External possession refers to the phenomenon where a DP is marked as an independent argument in its clause but is interpreted as the possessor of another argument. Choctaw makes extensive use of external possession, but, puzzlingly, it comes in two distinct morphological profiles. Previous work has assumed these to be surface morphological variants, but this article shows instead that external possession in Choctaw is derived by two distinct mechanisms. One mechanism involves building a DP with an internal possessor and raising the possessor out to a higher, left‐peripheral position. The alternative mechanism involves building two unconnected DPs, one in an internal‐argument position and one in a high applicative phrase, and identifying the higher DP with the possessor θ role of the lower DP in the process of semantic composition, by a mechanism known as delayed saturation. I demonstrate that this latter mechanism can generate external possession of objects and unaccusative subjects, depending on whether there is an external argument, and is subject to a host of interpretative restrictions that the movement‐based mechanism is not. Thus I show not only that external possession can be derived by two different mechanisms but also that those mechanisms may coexist in the same language.

中文翻译：

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密西西比州乔克托的两种外部财产

外部占有是指DP在其子句中被标记为独立论点但被解释为另一论点的拥有者的现象。Choctaw广泛使用外部财产，但令人费解的是，它具有两种截然不同的形态。先前的工作假定这些是表面形态变异，但是本文显示，在Choctaw中的外部占有是通过两种不同的机制派生的。一种机制涉及建立具有内部拥有者的DP，并将拥有者提升到更高的左外围位置。另一种机制是建立两个未连接的DP，一个在内部参数位置，一个在高应用短语中，并用拥有者θ识别较高的DP。通过称为延迟饱和的机制，较低DP在语义合成过程中的作用。我证明了后一种机制可以根据是否存在外部论点而产生对象和非宾格主体的外部占有，并且受到一系列解释性限制的限制，而基于运动的机制则没有。因此，我不仅表明外部占有可以通过两种不同的机制得出，而且这些机制可以以相同的语言共存。