RT list: help on possessive pronoums and preposition "for"

Dear all,

Happy new year! I'm looking for current work on the semantics and pragmatics of possessive pronoums and of the preposition "for."

1) In relation to possessive pronoums, my interest is quite general. I just want to know about work that discusses the range of meanings that pronoums like "my" can help to convey in different contexts, and if there is any sense in claiming that these pronoums have some stable semantic feature that remains constant across contexts.

2) In relation to the preposition "for", I'm interested in whether one knows about any discussion of the contribution, if any, this preposition may give to the meanings of sentences like these:

a) The captain is responsible for the ship (the captain ought to make sure that the conditions of the ship remain safe)
b) The rain was responsible for the accident (the rain caused the accident)
c) The captain is responsible for the death of the passengers (the captain is to blame for the death of the passagers)

all the best, Paulo

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Dr Paulo Sousa
Assistant Director, Institute of Cognition and Culture
Lecturer in Cognitive Anthropology, School of Anthropological Studies
Queen's University, Belfast
http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/InstituteofCognitionCulture/Staff/
Received on Sun Jan 10 18:49:03 2010