Genitive Variation in English. Conceptual Factors in Synchronic and Diachronic Studies

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Anette Rosenbach
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2002 to 2003
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5365768

This monograph is an empirical study of a particular type of grammatical variation, i.e. the genitive variation in English (s-genitive vs. of-genitive). The main empirical finding of this study is that, counter to the general development of English towards more analyticity, the more synthetic s-genitive has become more productive again from late Middle English to Present-day English, and the present study sets out to account for this (at first glance) peculiar change. In an experimental study the impact of various conceptual factors on the choice of genitive construction (i.e. animacy, topicality, and possessive relation) is investigated and their relative importance is assessed. (In this respect, this study also introduces a specific way of analyzing - and weighing - theinteraction of several competing factors). Moreover, it combines the study of present and past English in an intriguing and new way by comparing Present-day English experimental data with historical corpus data (early Modern English). A psycholinguistic approach to grammatical variation and change is introduced, looking at what makes speakers choose one genitive construction rather than the other, and the observed change is accounted for in terms of economically-driven language change (what is optimal for the language user synchronically, becomes more frequent diachronically). It is also shown in which way the structural change of possessive `s from a fully-fledged inflection to a clitic as well as the new determiner function of the s-genitive relate to the observed new productivity of the s-genitive, and in which way possible (de)grammaticalization processes could be at work in this development.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants