Abstract
The paper deals with the functional properties of possessive constructions. It focuses on internal (adnominal) possession and external (affectedness) possession in Czech.
The elements of both construction types (the possessor, the possessum, and the predicate) are first thoroughly investigated from a semantic and pragmatic perspective. In the main part of the article, it is claimed that the emergence of specialized possessive constructions can also be explained as a functional, speaker-oriented preference, based on different needs in terms of information structure.
It concerns the hypothesis that the possessive construction types are correlated with different word order arrangements. A case study examining the relative frequency of word order patterns for each construction type corroborates this assumption.
Specifically, for dative external possession, the emergence of the construction can be explained as a discourse preference of speakers to employ the possessor in the topic and the possessum in the focus.