Views on the syntax of the ’s-Marker in English

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Ewa Willim and Adam Papuziński

Views on the Syntax of the ’s-Marher in English

In this paper,we wish tocompare threeapproaches to the syntax ofnominal possessives in Modern English: two influential analy ses found in standard reference books on English grammar and a recent analysis advanced within the generative model. Each ap

proach offers a different perspectiveon thesyntactic status ofthe possessive dependant in the noun phrase. The main purpose of thispaper is to gain insightinto the nature of the controversy and theimplications the comparedanalyseshave for thegeneral study of English grammar. We begin our survey with a brief introduc tion in Section 1 tothe complexgrammatical aspectsof possessive descriptions. In Section 2 we outline the syntactic analysis of nom inalpossessivespresentedin Quirk etal. (1972)and in Huddleston (1988) and place these analyses in the context of modern traditional linguistics. Section 3 offers a historical synopsis ofthe development of prenominal’¿-marked possessivesin English. The reason we in

cludediachronicdata here isthatwebelieve that it may help un

derstand the nature ofthe controversy better and clarify the impli cations of their analysisforthestudy ofEnglish syntax. Finally, an analysistaking the ’¿-morphemeas a marker of definiteness is in vestigated in Section 4. Section 5includes conclusionsof thecom

parison. Throughout, when we refer to the ’¿-marker, we mean a morpheme, which is realized in a particular context with one of its allomorphs, including the zero allomorph. Inthis paper, we

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Views onthe Syntax ofthe \-Marker in English 59

restrict ourattention tostructures with a referential nominal pos sessive in pre-position to the head noun (cf. (1) below).

1. INTRODUCTION

A possessive description, that is, a nominal structure in whichthe head noun is modified by a nominal possessive, i.e. a lexical noun phrase marked with's, as in Mary’s car,orby a pronominal pos

sessive, as in her car, is a productive, creative and common con struction in Modern English. Itisacquired early, at the two-word stage of the development of language in children, and it is used frequently already at this stage (Radford 1990).1 It is also com

mon inadult English. Barker(1995) pointsout that possessive de

scriptionscan be found in approximately one out of five sentences in everyday written English.2 Their formal properties,origin and development, aswell as interpretation have been a widelystudied topic in the theory of grammar.

1 According to Radford (1990), at the two-stage level children are at the ini

tial stage of their categorial development. At that stage, which typically occurs at the age of approximately 20—23 months, children begin to learn the prin

ciples of categorizing words and projecting lexical categories into phrasal cat

egories. At that stage children do use the 7-marker, even if sporadically. For Radford (1990), this shows that the grammatical properties of lexical categories (e.g. determination) are initially uncategorized or else they are miscategorized as lexical. We will return to the difference between lexical and grammatical (functional) categories later in the paper.

^Barker’s count is based on the front page of May 1st, 1991 issue of The New Yor% Times. His estimate is confirmed by the number of possessive descriptions found in a randomly chosen article in Newsweeki March 11th, 2002 issue. In the article entitled “South Africa is not Zimbabwe,” which comprises 54 sentences, there are 15 possessive descriptions, 11 lexical and 4 pronominal.

With respect to meaning, possessive constructions have been claimed to instantiate a fundamentalcategoryof human cognition, the notion ofabstract location (cf. inter alia Anderson 1971; Lyons

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60 Ewa Willim and Adam Papuziński

1977; Clark 1978;Langacker 1990).Nominaland pronominal pos sessives typically denote entities which may be seen as reference points, or locations, for the entities denoted bythe noun? In other words,the use of a possessive implies theexistenceofa relationbe tweentwo entities. Theexact nature of this relation may be easier todetermine in the case of deverbal nouns taking subject and ob jects arguments, asin (la), and relational nouns, for example kin shipand body-part terms asin (lb), as such nouns denoterelations and entail the existence of the entity denoted by the possessive, but itseems that it cannot be determined in a context-independent way with non-relational nounsillustrated in (lc), which denote in

dividualsrather than relations (Barker 1995)?

(1) a. John’s refusalof theoffer/the ojfer’srefusal (by John), etc.

b. John’s brother/leg!nose,etc.

c. John’steam/car/soup, etc.

