Germanic possessive -s : an empirical, historical and theoretical study
Summary
Two much-debated questions in recent theoretical linguistics concern the historical origin of grammatical markers and their synchronic status. Researchers have adduced key evidence for both from the evolution of English possessive -s and the related but subtly different constructions in Swedish and Dutch. What has not to date been attempted, and what the present proposal offers, is a systematic synchronic and diachronic comparison of these constructions across all three languages. The aim is threefold: to provide a consistent multi-lingual dataset; to compare detailed historical trajectories; to develop a theoretical account of these items within a typology of grammatical markers.
People
Principal investigators: Professor Kersti Börjars, Professor David Denison.
Research associate: Dr Alan Scott.
PhD students: Sophie Guile (The possessive -s and the of-possessive: Identifying and accounting for relative frequency (1650-1800)), Pauline Harries (The history and current distribution of the genitive in insular Scandinavian).
Technical Support
Technical support provided by Paul Johnston, under the direction of David Risley (initially Daniel Smith) of the Faculty of Humanities ICT Office.
