Prenominal possessives have been traditionally analysed as adjectives; however, their behavior is not consistent with either attributive or predicative adjectives. They do not occur in elliptical constructions; they can not be predicates nor can they be modified. A further aspect of possessives that proves problematic is that the possessive demonstrates agreement with the possessor with respect to person and may show agreement with the possessed with respect to number and possibly gender (e.g. the adjectival-like agreement found in Romance languages).
Assuming Chierchia's (1985) contention that there does exist a syntactic instanciation of semantics within grammar, I propose that by taking into account the semantics of possession, the syntactic behavior of possessive constructions can be accounted for. I propose that possessives should be viewed as two-place predicates. Following Napoli's (1989) distinction between semantic and thematic roles, the possessive has two semantic roles: possessor and possessed. To account for both the syntactic variation in prenominal possessives in Romance and the semantics of the possessive, I propose that the prenominal possessive is projected in an XP as a predicate structure. Generating the possessive as a two-place predicate structure allows us to capture both their pronominal-like behavior with respect to binding, and their adjectival-like behavior with respect to agreement. The adjectival-like agreement of the possessive would reflect the predication relation as claimed by Napoli (1991).