Owing to their cognitive salience and frequency of use, pos sessive descriptions figure prominently in syntactic typology and studies on language universals (cf. Clark 1978; Ultan 1978; Croft 1993). Such studies attest to a considerable parametric variation in the morphosyntactic properties of the possessive description, sometimesalso referred to as the genitive construction (cf. Croft 1993). For example, the relation between the possessive and the head noun denoting the possessum can be expressed via a (vari able) case-ending,genitive in Polish (cf. (2)), nominative or da

tive in Hungarian (cf. Szabolcsi 1994), or it can be expressed via * * 3The notion of abstract location is widely taken to encompass a number of more concrete relations, including possession/ownership, part-whole and kin

ship relations.

4The relation between the possessive and the noun is sometimes taken to be a loose concept, termed “intrinsic connection,” that can involve any specific relation whatsoever. In other words, the relation is essentially vague and it is determined pragmatically (cf. Jackendoff 1981).

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Viewson the Syntax ofthe ’¿-Marker in English 61

concord, as is the case with pronominaland adjectival possessives in Polish (cf. (3)), or cross-referencing agreement where the ref

erential features of the possessive are marked on the possessum, as in Hungarian (cf. (4) from Szabolcsi 1994: 180). The posses sive construction can alsobe expressed with the help of an adpo- sition, of in the English example given in (5) (cf. Croft 1993: 33), via aninvariant linkingmorpheme,5 affixation, incorporation, fu

sion, compounding, and other morphosyntactic means discussed in more detail in Ultan (1978), Croft (1993: 28—39), and Blake (1994: 94-118).6

5By virtue of the fact that r is morphologically invariant, Croft (1993) anal

yses it as a linker. See also note 16.

6As the English examples provided in (1) and (5) show, a single language can employ more than one means to grammaticize the possessive relation. We use the term “grammaticize” rather than “grammaticalize” to avoid confusion with the meaning now widely ascribed to the term “grammaticalization” in historical linguistics.

(2) dom Jana “John’shouse”

house-n(om),m(asc),sg Jan-gen, m, sg

(3) moja książką “mybook”

my-nom, f(em), lsg book-nom,f,sg

Jankowa książka “John’s book”

Jan-(A)nom, f,sg book-nom, f,sg

(4) a te kalapjaid “your hats”

the you-n, 2sg hat-poss, pl,2sg

(a) Mari kalapjai “Mari’shats”

(the) Mari-n, 3sg hat-poss, pl,3sg (5) the library of Boston

Furthermore, if the possessiverelation ismarkedmorpholog

ically in a language, the possessive marker can attach itself bothto

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a referential and a non-referentialpossessive. An exampleat hand is English, where the \-marker appears on two distinct classes of possessives, referred to as specifying and classifying, respectively (cf.Biber 1999).Theformer construction is illustrated in(1) above, while the latter is illustrated in (6) below. Thanks to the differ ence between the two kinds ofpossessives, a single noun phrase can contain two such elements, asshown in (7) from Zribi-Hertz (1997: 532):7

'Classifying possessives are sometimes analysed as constituents of noun

noun compounds or compound-like objects (cf. Barker 1995; Biber 1999). By contrast, Zribi-Hertz (1997) analyses the r-marker as syntactic in specifying possessives and derivational (i.e. morphological) in classifying possessives.

8Some languages distinguish formally between alienable and inalienable possessive constructions (e.g. Konkow, a North American Indian language spo

ken in Pacific coastal areas), mark kinship possessives differently from all other possessives (e.g. Piro, a language spoken in Equadorial Peru), encode the part

(6) a children’s bool{, a girl’s bicycle, a men’s room (7) a. I sawtheblonde boy’s girl’sbicycle.

b. I saw his girl’s bicycle.

As follows from the briefoverview presented above, theterm

“possessive description” (alternatively, “genitiveconstruction”) is acover termfor a construction characterised by considerable con ceptual as well as formal complexity. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that various claims have been advanced regarding its syntax as well as its interpretation. Problems of classification and analysis emerge both cross-linguistically and intralinguistically, es

pecially in a language havingseveralmeans tomark the construc tion while at thesame time failing todistinguish formally(or fail ingtodoso systematically)betweenthe various meanings ascribed to the possessive.8

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Viewsonthe Syntax ofthe ^-Marker in English 63

