Alternation ‘Body part possessor alternation’ (Uncoded)

The (in)transitive variant of a pattern involving a possessor object and a possessed body part, which may be encoded either as an object noun phrase (e.g., L’uomo colpì la spalla di Marco 'The man beat Mark’s shoulder'), or may be expressed as a prepositional phrase (e.g., L’uomo colpì Marco sulla spalla 'The man beat Mark on his shoulder') (Levin 1993: 71-77).

Verb Meaning Verb form Basic coding frame Derived coding frame Occurs Comment # Ex.