ИСТИНА

The elative postposition gə̈c in Hill Mari (<Finno-Ugric) has a completely unexpected meaning which is just the opposite of its elative-based uses – it is Contact point. We argue that the meaning of Contact point expressed by gə̈c arises from the encoding of Selection from the set with this postposition. The Contact point is thus categorized as a part selected from the whole entity (which is referred to by a direct object). Our assumption is supported by the set of possessive relations possible for gə̈c-constructions