Genitives in Early English: Typology and Evidence

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Genitives in Early English

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Genitives in Early English Typology and Evidence

CY NT H IA L. A L L E N

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©

Cynthia L. Allen 2008

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–921668–0 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents Preface List of Tables Abbreviations

viii xii xiii

1 Genitive case and the typology of case marking 1.1 Introduction: aims and scope 1.2 The typological approach 1.3 Assumptions about the nature of language 1.4 Phrase structure 1.5 Case: categories and form 1.6 Structural, inherent, and semantic case 1.7 Genitive case in this book 1.8 Case morphology and typology 1.9 The nature of the evidence 1.10 Methodology 1.11 Organization

1 1 4 7 8 13 15 17 18 25 31 34

2 Genitive case and the Germanic languages: Overview 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Common Germanic background 2.3 Genitive/possessive constructions in the modern Germanic languages 2.4 The invariant -s genitives 2.5 Correlations between position and case systems? 2.6 Conclusions

37 37 38 42 43 57 58

3 Genitive case in Old English 3.1 Periods, dialects, and the nature of the evidence 3.2 The OE case marking system 3.3 Genitive case in OE: overview 3.4 Genitive pronouns and possessives 3.5 The NomP in OE: overview 3.6 Adnominal genitives: semantic types 3.7 Adnominal genitives: prenominal 3.8 Post-head genitives 3.9 Partitive genitives

60 60 63 64 66 70 74 76 83 85

vi

Contents 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17

Dislocated genitives and split genitives What determined position? Determiners in OE Genitives and determiners in OE Definiteness and genitives in OE Adverbal genitives Changes from EWS to LWS? Conclusions

89 95 98 102 107 110 112 118

4 Genitive case in Middle English 4.1 Introduction 4.2 ME periods, texts, and morphological systems 4.3 Nature of the adnominal -es genitive: the ‘pre-group’ period 4.4 Rise of the ‘group’ genitive 4.5 Reduction of genitive types: adnominal 4.6 Non-adnominal genitives 4.7 Conclusion

121 121 123 134 152 158 174 181

5 The possessor doubling constructions in the Germanic languages 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Low Saxon 5.3 Standard German 5.4 Dutch 5.5 Frisian 5.6 Afrikaans 5.7 Scandinavian languages and dialects 5.8 Conclusion: possessor doubling constructions in Germanic languages other than English

186 186 190 195 197 210 211 213

6 The separated genitive in English 6.1 Apparent separated genitives in OE 6.2 The early period: c1250–c1380 6.3 Possible explanations: EME phonology 6.4 The middle period: non-agreement c1380–1545 6.5 The period with agreement: c1550–???? 6.6 The demise of the separated genitive 6.7 Conclusion

223 225 229 233 240 253 263 269

7 Determiners and possessives 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Det poss and poss det in Germanic: overview 7.3 Poss, poss det , and det poss in OE

274 274 275 279

218

Contents 7.4 A non-occurring construction 7.5 Poss det and det poss in later English 7.6 Conclusions

vii

289 291 304

8 Conclusions 8.1 Methodological matters 8.2 Major empirical findings 8.3 Future directions

306 306 310 315

Appendix: Primary texts and electronic corpora used

319

References Index

325 345

Preface This book is about a topic in the history of English, but it takes the linguist’s point of view that as a human language, the English of any stage is subject to the universals of human languages and (in principle at least) amenable to linguistic analysis. It seems advisable to set this point of view out clearly at the outset, because it is my hope that besides those who would identify themselves as diachronic syntacticians, the book will also be of interest to scholars who are not interested in linguistic theory in general but are very much interested in what English was like in earlier periods, and how it has changed. I know from experience that these scholars may well be puzzled as to why any mention of languages like Hanga Hundi or Papiamentu would be found in a book about the history of constructions in English. I also know how likely such scholars are to be disappointed in the rather fast and loose treatment sometimes accorded to the facts by linguists in their enthusiasm for developing theories. I have written this book in the full realization that anyone trying to appeal to both the more theoretically oriented and the more philologically oriented runs a substantial risk of not satisfying either group. However, I have written it in the hope that both groups may find something worthwhile in it. I firmly believe that systematic case studies of syntactic change in specific languages are essential to advance our understanding of how syntactic systems change. A poor empirical base not only stands in the way of such progress, it may have a more baleful effect if linguists assume (on the basis of inaccurate data) that they have found an explanation for a change between an earlier stage and a later one, since they will not look for an explanation for the actual facts. On the other hand, the most systematic study is of little use to linguists if the system used is not informed by current syntactic theories. In writing this book, I have attempted to unite an awareness of theoretical issues of interest to linguists with the attention to detail that is necessary to the establishment of an empirical base adequate for testing hypotheses concerning changes which have been of particular interest to linguists. However, I have avoided formalism except where I think it serves to make things clearer, and have attempted to couch the discussion in language that will be comprehensible to as wide an audience as possible. This book had its origins in my dissatisfaction with earlier treatments of the development of ‘group genitives’ (e.g. the king of France’s daughter) and developed over more than a decade as my investigations into the question of