2. STANDARD REFERENCE ACCOUNTS OF THE PRENOMINAL ’S: A CONTROVERSY

2.1. The ’s-marker as a case-morpheme. For Quirk et al. (1972), possessive constructionslike (1)above contain a head noun and a premodifier,whichismarked for genitivecase with j.Intheir ap

proach, case is agrammatical category encoding the relations be tweenthe head noun and its nominal depandent with surface ex ponents. In other words,case is an inflectional category for Quirk et al. (1972), and their approach falls under the traditional concep tion of case as a system of variation in the form of nouns which is correlated with their roles in syntactic structures (cf. Lyons 1971). As a result of adoptinga Latin-based approach to case, al though Quirk et al. (1972: 194) analyse Modern English to have two kinds of genitive case, the inflected \-genitive and the pe riphrastico/"-genitive, theyexpress reservations as to whether the o^-construction should be treated as the exponent of case, i.e. as a case-marker (Quirk 1972: 194). By contrast, for Jespersen (1924 and 1949), whereas the 's in Paul’s son is a case-marker, the ofin the worlds ofShakespeare is not. Rather, it is a preposition intro ducinga prepositional group just like any other preposition. This view is not widely accepted. For example, for Blake (1994: 174) the postnominal of is a default marker for nominal and adjec

tival complements. Hence, it is a grammatical formative devoid of descriptive content, unlike contentfulprepositions. Notice that in the modern approach to case of Blake’s (1994), where case is taken to be “a system of marking nounsfor the type of relation

ship they bear to their heads” (Blake 1994: 1), both the \-marker and of could be taken as exponents of case. Blake’s approach es

capes the confines of the classical traditional approach to case as an inflectional category, but maintains its spirit in taking case as whole relation with specific case-morphology (e.g. partitive case in Finnish), etc.

See Ultan (1978) for further examples.

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involving marking of some kind, typically by affixal casemarkers, or case forms,9 but also adpositions, cross-referencing agreement, bound pronouns, etc.10

9Case forms are typical of languages with fusional inflectional morphology like Latin and Polish, in which it is impossible to separate case marking from number and gender marking.

l0By contrast, in generative grammar case is an abstract grammatical cate

gory, which may but need not have any morphological exponents in particular languages. Furthermore, both's and of realize case in recent models of genera

tive grammar.

"The status of's is unclear for Blake (1994: 91, 190ff), who, not willing to assign it inflectional status, hypothesises that it could be taken as a deriva

tional marker for the determiner in English only to dismiss this analysis on the grounds that the nominal possessive would have to be analysed at word-level in this scenario.

Given their traditional, Latin-based approach to case,itis un

clearwhy Quirketal. (1972: 194) shouldanalyse the prenominal 's as inflection, i.e. as an ending, as traditionally, inflectional suf

fixes, whether they are case markers encoding only case, or fusional morphemes encoding several grammatical categoriesat the same time, are taken to attach to stems (Matthews 1974; Blake 1994).11 In fact, asQuirk et al. (1972)note themselves,in English’s marks noun phrases rather than nouns, unlike the plural ending.

The relevantcontrast is shown in (8) and (9):

(8) a. the director of themuseum’s books b. *the director’sof themuseum books (9) a. studentsof English

b. *student of Englishes

(intended as the plural of student of English)

Importantly, the prenominal's attaches to the last elementofthe premodifier, whetherit isa noun ornot,as illustrated by(10)from Quirk etal. (1972: 921) and (11) from Zwicky (1987: 141):

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Viewson the Syntax ofthe \-Marker in English 65

(10) a wee\ orso's sunshine

(11) peoplewho hurry's ideas!everyone who hurried’s ideas

In view of the contrastbetween (8) and (9), Quirk et al. (1972: 920) conclude that the rules distributing the two English nominal in

flections, i.e. case and number, are identical except when the noun is postmodified. The presence of a postmodifier has no effect on the distribution ofthe plural inflection (which is affixed onto the noun head, as shown in (9a)),but it has an effect on the rule dis tributingthe case inflection, which attaches thegenitive inflection to the last elementof the postmodifier. If both number and case markersare treated on a par, i.e. as nominal inflections, the ques tionthat arises immediatelyis what triggers the differenceintheir distribution, and in particular, why the distribution ofthe case marker should be sensitive to syntactic structure if the distribu tion of the plural marker is not.12

l2In Booij’s (1995) typology, number inflection is an example of inherent in

flection, which is not sensitive to syntactic structure, while case inflection illus

trates contextual inflection, which is determined by syntactic rules. Contextual inflection is peripheral to inherent inflection. Yet, both inherent and contex

tual inflection are distinguished from lexical (derivational) morphology in his approach and thus are not separate components of grammar.

