The following paper deals with the genitive case in English language and the possessive construction in Dutch language referring to the examples Jan zijn boek as well as in English language John’s book.
In a first step there will be given a general definition on the term both genitive and determiner, with regards to the comparison of genitive case and determiner given in the topic of this paper. In this place, even clitic and affix definition is not left blank.
Furthermore it is mentioned that during English language change from the Old English language to the Modern English language a change has taken place concerning the treatment of nominal phrases and determiner phrases within the DP-Analysis raised in the late 1980s. This will be pointed out in this paper as well.
As well as the question whether a possessive construction can be treated as an inflectional form or even gets the status of a determiner there will be given a closer look to the history and use of the ’s genitive and the his-genitive which usually applied in the second half of the 15th century. To get deeper into the discussion there will be a closer look to the position where the ‘s-construction do occur.
Referring to cross linguistic reference the ‘s-genitive and other variations to point out a possessive relationship in Dutch language will be analysed more concrete. With reference to the DP-Hypothesis the change of the determiner status, i.e. the change of the ’s-construction from the inflectional endings in Old English to clitic and in the end to determiner status are examined in this paper to give an overview how complex and investigated the ’s-construction in English language is to this day.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Genitive and Determiner Phrase
2.1 Genitive
2.2 Determiner
2.3 Clitic vs Affix
3. History and Use of the ’ s -genitive and the his -genitive
3.1 Position of the ’ s
3.2 Presence of the genitive in Dutch language
4. Change of status: from inflectional ‘ s to determiner
5. Summary
References
1. Introduction
The following paper deals with the genitive case in English language and the possessive construction in Dutch language referring to the examples Jan zijn boek as well as in English language John’s book.
In a first step there will be given a general definition on the term both genitive and determiner, with regards to the comparison of genitive case and determiner given in the topic of this paper. In this place, even clitic and affix definition is not left blank.
Furthermore it is mentioned that during English language change from the Old English language to the Modern English language a change has taken place concerning the treatment of nominal phrases and determiner phrases within the DP-Analysis raised in the late 1980s. This will be pointed out in this paper as well.
As well as the question whether a possessive construction can be treated as an inflectional form or even gets the status of a determiner there will be given a closer look to the history and use of the ’ s genitive and the his -genitive which usually applied in the second half of the 15th century. To get deeper into the discussion there will be a closer look to the position where the ‘ s -construction do occur.
Referring to cross linguistic reference the ‘ s -genitive and other variations to point out a possessive relationship in Dutch language will be analysed more concrete. With reference to the DP-Hypothesis the change of the determiner status, i.e. the change of the ’ s -construction from the inflectional endings in Old English to clitic and in the end to determiner status are examined in this paper to give an overview how complex and investigated the ’ s -construction in English language is to this day.
2. Genitive and Determiner Phrase
To get deeper into the discussion it is helpful to explain the difference between genitive constructions and determiners. In the following step there is a short definition of what is dealt with in this paper.
2.1 Genitive
The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship between a noun in genitive case and another noun. Mostly the genitive case refers to a relation of possession. Varieties of genitive case can include origin, composition, part of mass, relationship, subjectivity, objectivity, alienable and inalienable possession.
In many languages the genitive case does occur, for example Latin, Irish, Greek, German, Russian, Finnish, Sanskrit and Dutch. English does not have a proper genitive case, but a possessive ending -’ s. It is important to mention that the genitive case, in contrast to nominative and accusative case, is an inherent case. In English there are several ways to express a possessive relationship concerning the genitive:
- ’ s -genitive: John’s book[1]
- ’ s -less genitive: the butcher wyff
- zero -genitive: certin howers tasks
- his -genitive: John his book (this was a possible statement usually used in Old English / Middle English (1450-1500); Modern English do not use this construction; it can be found in very informal / colloquial Modern English; this will be discussed later on)
- of - genitive: the book of John
- to -genitive: servant to Polonius[2]
2.2 Determiner
Determiners quantify or identify nouns including definite or indefinite articles, quantifiers, demonstratives and possessive pronouns:
- definite / indefinite articles: the, a, an
- quantifiers: all, few, many, several, some, etc.
- possessive pronouns: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
- demonstratives: this, that, these, those
Syntactically, determiners are operators that combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Semantically, determiners are functions that combine with noun denotations to form noun phrase denotations.
Determiners can be prefixed (predeterminer), central determiners, suffixed (postdeterminers) or a noun do not occur with a determiner (zero determiner). The use of the determiner phrase became popular during the analysis of noun phrases in the late 1980s. In a determiner phrase the noun is headed by a determiner:
(1) the old lady
This example shows that old lady is headed by the definite article the. Before the analysis in the 1980s this determiner phrase would be analysed as a noun phrase. Taylor (1996) in this case presents the following example[3]:
illustration not visible in this excerpt
2.3 Clitic vs Affix
The distinction between a clitic and an affix is not always very clear; the ’ ll of the full word will or the ’ ve of the full word have is for example a clitic, whereas an affix normally attaches to a word stem as the - s in cats or the past-tense form of
- ed in talked.
[...]
[1] The ’ s attaches to the head of a noun phrase (Abney 1987: 78).
[2] Some examples are taken from Anette Rosenbach (2002: 186; table 43).
[3] In this place the DP-Hypothesis should be mentioned: according to Abney (1987) a move takes place from Spec NP to Spec DP; the DP-Hypothetis assumes that all nominal arguments have the status of DPs; see also Abney (1987: 72-74) for further information.
Radford (2004: 77) also treats a construction like the president as a DP.
- Citation du texte
- Stefanie Udema (Auteur), 2004, Genitives and determiner phrases - Jan zijn boek vs John’s book, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/79444
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