Preface

ix

what happened to the genitive case in Early Middle English led me into related topics, some of which extend into Early Modern English. I have not made any attempt to cover all aspects of the development of genitives in English—which would be an impossible task to accomplish in one volume in more than a very superficial way—but have focused mostly on some developments which have been of particular interest to linguists (or which I think ought to be) or to those who would not wish to call themselves linguists but are interested in how English grammar has changed. The emphasis is on adnominal genitives, although a comparison of developments with non-adnominal types will play a minor role. Several questions of particular interest concerning how syntactic systems change over time arise from these developments. One subject which has already received a great deal of attention is how a specific inflection for genitive case in Old English became the -s genitive of present day English. This is a change of particular interest to diachronic syntacticians because the evolution of the possessive marker from a clear case inflection to a bound morpheme which is further towards the clitic end of the cline from affix to clitic than to the inflection end seems to go against the more usual pattern whereby free morphemes become bound ones. It has been connected in the literature for more than a century with the development of the so-called his genitive. Another question which has been the subject of a good deal of scrutiny concerns the definiteness or otherwise of possessives in earlier English, a question which arises because of the greater freedom with which possessives combined with demonstratives in earlier stages than is the case today. This question is connected with the correct analysis of the his genitives as it has been suggested that the possessive pronoun in this construction was in fact a type of determiner. Since these questions have already received so much attention, it is necessary to say what a new investigation can hope to add. Previous studies have typically not placed an emphasis on the quality of the data. Current theoretical debate on some of these questions often makes crucial use of examples which under close scrutiny do not provide the sort of evidence which is claimed. It also often relies on studies which are now quite old. More recent scholarship and the advent of electronic corpora have brought us to the point where a reexamination of some empirical assumptions is warranted. In this book, the discussion of earlier English is based mostly on fresh facts compiled from my own investigations, although of course anyone working in this area owes a huge debt to the pioneers who went before. In some of the linguistics literature, arguments based on linguistic typology have been used in the debate over the nature of syntactic systems in earlier English. Such arguments need careful scrutiny. I have tried in this book to

x

Preface

establish that the typological assumptions which have been brought to bear on the topics discussed here are flawed to begin with, and that at any rate the evidence from trustworthy texts must outweigh apparent evidence from linguistic typology. We cannot assume without further investigation, for example, that because a construction in Middle English reminds us of a construction in Modern Dutch, it should be given the same analysis as the Dutch construction. On the other hand, a comparison of English with other languages can raise hypotheses which can be tested and can also play a crucial role in ruling out some hypotheses about particular types of grammatical systems not being possible. In this book, I have drawn on the Germanic languages in particular in demonstrating how earlier periods of English fit into what we know about syntactic typology. In fact, an entire chapter is devoted to possessor doubling constructions in Germanic languages not including English, preparatory to the demonstration that the his genitives of Middle English did not fit the profile of a possessor doubling construction. My typological investigations have also borne fruit in the discovery that the combination possessive + determiner, found in Old English but not often analysed by linguists, is not as unusual as I first thought, and in fact that this is an area in which a comparison of Old English with another language reinforces the evidence found from the Old English texts. A study of earlier English can both be informed by our knowledge of linguistic typology and add to that knowledge. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of several people and organizations in the preparation of this book. The research for this book was partially funded by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0208153 and assisted by the granting of Outside Studies Leave (and funding for it) by the Australian National University. I am indebted to Professor Stephen Parker at the University of Manchester in appointing me as Honorary Visiting Scholar in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, which made available to me electronic corpora not available to me at my home university as well as the resources of the John Rylands University Library, and to Jonathan Starbrook for his assistance in setting my visit up. David Denison took time out of a hectic schedule to help me get started with the corpora and Ann Taylor at York kindly provided me with an advance copy of the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Other colleagues who made my all-too-brief visit a worthwhile and memorable one include Kersti Börjars, Nigel Vincent, and John Payne. While in Manchester, I benefited also from conversations with Joan Bresnan, who participated in the Directions in English Linguistics conference. Bethwyn Evans generously shared her house with me and provided both companionship and a very pleasant environment to work on the book.

