysis of French attributive absolute constructions (att. AC) with emphasis on their semantic characteristics. Att. AC is an example of what is called "secondary predication", i.e. a non-finite predicative structure modifying the primary predication, see a typical example "les yeux fermés", 'the eyes closed', in the sentence "Marie est assise, les yeux fermés.", 'Mary sits with her eyes closed.'. The main function of the att. AC is the modification of the head noun through the relation of inalienable possession (IP), or a part - whole relation, between this noun, which is mostly a human being, and an entity conceptualized in the att. AC. The thesis finds its main source in a monograph about AC written by Suzanne Hanon (1989), which is here completed by a qualitative analysis of syntactic and semantic factors that come into play in the formation of att. AC. Att. AC are approached form the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammar as conceptualizations of the IP (or part - whole) paradigm and it is proposed their description as a prototype-based category with some instances more typical (see the example above) than others (e.g. att. AC with an adverbial function or modifying an...

The Gift 2.0 - A Museological Study of donations of Objects and its Underlying Motives, is a study in order to explain why people choose to donate items for museums, rather than any other alternative.The empirical study consists of qualitative, semi-structured research-interviews conducted with seven selected curators from various museums, with extensive experience of the subject acquisition. I have chosen to only examine Swedish cultural-historical museums. The hypothesis that I assumed was first and foremost that the heritage sphere is what Pierre Bourdieu calls a field. The reason that people would donate objects to museums, is that the donation itself brings cultural capital to the donor, from people with the same habitus. Since I felt that Bourdieus theory of field, capital and habitus could not explain all the reason why people donate items to museum, my second hypotheses was that certain objects are what Annette Weiner called inalienable possessions, objects that at any cost may not be sold or bartered away. It is precisely the ability to keep the object outside of the commercial sphere that is the essential for an inalienable possession. Linked to this hypothesis I argued that museums act like a bastion of inalienable possessions, in which the donor can continue to keep the object while it has been given. My source material consists of the research interviews and secondary material that I have acquired during the study, consisting of literature, deed of gift and e-mail correspondence. I have analyzed both primary and secondary source material using my hypotheses. The results of this study verify that my hypothesis is valid to use as a musicological theory of gifts. The study is a two year master´s thesis in Museum and Heritage Studies.