Genitives and determiner phrases - Jan zijn boek vs John’s book

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2.  GENITIVE AND DETERMINER PHRASE  3

2.1  GENITIVE  3

2.2  DETERMINER  4

2.3  CLITIC VS AFFIX  5

3.1  POSITION OF THE S  7

3.2  PRESENCE OF THE GENITIVE IN DUTCH LANGUAGE  8

4.  CHANGE OF STATUS: FROM INFLECTIONAL S TO DETERMINER  10

5.  SUMMARY  13

  REFERENCES  14

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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.

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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:

John’s book 1

’s-genitive:

’s-less genitive: the butcher wyff zero-genitive:

his-genitive:

of- genitive:

to-genitive:

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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:

possessive pronouns:

demonstratives:

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 :