Preface

xi

Linguists who have generously answered my queries on points of grammar in Germanic languages include Lars-Olaf Delsing (Scandinavian languages generally), Lilianne Haegeman (West Flemish), Jan Strunk (Low Saxon), and Peter Tiersma (Frisian). I could not have written the sections on Dutch and German without the research done for me by Jennifer Hendriks as a research associate on my grant, and Rachel Hendery is responsible for the German examples which were collected from the Web and was also helpful in my efforts to understand literature written in Scandinavian languages. Jennifer also provided comments on Chapter 5, while Johanna Wood provided comments on an entire earlier draft. While I am certain that the book has benefited from the help of all these people, any shortcomings remain uniquely my own. Finally, Avery Andrews has remained a firm and constant support, both emotional and intellectual.

Tables 3.1 Two-element genitives in the EWS texts

114

3.2 Two-element genitives in four LWS texts

114

3.3 Positioning of genitives with dæl and healf in EWS and LWS texts

115

3.4 Percentage of dislocated genitives in EWS and LWS texts

117

3.5 Genitive objects vs. alternatives in EWS and LWS

117

4.1 PPCME2 periods for manuscript dates

125

4.2 EME texts classed according to degree of case inflection

126

4.3 Case agreement patterns of determiner with genitive noun in selected EME texts

144

4.4 Post-head genitives and inflected determiners in selected EME texts

166

4.5 lufu, ege, and dred in ME

169

4.6 lufu, ege, and dred in inflection-rich texts in the m1 period

171

4.7 Genitive objects in EME texts

176

4.8 Occurrence of selected genitive constructions in the ME period

182

6.1 Summary of Grammarians’ views of the -s and separated genitives

264

7.1 poss det and det poss in OE texts

281

7.2 det poss, poss det, and poss in selected OE texts

284

Abbreviations acc (in glosses)

Accusative case

Adj

Adjective

AG

Adjective Genitive (language)

AP

Adjective Phrase

ASC

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

CG

Common Germanic

CGEL

Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

CLMET

Corpus of Late Modern English Texts

D

Determiner (node in phrase structure)

dat (in glosses)

Dative

def (in glosses)

Definite

DemP

Demonstrative Phrase

Det

Determiner

det poss

Any construction in which a determiner (including demonstratives) precedes a possessive

DG

Determiner Genitive (language)

DOE

Dictionary of Old English

DO

Direct Object

DP

Determiner Phrase

EME

Early Middle English

EModE

Early Modern English

EWS

Early West Saxon

f (in glosses)

Feminine

GD

Gregory’s Dialogues

gen (in glosses)

Genitive

IO

Indirect Object

IP

Inflectional Phrase

LALME

Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English

LFG

Lexical Functional Grammar

LME

Late Middle English

xiv

Abbreviations

LP

Linguistic Profile (used by LALME)

LWS

Late West Saxon

m (in glosses)

Masculine

ME

Middle English

N

Noun

n (in glosses)

Neuter

NAPA

Non-Agreeing Possessive Appositive

nnom (in glosses)

Non-nominative

nom (in glosses)

Nominative

NomP

Nominal Phrase

NP

Noun Phrase

obl (in glosses)

Oblique case (= not nominative, not genitive)

OE

Old English

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

PC

Peterborough Chronicle

PCEEC

The Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence

PDE

Present Day English

pl (in glosses)

Plural

Poss

Possessive

poss (in glosses)

Possessive marker

poss det

Any construction in which a possessive precedes a determiner

PP

Prepositional Phrase

PPCME2

The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2

sg (in glosses)

Singular

Spec

Specifier (Spec, DP = Specifier of DP, etc.)

w (in glosses)

Weak (adjectival) inflection

YCOE

The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose

1 Genitive case and the typology of case marking 1.1 Introduction: aims and scope This book examines aspects of the development of genitive constructions from Old English (OE) to Early Modern English (EModE), putting these developments into a typological context. The focus is on the evidence for the grammatical possibilities in different periods of English. In OE, the genitive case was part of a system in which relationships between nouns and other parts of the sentence were signalled by inflection. During the Middle English (ME) period, the use of case marking as the primary signal of grammatical and semantic relationships disappeared. It is a matter of controversy whether ME can be said to have had a genitive case in the same sense as OE had a genitive case. It is traditional to use the term ‘genitive’ to refer to the possessive marker -es of ME (later written ’s), and commonplace to find references to the ‘of genitive’ or ‘periphrastic genitive’ for expressions such as the mother of the child, where there can be no question of case as an inflectional category. Such terminology does no harm as long as either context or explicit definition makes it clear how words such as genitive and case are being used. At this point, it is useful to use the cover term ‘genitive’ to stand for ‘phrases which would have been in the genitive case in OE’, although I will often use terms such as possessive marker to avoid the impression of theoretical assumptions concerning the morphosyntactic nature of the marker in question. Of considerably more interest and importance than terminological matters is the question of whether and how changes in the syntax of nominal phrases which would have been in the genitive case in OE can be related to other changes in the grammar which took place in ME. Our findings concerning the history of these ‘genitives’ in English are of interest not only in so far as they improve our understanding of the history of a specific language, but also for what they tell us about the nature of linguistic change. They can also play a