For Matthews (1974) thedifference indicates that the prenominal 's is a clitic rather than a suffix. Traditional grammarians used the term “clitic” in reference to elements “that are words from the syntactic point of view but are phonologically depen

dent (specifically, prosodically dependent, in fact, accentless) upon a neighbouring word (specifically, the preceding word) and consti tute some sort ofmorphological unit with theword. . .” (Zwicky 1994:572). In contrasttoclitics, inflectionalsuffixes, being integral partsof words,are notsyntactically independent(Matthews 1974:

169). If's is a clitic, in other words, a syntactic object, it follows

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66 EWA WILLIM AND ADAM EAPUZINSK1

that it is distributed by a syntactic rather than a morphological rule or rules, and it is small wonder that it is located on the edge of a phrasal category.13

l3However, Zwicky (1987) argues that ’s is an inflectional marker, just like the plural marker in English. Case inflection (possessive inflection in Zwicky’s terminology) is located on the right edge of a phrase because it is distributed in the syntax, unlike the plural inflection, which is distributed at the lexical level.

By analysing ’s as a phrasal affix, Zwicky (1987) succeeds in explaining why two instances of possessive markers are impossible in principle (cf. *a friend of my children's's ideas). However, if the distribution of the possessive marker is sensitive to the morphological structure of its host only, that is, the host cannot end in a morpheme, Izl if the possessive marker is to be realised, it is unclear why a friend of mine's brother is licit (cf. Barker 1995: 31), nor is it clear why *the people who lose’s ideas is illicit.

l4Payne (1994: 2851) takes the analogy between ’s and of one step further, suggesting that both are adpositions. In particular, of is a preposition while ’s is a postposition.

2.2. The ’s-markeras aclitic. Matthew’s (1974) stand on the sta

tus ofthe possessive marker in English is shared by Huddleston’s (1988), whotakes 'sto be a cliticwhichsyntactically belongs with a noun phrase and is in this sense a syntactically independent word very much like a preposition is a syntactically independent word in a prepositional phrase. Giventhat the prenominal ’¿-modifier is functionallyequivalent to the postnominal o/-modifier (e.g. (12)), in which the preposition of isa head, also the 's marker should be analysed as a head.14 Tosubstantiate theanalysis of's as a syntacti callyindependent word, Huddleston suggests that it isthe head of the possessive, i.e. 's is the head ofthe Possessive Phrase (e.g. The King of Spain’s) taking the “possessor” the King of Spain as com

plement.

(12) a. the King of Spain’s daughter b. the daughter of the King of Spain

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Viewsonthe Syntaxofthe \-Marker in English 67

In this scenario, the prenominal 's is dissociated from inflection.

Yet, since Huddleston analyses possessive pronouns as a subclass of determinatives, to which also articles and demonstrative pro

nouns belong,notall possessive expressions are PossPs.15 PossP is a purely formal concept, i.e. a grammatical relation, encompass inga marking between the headnounand itsnominal dependent which is realized with the clitic j.16 As Huddleston (1988: 34) no

tices himself, the English’s is a peculiar clitic in that it is not a re duced formof somesyntactically independent word (e.g. theaux

iliary have),but rather,it isan inherent clitic. Thusits distribution inthe language differs from the distributionofanyother syntac tically independent word.

l5Barker (1995) also takes possessive constructions to grammaticize posses

sive relations, a basic cognitive category. With regard to prenominal possessives, like Huddleston, Barker takes 's to be a syntactic object, the head of a possessive noun phrase, Poss in his terminology.

16According to Croft (1993), 's can be analysed as a linker, that is an invariant marker linking the possessor and the head noun in a grammatical construction.

A similar idea can be found in Jespersen (1933: 141), for whom the difference between plural marking and genitive case marking stems from the fact that the genitive marker participates in forming a grammatical construction whereas the plural marker does not.

l7According to Huddleston (1988: 84), case as a morphosyntactic category is applicable only to some pronouns in Modern English, which vary in form between nominative/subjective and accusative/objective.

In summary, the survey of two influential references on En

glish grammar has revealed a non-uniform treatment of the prenominal ’^-marker, which is analysed as an inflection intro duced at the phrasal level or as a syntactic head of a grammat

ical construction, i.e. an element introduced in the syntax at the phrasal level. Importantly, in the former approach Englishis anal ysed as a language with case morphology.17 In the next section, we look at the origin ofthe 7-marker to see if the diachronic de

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velopment of English can help resolvethe problem of its syntactic analysis in Modern English.

