The absolutive suffix indicates the absence of a possessor.
He claims that possessives normally receive an asymmetric reading with the possessor dominating, while also admitting a symmetric reading - but never a possessee-dominant reading.
The rest of the book concentrates on 'quantificational possessives', those in which the possessor phrase contains a quantificational determiner: every woman's father for example.
However, within the noun-phrase template, the value of the possessor slot will, in turn, be used to instantiate an embedded template, possessive-pronoun.
Again, they share the meaning that the possessor is predicated through or in its possessee.
In non-argument-taking nouns possessives are always interpreted as possessors.
Therefore, when a verb which does not lexicalize caused possession is found in the double object variant the first object has an intended possessor interpretation.
In such cases, the possessors are highly animate things (animals, rivers, trees), or the locations of human instruments.