2


role in evaluating synchronic analyses. Suppose for example that English and German differ syntactically in a particular respect X, and that two parametersettings Y (assumed by analysis A) and Z (analysis B) have been proposed by linguists as underlying the syntactic difference. If the historical record is consistent with the acquisition in English of parameter-setting Y at just the point when difference X between English and German becomes apparent, this can provide support for analysis A over analysis B if there is no independent reason to suppose the acquisition of parameter-setting Z around the time when the difference arose. Of course, not all linguists adopt the notion of parameter-settings, but the type of argument I have outlined remains valid for any analysis which attempts to correlate two or more features of a language. As a language with a rich history of documentation, English provides a very good opportunity to make a case study of how the loss of inflectional categories or ‘deflexion’ affects (or does not affect) other parts of the grammar. The deflexion which took place in ME is often assumed to be responsible for many changes which took place concerning genitives. However, not all of these assumptions are supported by the evidence of the texts. A major aim of this book is to provide a firm empirical base for testing some assumptions about the relationship between changes to the case marking system of English and other changes which took place within the nominal phrase (NomP) around the same time. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, a satisfactory empirical base is still not available. At this point, I will just give a simple example of the sort of important empirical questions to which we lack answers. In OE, the genitive case was used in partitive expressions such as heora nan, literally ‘their none’, but now we must use of phrases such as ‘none of them’ to express such ideas. This change is important because of its possible relationship to other changes in English grammar. It is well known that the genitive types became more restricted in Middle English, but to date no study has been made concerning the implementation and timing of all these restrictions. Did all the obsolete genitives disappear from the texts roughly at the same time, suggesting they were the victims of some single event which triggered widespread changes within the NomP, or did some of the old types last longer than others? I intend to offer some answers to such questions. Thomas’ (1931) pioneering study of the development of the periphrastic genitive in English still provides the empirical basis of many discussions of possessives in Early Middle English (EME) in particular. For example, work done by Anette Rosenbach and her colleagues (Rosenbach et al. 2000 and Rosenbach 2002, 2004) adds much to our knowledge of how the -s genitive developed from Late Middle English (LME) until the present, but relies on

Introduction

3

Mustanoja’s (1960) figures for OE and EME, which are based on Thomas’ work. Koike (2006) similarly depends on Thomas’ data in discussing the frequency of prenominal, postnominal, and periphrastic genitives in different periods. As is only to be expected with a study made so long ago, Thomas’ dissertation is out of date in many respects, although its findings have in the main stood the test of time and this work remains the best starting point for any investigation into the matters it covers. A new study of the EME texts which takes recent scholarship into account is needed. The last several decades have also seen great advances in our understanding of human languages. The time is ripe for a study which pulls together recent findings in diverse areas such as the nature of case marking, the nature of syntactic and morphological change, the role of processing and pragmatic considerations in the construction of grammars and grammatical change, and a review of the evidence for the nature of the possessive inflection in earlier stages of English, based on the systematic examination of texts. Although the major focus of the book is on adnominal genitives, the genitive case was also used to mark the objects of certain verbs in OE as well as adverbial phrases and the complements of some adjectives, and it is important to establish the relative chronology of the loss of these nonadnominal functions in ME with the changes which took place within NomPs. I have restricted my systematic investigations to the genitive case involved in arguments, that is, either marking a NomP inside a NomP performing an argument function such as subject or object of a preposition, or marking the NomP itself as an argument of a verb. However, a few remarks will be made in section 4.6 concerning the relative timing of the disappearance of genitive case as a productive marking in non-adnominal functions. Since this book is written from a linguist’s point of view, the focus will be on what the texts can tell us about the systems of earlier periods, and how different subsystems worked together, rather than on a taxonomy of constructions. I will also not normally be concerned to give statistics on the use of the constructions in the various texts, although I will do so on occasion, when relative frequencies seem particularly relevant. Any linguistic description has some sort of framework underpinning it which determines such crucial matters as the assumptions about how phenomena are to be classified. There is no such thing as a ‘theory-free’ description of any set of facts and the facts which are presented by one linguist are sometimes of limited use to someone working in another framework because of the difference in assumptions. However, although linguistic theories vary greatly in important respects, there is a good deal of common ground which makes it possible in many cases to present facts in such a way as that translations can be made between different

