This thesis will focus on the supposed ongoing changes in the use of the s-genitive form. It will examine 200 genitive constructions found in on-line versions of quality newspapers, and describe them in terms of parameters that have been established as determining factors for the choice of genitive construction, for example possessor animacy, syntactic weight, final sibilant and semantic relationship holding between the constituents of the phrase, as well as those connected to the journalistic prose itself (e.g. language economy). Key words: Genitive, s-genitive, of-genitive, genitive variation, journalistic prose

No description available.

The evolution of the genitive noun phrase in English has been the subject of numerous studies, yet some aspects of this evolution have received less attention than others. In this study I address two of these less studied aspects: the evolution of the plural genitive noun phrase in Middle English (1150-1500), and the decline of the overtly case-marked genitive modifiers (singular and plural) in the same period. The former has generally been presented as following the same path of the singular genitive noun phrase; the latter has been all but ignored, with only a single study (Thomas 1931) which explicitly examines the use of the genitive definite article and strong adjective. The study uses text samples from two electronic corpora, the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English and the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, Second Edition, as well as samples from printed editions. The texts used in the present study have been selected with the aim of covering as wide a geographical and chronological range as possible. The thesis examines how and why the number of endings for the genitive plural inflection first increased (in the period up to about 1350) and then decreased (from 1350 onward), a fluctuation not found in the singular inflected genitive noun. The number of available inflectional endings increased due to the morphophonological weaknesses of the -V ending type – the dominant ending type inherited from OE – leading to instabilities in the inflectional system which allowed alternatives to arise. However, the number of genitive plural inflectional endings then decreased, apparently affected not only by the phonological strength/weakness of the ending types but also the type of noun phrase that these were associated with. The inflectional ending which survives, -Vs, is most commonly found with genitive noun phrases in which the genitive noun is animate and the noun phrase has one of the genitive functions labelled POSSESSIVE in this study. This distribution of the various inflectional endings according to animacy and function is related to the rise of the periphrastic genitive plural noun phrase. The initial preferred environment for the periphrastic genitive construction is noun phrases with those functions which will be referred to as NONPOSSESSIVE. As the inflected genitive becomes increasingly restricted to a single noun phrase type, the periphrastic construction expands, to become the default genitive construction by the end of the period. The thesis examines the decline of overtly case-marked genitive modifiers in Middle English, both adjective and determiners. In general, the trend is that morphologically more conservative texts are more likely to preserve case-marked modifier forms, although some marked forms are more widespread due to the development of fixed expressions. Where case-marked modifiers are maintained, historical grammatical gender agreement and the strong/weak adjective distinction are often preserved. Factors which play a role in the survival of marked modifiers are chronological distribution, impact of Old English exemplars, and the development of certain fixed expressions with the adjectives. Thomas (1931) considered the loss of case-marked definite articles and strong adjectives to be the principal factor in the shift from inflected to periphrastic genitive constructions, but the evidence from the present study shows that this is not the case for all texts.

No description available.

In this thesis I examine the placement of the dependent genitive relative to its head noun in Classical Latin prose. The corpus is drawn from the works of four first-century B.C. authors: Caesar, Cicero, Sallust and Varro. The thesis itself is split into two main sections, a qualitative analysis and a quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis discusses a number of factors that may influence genitive position, drawn from literature on the subject as well as my pilot studies. These factors are information structure, the genitive’s grammatical function, discontinuity, lexical category, animacy, prepositions governing the head noun, reported speech, idioms, lexical items, and grammatical number of the genitive. This analysis examines individual instances of genitive position in context, providing examples and counter-examples of the ordering patterns found with each potential factor. The qualitative analysis suggests that a number of these factors have an effect on genitive position, particularly information structure. These results are tested by the quantitative analysis. By performing a multivariate statistical analysis using the programme GoldVarb, the combined effects of multiple factors are determined and the statistically significant factors ranked in order of importance and strength of effect. The statistics show that information structure is the most important of the factors. Other significant influences are the presence of prepositions, the function of the genitive and its lexical category. By combining the two types of analysis, qualitative and quantitative, this thesis shows in detail how the factors combine to influence word order, which of them are independent, which interact, which are important and which have little to no effect at all, resulting in a better understanding of the data and the way that the contextual factors work together to produce the variant orders of the dependent genitive.

This diploma thesis - in its theoretical part - deals with the position of adnominal genitive in contemporary Czech language, its semantics and syntax. First, it defines this case (its semantical and syntactical structure in contemporary Czech) and after that it describes- with the theoretical linguistic background - the semantical types of adnominal genitive in Czech. The semantical types of adnominal genitive then serve as a criterion for determining specific cases in the texts of the Czech language and Literature Journal. This diploma thesis is focused on the texts published between 2010-2019.

<p>This quantitative corpus study discusses and compares the distribution of the inflected genitive (’s- or zero-genitive) with that of the of-construction in East African, Indian, American and British English using data collected from the ICE-EA, ICE-IND, Frown and FLOB corpora. This study also discusses the semantic categories of the inflected genitive in the varieties mentioned.</p><p>The first conclusion of the study is that the distribution of tokens according to semantic categories is similar in all varieties examined. Furthermore, it is concluded for the modifier classes that animateness-biased classes are more common with the inflected genitive, while inanimateness-biased classes are more common with the of-construction; this distribution is similar in all varieties.</p>

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

We explore the language production process by eliciting subject-verb agreement errors. Participants were asked to create complete sentences from sentence beginnings such as The elf's/elves' house with the tiny window/windows and The statue in the eirs/elves' gardens. These are subject noun phrases containing a head noun and controller of agreement (statue), and two nonheads, a "local noun" (window(s)/garden(s)), and a possessor noun (elf's/elves'). Past research has shown that a plural nonhead noun (an "attractor") within a subject noun phrase triggers the production of verb agreement errors, and further, that the nearer the attractor to the head noun, the greater the interference. This effect can be interpreted in terms of relative hierarchical distance from the head noun, or via a processing window account, which claims that during production, there is a window in which the head and modifying material may be co-active, and an attractor must be active at the same time as the head to give rise to errors. Using possessors attached at different heights within the same window, we are able to empirically distinguish these accounts. Possessors also allow us to explore two additional issues. First, case marking of local nouns has been shown to reduce agreement errors in languages with "rich" inflectional systems, and we explore whether English speakers attend to case. Secondly, formal syntactic analyses differ regarding the structural position of the possessive marker, and we distinguish them empirically with the relative magnitude of errors produced by possessors and local nouns. Our results show that, across the board, plural possessors are significantly less disruptive to the agreement process than plural local nouns. Proximity to the head noun matters: a possessor directly modifying the head noun induce a significant number of errors, but a possessor within a modifying prepositional phrase did not, though the local noun did. These findings suggest that proximity to a head noun is independent of a "processing window" effect. They also support a noun phrase-internal, case-like analysis of the structural position of the possessive ending and show that even speakers of inflectionally impoverished languages like English are sensitive to morphophonological case-like marking.