3. A HISTORICALSYNOPSIS

The general view of the r-marker in Modern English is that it is a descendant ofthe genitive -es ending found in the masculine and neuter singular inflection of a subclass of nouns in Old English (cf., inter alia Traugott 1972; Pei 1967; Crystal 1995):

(13) prera iudeiscra manna heortan

the-gen,pl Jewish-gen, pl man-gen, pl heart-nom,pl

“the heartsof the Jewish men”; Homilies of Ælfric 1: 26

In Old English (OE), genitive inflection was marked on the de

pendantsof certain verbs (e.g. Micel tvund behofaô micles lœcedomes

“Agreat woundrequires great medicine”(Allen 1995: 133),prepo sitions (e.g. wip “with”), as well as numerals (e.g.tivegen suna “two sons” (Mitchell 1985: § 107),and nouns,asillustratedin (13) above.

Genitive was also marked by agreement/concord on demonstra tive, possessive pronoun andadjectival modifiers of the head noun in the genitive. Inaddition, the OE genitive was sometimes used adverbially, as in He htvearfdœges and nihtes “He wandered (by) day and (by) night” (Pyles 1982: 119).18

l8In fact, the -s found in Modern English adverbials such as towards, besides, homewards etc. derives from the genitive singular ending -es (Pyles and Algeo

1982: 119).

On the whole, the OE (inflected) genitive was much more widespread than its Modern English descendant. This is partly becausethe periphrastic o/"-genitive, whichis now preferred e.g. in the “objective genitive” constructions, wasnot used at that time- of was a contentful preposition with the meaning from, off have in Modern English (Nagucka 1991/92: 13). Hence the inflected

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Viewsonthe Syntaxofthe ’.»--Marker in English 69

genitive covered “subjective genitive” constructions (wherethe in

flected noun denotes the agent or doer of anaction),e.g. ymbe mon- egra operra folca gewinn “about the battles of many other peoples”

(Traugott 1972: 77), “objective genitive” constructions (where the genitive denotes the patient ofthe action) e.g.for hiora magdena of- frunga “becauseof theirmaidens’ sacrifices” (Traugott 1972: 78) as

well as partitive genitive and the genitive of measure illustrated above.

As for its syntax, an inflected genitive dependant of a head noun can be found prenominally as wellas postnominally.19 Com

pare (13) with (14) below:

’’According to Mitchell (1985: § 1315), the factors determining whether the genitive dependant preceded or followed the head noun were probably stylistic rather than grammatical. Nagucka (1991/92) points out that postposition be

came available for genitives only in Late Old English.

20See Mitchell (1985: § 1315) and Nagucka (1991/92: 16) for further exam

ples.

21 Exceptions to the unified genitive comprised some unmarked OE kinship terms, such as brother, father, mother, hence hyr broder advice. Some ME ex

ceptions, like “lady” and “moon,” conformed to the new paradigm in time, but they still signal their initial r-less genitive in such fossilized expressions as Lady Chapel (OE hlcefdige “lady-sg,gen”) or Monday (OE monandceg “moon’s day,” in contrast to Tuesday with -5- from the original -es genitive, OE Tiu/esdteg “Tiw’s day”) (cf. Traugott 1972: 123).

(14) pa anlicnyssa ptEra hcepenra the-nom, pl idol-nom, pl the-gen, pl pagan-gen,pl

“theidolsofthe pagans”;Homilies of ALlfrtc 1: 37620

In the Middle English(ME) period the case system underwent substantial simplification. Changes in the stress rules contributed to the weakening and disappearance of final vowels and as a re sult, for reasons of disambiguation, the -es suffix was generalized toalmostall nouns21 inthe singular and later also in the plural, the lattertakingsomemore time, as-eshad never marked thegenitive

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pluralin OE. Importantly, in OE the-es marker prototypicallyat

tached tothenominal stem of the head of the NP marked for gen itivecase so that when the headnoun was postmodified, the post

modifier had to be moved out ofthe inclusive noun phrase. The constructionis referred to as the splitgenitive and is illustrated in (15) from Traugott (1972: 124):22

22The split genitive is common in Chaucer’s times, but the group genitive illustrated in (15) below is already found occasionally at that time (cf. Traugott 1972: 124).

(15) pe pinges susterof France “the King of F rance’s sister/

sisterof the King of France”

In a split-genitive construction, thepostheadportion began tolose case-marking when English began to lose its case distinctions.