4


frameworks. I want the discussions in this book to be accessible to linguists of different theoretical persuasions who are interested in theoretical issues surrounding morphosyntactic change generally or specifically in such change in English, and I have attempted to present the facts in such a way as to answer questions which would be asked by syntacticians working in both formal and functionally oriented frameworks. However, I want this book to be accessible also to scholars who would not call themselves linguists but are interested in the history of English grammar. I have tried to keep formalism to a minimum, restricting it to places where it clearly does some work, and to be clear about why it is being used and the assumptions which are being made.

1.2 The typological approach Although the book is centrally concerned with English, I will be taking a typological approach. That is, I will be showing how some of the constructions found in earlier English are similar to or different from constructions in other languages and will be making some observations about how changes which have taken place in English relate to changes which are known to have taken place in other languages, especially other Germanic languages. To most linguists, the rationale for putting the developments in English into a typological perspective will probably seem obvious: as a human language, English has been subject in all periods to the same universal constraints and possibilities as all other human languages are. This is true both of the synchronic system we posit at any stage and of the changes which we assume to have taken place between stages. We may reasonably hope that the knowledge which linguistic typologists have accumulated concerning these universal constraints and possibilities may suggest the best possible answer to some questions on which there is no clear evidence available from the texts at our disposal. It is probable that the languages which are most closely related to English are the most likely ones to provide the sort of typological evidence to add to the evidence from the texts in getting a clear picture of the development of adnominal genitives in English, which is why the typological focus is mainly on the Germanic languages. However, if we assume that at all stages, the English texts reflect (albeit sometimes in a fairly distorted manner) a linguistic system ‘internalized’ by the author of a text or perhaps layers of linguistic systems internalized by successive scribes copying the text, we may use facts from any human language to demonstrate that a system of the sort which is being suggested is indeed a possible system for a human language. If the

Introduction

5

textual evidence points in the direction of a system which is not found in the other Germanic languages but such a system is found in some other language, it is a system which is learnable by humans and which may be posited. It is for this reason that not all of the examples which will be used in this book to illustrate grammatical phenomena will be drawn from the Germanic family, although most will be. In the chapters which follow, I will discuss several examples of how typology helps to support a proposed analysis of syntactic phenomena in earlier English. We will also see that the sort of variation we find in case marking in at least one modern-day Germanic language is similar to the situation found in some ME texts, a finding which must give us more confidence in the texts as witnesses of the state of the spoken language. Typology comes into play in more than one way in diachronic syntax. Diachronic typology, the study of what sorts of changes are known to have happened in languages, can be particularly helpful in filling in the gaps in a historical record. We can often use it to make an educated guess about how some systems evolved during a period when there are no records. These sorts of gaps are not so relevant to the study of English, although the EME period is one where a certain amount of guesswork is needed. Nevertheless, a comparison with similar changes in other languages will surely be useful in helping us to understand what has happened, and to seek explanations for why a particular change took place in one language but not in a closely related one. The findings of a systematic investigation into the history of a particular language will ideally both make use of and add to our knowledge of diachronic typology. Typology is particularly useful in diachronic syntax to help narrow down possible explanations for particular changes. It is frequently argued, for example, that a given change (call it B) happened because a previous change (A) had occurred which would have resulted in an impossible linguistic system had B not also occurred to set things right. If we restrict our study to the history of an individual language, several plausible-seeming explanations of this sort may present themselves as possibilities, that is, there might be several possible pairs of linked changes; in other words, there may be several potential As and Bs. Diachronic typology can help us to exclude some of these pairs when we come across languages in which a particular change A has happened without the proposed consequence B also happening. Synchronic typology can help us too; if we find a language in which the putatively impossible situation is found that is supposed to have resulted if change A happened on its own, the proposed explanation is clearly faulty. We may still be able to say that change A made change B probable, but we cannot say that it made change B necessary, and we

