Concept: appertentive clause

Definition

An appertentive clause is a clause construction with a topic-comment structure with a definite subject that has a predicate that is a possessor nominal.

Comments

An example is This house belongs to my sister. The definition is adapted from Haspelmath (2025: 17). Appertentive clauses have simply been called "belong clauses" (Stolz & Levkovych 2019), but Bickerton (1981/2016) called them "ownership (expressions)" (as opposed to "possession expressions"). The predicate nominal in an appertentive clause can be called "appertentum". As they are clearly predicational (in contrast to predpossessive clauses, which do not have a topic-comment structure), Croft (2022: 316) calls them "predicational possession clauses".

Sources
Haspelmath 2025; Bickerton 1981; Croft 2022; Stolz and Levkovych 2019