Compare (15) with (16) and (17) below, from Barker (1995: 21), as well as with (14) above:

(16) pees cyninges sweoster Ecgfrides the-gen king-gen sister-nom Ecgfrid-gen

“the sister ofEcgfrid the king”

(17) Wihtredes sunu cing “King Wihtred’s son”

Wihtred-gen son-nom king

Furthermore, as early as app. 1200 genitive is lost on the deter miner in the prenominalpossessive, as illustrated in (18) and (19) from the Ancrene Riwle(Barker 1995:21). Tabor (in Barker 1995) suggests that it isat this stage thatthe noun-final -esfirstbecomes a phrase final clitic:

(18) pe-s deofle-es beam

the-gen devil-gen child “the devil’schild”

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Viewson the Syntaxofthe \-Marker in English 71

(19)pe hus-es purle

the house-gen window “the house’swindow”

When the posthead portion of the splitgenitive came to be used unmarked forthe genitive (cf. (15) and (17)),nouns in thegenitive startedbeing used only prenominally, i.e. postnominal genitivebe gan to decline, including the split genitive.23

23The split genitive dies out around the middle of 14th c. Professor Görlach suggests that the split genitive died out in English as a result of a prohibition against discontinuous modification in the language. However, even Modern English allows discontinuous modification to some degree (cf. Quirk et al. 1972:

930), so a ban against it cannot be the sole answer to the question why the split genitive declined.

InME complex possessives, e.g. possessives with a postmodi fied head, began to be marked on the right edge of the construc tion, i.e. on the last element of the possessive phrase rather than on the nominal stem, as shown in (20) from Chaucer (Traugott

1972: 124):

(20) The grete god of Loves name “The great god of love’s name” The construction illustrated in (20) is known as the group geni tive and it had become dominant by Shakespeare’s time (Traugott 1972: 124, Janda 1980: 247). It isthisconstruction which is gener ally taken to be the direct predecessor of prenominal possessives in Modern English. Accordingto Crystal (1995), the fact that the head of the possessive, i.e. the noun god in (20) does not bear geni tive inflection, which is instead located on the final elementof the complex possessive, indicatesa change in the status of the genitive inflection in the grammar of English: -es shifts in a reduced form (-s') awayfrom marking nouns tomarkingnoun phrases. In other words, thestandard view is that the Modern English prenominal 's- marker is diachronically related to genitive case inflection,OE

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-es, except that over time “word inflection”changed into “phrasal inflection,” as is illustrated in (21) below (Janda 1980: 247):

(21) a. \pe[kjng-es\\

b. \pe

There is another view on the emergence ofthe Modern En

glish j marker that deserves consideration. Namely, it is some timesclaimed that it was an invariant reducedform of the posses sive (i.e. genitive) pronounhis that gave riseto the ModernEnglish

’s. The construction inquestionbecamepopular inlate ME (Trau

gott 1972: 125):24

24Pyles and Algeo (1982:184) point out that the doubling possessive construc

tion can also be found in OE, where it was heavily restricted to noun phrases with foreign names or proper names with which the inflected genitive was awk

ward. It was used productively in English between mid-13th c. and mid-18th c.

(22) the child is gumys “thechild hisgowns/clothes”

In this construction, the so-called doubling possessive construc tion, the possessive is expressed by an uninflectednoun accompa nied by thegenitive ofthe third personpronounhe, i.e.his. In ME his wasused regardlessof the genderof the possessor, as shownin (23) from Traugott (1972: 125), while in early Modern English, an agreeing pronoun could be used, asshown in (24) from Pyles and Algeo (1982: 186):

(23) my moder ys sa%e (1469)

(24) a. Elizabeth Holland her house (1546) b. theHouseof Lords their proceedings ( 1667)

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Viewsonthe Syntaxofthe ’/-Marker in English 73

Janda (1980) argues that the doubling possessive construction arose through the reanalysis of-es as his.15 At the time when [b] was dropped in pronunciation, the allomorph of -esattached to nouns ending in a sibilant and theallomorph ofhis were identical and could havebeen confused.2526 According to Janda (1980),ifcasein

flection remainedin the systemof the English language over time, on the assumption that the genitive ending -es could have been reanalysed as a phrasal affix in principle (cf. (21)), it isa mystery why the postnominal genitive (cf. (14)) could not undergo such reanalysisand declined. On the assumption that Modern English prenominal's is diachronically related tothe unstressed variant of thepronoun his rather than toOE genitive caseinflection, it is pos sible tosuggest that genitive case morphology was lost altogether, which is unsurprisingin lightof thefactthat English also lost all otherOE case inflections on theway to Modern English.27

25In fact, this analysis has a long history in English linguistics. Already Dr.