6


will be open to alternative explanations. If we do not know enough about what sorts of syntactic systems are attested, we cannot rule out possible explanations in this way. As useful as typology is in the study of diachronic syntax, however, it has its limits, and it is important not to let typology outweigh evidence. In particular, we must not ignore the evidence of the texts in favour of typology. Suppose the evidence from a particular period pushes us strongly in the direction of assuming a linguistic system which is known to exist in a few languages but is uncommon. There is no good reason in such a situation to reject such an analysis if the textual evidence supports it over other contenders. An attested but unusual syntactic system is still a possible system, and an unusual conjunction of historical changes may converge to produce a typologically unusual system. 1 Suppose that the situation is even worse, that is, that we are forced on the basis of the evidence of the texts to posit a system which is not known to exist in any other language. A possible reaction to such a situation is to say that the evidence must be flawed, because English cannot ever have had a typologically unknown system. The problem with such a reaction is that ‘unknown’ is not the same as ‘humanly impossible’. Certainly, English cannot at any time have been a language which is not a possible human language, but the fact is that we simply do not know everything about what a humanly possible grammatical system is. Not every human language has been studied, for one thing. Furthermore, typologists are at the mercy of the quality of the linguistic descriptions which exist. Linguistic descriptions must always have some idea of the nature of linguistic organization underlying them, be it traditional grammar or the latest formal syntactic framework, and grammars will vary in the sorts of linguistic categories which they assume because of the different assumptions of the linguists who write them. This means that even when a grammar of a particular language is available, the existence of an exotic phenomenon may not be documented because the author of the grammar did not investigate that phenomenon, not knowing of its potential interest to linguistic typology, and did not present the particular array of facts which would lead a typologist to realize that a new or unusual linguistic type had been documented. The upshot of all this is that the evidence which is available must be the final arbiter of our analysis. The study of any language has the potential to add to our understanding of what constitutes a possible human language. When the 1 The poss det construction discussed in section 7.3.1 offers an example of a typologically unusual construction which appears to have come about in this way.

Introduction

7

language being studied is only available through corpora or grammars, the finding of a previously unattested phenomenon should provide an impetus to check other languages for a similar situation. A striking example resulting from this study concerns the ‘poss det’ construction studied in Chapter 7. The evidence for the existence of this construction in OE, as well as its limitation to use only when an adjective is also present, is overwhelming, but I have not been able to find a mention of this phenomenon in typological studies such as Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2003). The evidence for this apparently typologically unknown construction in OE is so strong, however, that it seemed impossible to deny its existence in OE, and there also seems to be some evidence for a parallel construction in Old Norse. It was with considerable relief that I discovered that a similar construction is (still) found in some Scandinavian varieties (see Chapter 7). The existence of the construction in these varieties strongly supports the view that the evidence coming from the OE texts is reliable. A final caveat which needs to be made about the use of typology is that it is a mistake to assume that because a construction in a given language has some superficial similarities to a construction in another language, the same analysis is appropriate for the two languages. This assumption has been made, for example, concerning the so-called ‘his genitive’ (e.g. the king his castle), the subject of Chapter 6. In this particular instance, closer investigation shows that different analyses are appropriate for different stages of English, and that the assumption that the analysis appropriate for Dutch, for example, is also appropriate for any his genitive in English turns out to be incorrect.

1.3 Assumptions about the nature of language To begin with, I make the descriptive linguist’s assumption that the native speaker of a language has internalized a linguistic system which is governed by rules which are not directly accessible to that speaker’s conscious inspection. The major goal of recent generative grammar is to discover the universal principles which are assumed to underlie a child’s ability to learn the system(s) of the language(s) which he or she hears, and the parameters along which languages may vary. Noam Chomsky and his followers have emphasized that in any language, speakers largely agree on judgements about previously unheard sentences. These judgements provide evidence concerning the grammar that the speaker has internalized. Of crucial importance is the fact that many of these judgements could not have been predicted on the basis of the sorts of rules found in grammar books.

8


Of course, there is lively debate over the nature of these internalized systems, even among linguists who agree in taking a formalist as opposed to a functionalist stance. This is not the place to go into these issues, but the sort of framework which is assumed here needs to be outlined. Although I will be avoiding formalism as much as possible, the theoretical framework which will underlie the presentation of facts in this book (except where someone else’s analysis is being discussed) is that of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), as presented in Bresnan (2001) and other sources cited in this book. In this theory, two levels of syntax are assumed, C-structure (Constituent Structure, i.e. Phrase Structure) and Functional Structure (the level of grammatical functions such as Subject and Object and information about grammatical categories such as tense and case). The C-structure is assumed to be annotated with statements (in the form of equations) which, in conjunction with information given in the lexical entries for words and affixes, map onto the functional structure, where information from different parts of the sentence is unified. Although I will be assuming this general framework, I will generally avoid using formalism, making statements such as ‘this inflection contributes the information that it is the modifier of something with dative case’ without presenting the lexical entries which contribute this information. The reader interested in the mechanics of how lexical entries contribute to functional structure, etc. should consult Bresnan (2001) and other works referred to at various points.

