New Research in Linguistics and English Language
Is the English possessive 's truly a right edge phenomenon?
Presented at The Second International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (ICLCE2), University of Toulouse-le Mirail, 2nd July 2007.
Abstract
This paper (8-page handout) was the first external presentation of the project '
Germanic possessive 's: An empirical, historical and theoretical study'. It examines the possessive
's in Present-day English from the point of view of standard definitions of clitics and also as described in standard grammars of English. Actual corpus behaviour is shown to be quite different from both theoretical predictions and descriptive accounts, with more examples of attachment to the head of a complex noun phrase than to the right edge.
Date Published
21 December, 2007
Author(s)
Alan Scott, David Denison & Kersti Börjars
