External possession of body-part nouns in Jumjum: Possessor raising with possessum incorporation

In Jumjum, a Western Nilotic language, some body-part nouns, and only such nouns, may be externally possessed in transitive and antipassive clauses. In these external possessor constructions, the possessor is either the object of a transitive verb or the demoted patient of an antipassive verb. The externally possessed body-part noun is partly incorporated into the verb, as shown by the following properties: It immediately follows the verb, its tone is determined by the final tone of the verb, it may combine with a nominalized verb in a kind of compound, and it does not exhibit the root-final nasalization that is prevalent in monosyllabic singular nouns in Jumjum, including internally possessed body-part nouns.

Possessor Raising

Various languages allow instances of external possession—possessive encoding without a possessive structure in DP. The analysis of these cases has long been a battleground of raising versus control. I provide a new argument from Nez Perce in support of possessor raising of a type thematically parallel to raising to subject. The possessor phrase moves from a possessum-DP-internal position to an athematic A-position within vP. Like raising to subject, this movement is obligatory and does not result in the assignment of a new θ-role to the moving element. A case-driven treatment of possessor raising is proposed.