1.4 Phrase structure The internal structure of the NomP has received a great deal of attention in generative literature, with the focus being on how the recurrent patterns found, sometimes in unrelated languages, can elucidate the possibilities of human language. One of the recurrent themes in this literature has been to explore how closely the structure of NomPs can be said to parallel the structure of sentences. This discussion is part of a general exploration into the similarities in phrase structure found across different categories. X (Xbar) theory, in which phrases such as Noun Phrases (NP) are assumed to be maximal projections of categories (e.g. N), is widely assumed in its basic outlines. In this theory, a head such as N projects a level N which consists of the head (N) and a complement, which is a phrase of some type. Its maximal projection (NP) comprises a phrasal ‘specifier’ (Spec) and the X projection (N ). Traditionally, a string such as the man is considered to be an NP, but there is now widespread (but by no means universal) agreement that NPs are

Introduction

9

themselves embedded in larger phrases, DPs (determiner phrases), headed by the functional element D (determiner), as in (1-1) (where N has been ‘pruned’ away): (1-1)

DP D

NP

the

man

Such structures were first proposed in generative grammar by Abney (1987), but the idea that the determiner heads the NomP, being what ‘grounds’ a particular type specification such as man to pick out a particular instance of the type, is found in various theories; see for example Hudson (1984: 90–2) and Taylor (1996: 99–101). Because so much of the literature is couched in the ‘DP hypothesis’, I will be adopting DP structures here. However, in most of the discussion, the question of whether we are dealing with NPs or DPs will not play an important role. I will therefore use ‘NomP’ to abbreviate ‘nominal phrase’ when the distinction between DPs and NPs is not at issue, and reserve ‘NP’ for discussions of phrase structure. It should be noted that among those who accept the DP hypothesis, there is little consensus on such matters as the correct analysis of APs (adjective phrases) and whether intermediate ‘functional projections’ such as NumP (Number Phrase), etc., need to be postulated between D and NP and, if so, how ‘articulated’ the DP should be, that is, how many functional projections it should be assumed to contain. In LFG, the number of functional categories recognized is kept to a minimum, and within the DP, only D is admitted. Bresnan (2001: 102) proposes that complements of functional categories are coheads, making D and NP equivalent in the functional structure corresponding to a DP. As Bresnan comments (p. 141 n.), Grimshaw’s (1991, 1997) notion of ‘extended projection’, in which DP is an extended projection of N, corresponds closely to the ‘functional domain’ of LFG. What is the structure of possessive phrases such as the man’s book? There is little agreement on this, with some of the disagreements stemming from fundamental differences in theoretical approaches and others representing differences of opinion within the same broad approach. In the current generative literature, analyses differ greatly because of the considerations just mentioned. I will not attempt to assess the merits of different analyses of possessives in Present Day English (PDE); a good summary of some broad differences in

10


approach is provided by Taylor (1996) and Longobardi (2001) presents what can be taken as a standard generative approach to unifying DP structure across typologically diverse languages. Instead, I will only outline here the most important assumptions that I will be making, although I will be discussing some analyses made for earlier stages of English within different frameworks in the relevant places. In the LFG approach adopted in this book, there are no movement processes and no underlying phrase structure as opposed to surface phrase structure. As in other frameworks, there is no consensus on the structure of strings such as the man’s in the possessive phrase the man’s book. The string the man is (uncontroversially) assumed to be in the Spec position of the possessive phrase (it is assumed to be moved into this position in some other frameworks), but there is disagreement over whether the possessive marker ’s forms a constituent (a possessor phrase) with the man, even within a single framework such as LFG. One common treatment is to assume that the possessive marker is in D, giving the structure of (1-2): (1-2)

DP

D

DP the man

D

NP

s

book

In this structure, the possessor phrase and the possessive marker, which is treated as a clitic, do not form a constituent. 2 Within the LFG framework, this sort of analysis is assumed by Strunk (2004a, 2004b, 2005) and Falk (2001). Bresnan (2001: 133), on the other hand, assumes a structure in which ’s is part of the possessor phrase in the Spec of DP. Her explanation (p. 134) for why there is no determiner co-occurring with the possessor phrase is that possessives are inherently definite, so a determiner would be redundant (an approach similar to that of Haspelmath 1999). No head D is required for the DP (i.e. the possessive phrase) because only lexical 2 Although Abney (1987) is usually credited with this proposal, Abney himself credited the idea to Richard Larson (p. 52). Abney expressed his preference for an analysis whereby ’s is a postposition (p. 56), pointing out that one of the attractive features of this analysis for English, i.e. that it gives an explanation for why possessors do not co-occur with lexical determiners such as the, does not extend to languages such as Hungarian, in which possessors and lexical determiners do co-occur.