Johnson argued against it in mid 18th c (Traugott 1972: 125f).

26Some support for this analysis comes from other Germanic languages, including modern Dutch and colloquial Modern German, which also have the doubling possessive construction alongside the regular possessive descrip

tions. In neither language can the possessive pronoun(s) be confused with case

inflections. The relevant examples from Dutch are given in (i) below after

“John’s car”

auto “John’s car”

car

21 Professor Ruta Nagucka suggests another interpretation, namely that the existence of the doubling possessive construction in ME could have helped sus

tain the OE -es in the grammar of English. Put in formal terms, the supporting role of the genitive pronoun in the doubling possessive construction could for example be explained on the assumption that at a stage in the development of English both the possessive pronoun in doubling possessive constructions and -es had the same syntactic status and could thus be confused, triggering reanaly

sis. Possessive pronouns are analysed as pronominal determiners in recent mod

els of generative grammar. If also -es is analysed as a determiner (cf. (28) below), Corver(1990: 179-180):

(i) a. Jan-s auto b. Jan z’n

John his

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74 Ewa Willim ano Adam Papuziński

In summary, the two influential views on the diachronic de velopment of the prenominal j take it respectively as related to caseinflectionor as unrelated to it. Importantly, the latterviewre lates s to a possessive pronoun. Before concluding this section it is worth pointing out that the rapid loss of the inflected genitive in late OK, which coincided with the gradual loss ofinflectional morphology at the end ofthe OE period, correlateswith the rise of thedefinitearticlethe(cf. Traugott 1972; Philippi 1997).28 Philippi (1997)arguesthat the extension in the use ofdemonstrative pro

nouns asdefiniteness markers and their subsequent development into themodernarticles is a consequence of the lossof verbal geni tive inall languages of the Germanic family.29 According to her, in Old Germanic languages definite and indefinitenoun phrases are distinguished by different case markings. Whereas definite noun phrases are typically accusative, indefinite noun phrases are typi cally genitive. As case marking is lost, a meansis lost to manipu

late the definite-indefinite interpretation of the object and a new means is introduced to serve this function. In her approach, the change between Old Germanic and Modern Germanic,including English, is correlated with the birth ofa grammatical category, [+/-Def], which grammaticizes the semanto-pragmatic concept of (in)definiteness of reference.As possessive constructions are tradi

tionally linked to the concept ofreference, in the next sectionwe look at the syntactic representation ofdetermination.

both elements have the same syntactic status. It thus follows that the possessive pronoun in a doubling possessive construction could have contributed to sus

taining -es in the grammar of English by providing evidence to the learner of a category change: from nominal case inflection to a syntactic head, D(eterminer).

28According to Traugott (1972: 135) the does not appear in OE prose until 12 th C.

2 ,See Philippi (1997) for a detailed analysis of the semantics of definite deter

miners in OE compared with Modern English.

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Views onthe Syntax ofthe ¿-Marker in English 75

4. POSSESSIVES AS DETERMINERS

The observation that possessives contribute to the interpretation of the referential properties of the nounphrase in which they oc

cur is a traditional one. For example, Jespersen (1924: 110-111) observes that the function of a nominal or pronominal possessive is to restrict thereference ofthenoun phrasesimilarlytothe func tion of the definite article.Thusthe referent ofboth theboof{ and of John’s boob is definite. However,whereas theboob requiresthat there be exactly one entity satisfying the description in the uni

verse ofdiscourse,John’sboob requires that there be at the most one salient entity of the kind in the universeof discourse.In other words, although John may have several books, with John’s boob referenceis made to a definite book, for exampleone the speaker has just been speaking about. It is precisely for this reason that pos

sessives are traditionally included in theclass of determiners, that is, “modifiers which combine with nouns to produceexpressions whose reference is thereby determinedin terms ofthe identity of the referent” (Lyons 1977: 455). Apart from possessives, the class ofitemsservingthe determinerfunction includes articles,demon strativepronouns,etc. (Quirk 1972; Huddleston 1988; Jackendoff 1981;etc.) In a traditional approach to noun phrase structure, de

terminersappear in the specifier position ofNP:

(25) a. [up [SPEC John’s/the(n book]]]

As shown in (25), a possessive is mutually exclusive with the article in English. If a possessive cannot co-occurwith the article in English, there is all the more reason to treat the possessive as a determiner, on a par with the article. Indeed,Chomsky assigns thepossessive the status of the article in “Remarks on Nominal- izations”:

(26) Article—>| +/-def]/Poss

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lb EWA WlLLIMAND ADAM PAPL'ZINSKI

Despite the functional parallel between possessives and articles, the two do not form a natural class. While articles belong with closed class categories, which have limited membership, at least nominal possessives should very much be classified with an open class, as lexical possessives are not restricted to specific lexical items.

Thefact that articlesconstitute a closed class in Englishis tra ditionally correlated with the fact that articles have no descrip tive content, but rather encodegrammatical properties ofnouns.

In generativegrammar, a distinction ismade between lexical cat

egories (e.g. nouns, verbs) and functional categories (e.g. inflec

tion, complementizers). Functional categories contain so-called function words,i.e. free lexical items or bound grammatical mor phemes with fully grammatical meanings. Functional categories encode the grammatical properties of lexical categories and they take the lexical projection ofthe lexical head (i.e. the projection in which all the thematic propertiesofthe lexical head are satisfied) as complement. In this scenario, the syntactic projection of the noun with functional interpretation is not NP, but rather,it is the so-called DP,a projection of the determiner.TheDP-counterpart of (25) is asin (27), suggested by Crisma (1999) or as in (28), sug

gested by Radford (1993):

(27)

|

dp IsPEC John’s |D 0

|

np book]]]|

(28) [DP ISPEC John |D ’s |\ book]]]|

On the analyses in (26) and (27) it is possible to account for the complementary distribution of the article and the possessive by claiming that when a lexicalarticle, a head element, isgenerated inD, itspresenceprecludes a possessive in Spec. Thequestion that arises is what is so special in English grammar that makes pos sessives, especially lexical possessives, a truly creative means of ex

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Views onthe Syntax ofthe ’¿-Marker in English 77

pressing (in)definitenessof reference and the answer seems to lie in thespecial status ofthe ¿-marker. For the sake of precision,it is its ability to attach to phrases rather than to head nounsthat makes the difference.30 Thisdifferencecanstem from the fact that’s is an affixal articlewhich requires the presence of aphrase in its Spec so that it can attach toit or else, as has beenargued by Crisma (1999), it can stemfrom thefact that English allows a null article. Likeall empty elementsthis null article must be either formally licensed or identified. It is identified by a possessive in its specifier. That the possessive must be marked with’s does not follow immedi ately inthis scenario. Rather, it seems thatthe null articleimposes a language-specific requirement that it be realised with a partic

ular morpheme. Such requirements are typical of heads, which supports the analysesin (27) and (28) over the traditionalanalysis in (25). If correct,this findingarguesagainst the traditional analy sisof noun phrase structure adoptedbyQuirk et al. (1972) inthat it indicates that thepossessiveis nota direct dependant of the noun and thusshould not be marked for case by it.

3l)Other Germanic languages, e.g. German and Dutch, allow only a re

stricted range of proper names and kinship terms as prenominal possessives (cf. Corver 1990).

Bibl. Jag.

5. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the fact that in Modern English the definiteness value ofa nominal is expressed morphosyntactically through an article or, in the absence of the article, through the ’¿-marked possessive seems to suggest a special relationship between the’s- marker and determiners. If Philippi (1997) is right in suggesting that the emergence of the DP in late OE was motivated by the weakening of case morphology asa result of which case could no longerfunction as the functional head of thenoun phrase and con

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sequently the demonstrative was reanalysed as thesyntactic head of the noun phrase, it is possible to relate the reanalysis ofgeni tive case inflection as a syntactic clitic head to the riseofarticles in English. For reasons oflimited space we cannotpursue the mat ter here,but we believe that the analyses presented in Section 4 offer a new perspectiveon the status ofthe \-marker in Modern English and are worth considering infuture research,especially as theyallow for ModernEnglish to be taken as a language withouta case-markingsystem, contra Quirk etal. (1972), “marking gram matical relations by means otherthan cases” (Allen 1995: 217).

Wewish to thanl{ the audience of April Conference 9 for their com ments. Specialthanks go to Professor Ruta Nagucka of the Jagiellonian University for her detailed comments and valuable suggestions on an earlier draft. Any remaining errors and infelicities areof course our own responsibility.

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