Introduction

11

phrases (as opposed to functional ones, such as D) are required to have heads of the same category (i.e. to be endocentric). This account is consistent with the view that the possessive marker is a phrasal inflection (or edge-located inflection; cf. Zwicky 1987). See section 2.4.1 for reasons favouring this treatment, rather than the treatment of -s as a clitic. In this approach, the possessor phrase (in the Spec of DP) is treated as having an annotation in the phrase structure which indicates that it bears the grammatical function poss to the larger possessive phrase (see Bresnan 2001: 293, etc.). 3 We can assume that this function requires genitive case, which is supplied by the lexical entry for -s. The treatment of case in LFG will be briefly discussed in the next section. What about possessive ‘pronouns’ such as my? Here, there is no agreement as to whether these elements should be given the same treatment as nominal possessives or even agreement on their category status. I will follow Bresnan (2001: 90) in assuming determiners, demonstratives, and pronouns to be instances of D. In a phrase such as my book, then, my is a DP-dominating D, and it is in the same position as possessor phrases containing nouns. Thus, my use of ‘genitive’ or ‘possessor phrase’ can be assumed to include possessive pronouns, unless otherwise specified. So far, I have been talking about possessor phrases, in which the possessor may be preceded by a determiner. As is well known, however, English has a construction often referred to as ‘descriptive genitives’ as found in an old folk’s home, a women’s magazine, etc. For discussions of the different subtypes of such genitives and the terminology used for them, see ‘Nouns and Noun Phrases’ (Payne and Huddleston 2002) in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), where these are called ‘attributive genitives’, and Rosenbach (2006). Clearly, such expressions have a different phrase structure from the one just discussed, the construction which is often referred to as the ‘determiner genitive’ because the possessor phrase is functionally similar to a determiner. The descriptive genitive has affinities with compound nouns, but shares the -s possessive marker with the more common determiner genitive. The essential difference between the determiner genitive and the descriptive genitive is that the former is used to talk about a particular instance of a type, while the latter makes reference to the type itself. Since a descriptive genitive will normally refer to a category of things which is a generally recognized type, 3 The usual LFG treatment treats poss as an argument function. Bresnan proposes a lexical predication template which augments the lexical entries for nouns (e.g. ‘book’) to require a possessive (poss) function (so ‘book’ becomes ‘book of <poss>’, requiring a possessor). It may be that such an approach is appropriate for inherently relational nouns such as father, while possessors of non-relational nouns such as book should be treated as adjuncts (modifiers). This question is not crucial for this study.

12


it is natural that descriptive genitives tend to be fairly fixed expressions, such as women’s magazine. As Rosenbach (2006) shows, however, it is possible to coin new descriptive genitives such as his old man’s soft belly, found in her corpus, because it is easy for a hearer or reader to think of a particular type of belly being characteristic of an old man. There is debate over whether descriptive genitives should be dealt with in the syntax or the morphology. I will assume that whatever the role of the morphological component versus syntax, the grammar allows for compounding structures such as N [N N], in which the first N (which may itself be a compound, as in old man) is an adjunct which may have genitive case, contributed by -s, when the semantics are appropriate. We shall see in section 3.7.2 that the descriptive genitives appear to be the reflex of a construction in OE which Crisma (to appear) refers to as ‘Low prenominal genitives’, in which the determiner agrees with the head of the NomP rather than the genitive-marked modifier. Something must finally be said about ‘independent’ genitives, as in the book is mine/John’s. It is common to treat such genitives as elliptical, with a missing head, as Jackendoff (1977), Anderson (1984: 17), Panagiotidis (2003), etc. do. But, as noted by Watkins (1967), among others, an elliptical possessum is not always to be understood in these genitives, and Lyons (1986) points out some problems with the assumption that the genitive in the prepositional construction is in the Spec position. Zribi-Hertz (1997) argues that these independent possessives are ambiguous between what she calls the possession reading and the relationship reading. 4 In the relationship reading, a range of semantic relationships between the possessive form and an understood possessum are expressed by the possessive form, the same as when the possessum is overtly expressed, as in his picture is good, but mine is better, where mine could refer to a picture I took, a picture someone took of me, etc. In this reading, a missing head is clearly understood, and alternatives such as his picture is good, but my picture is better are perfectly appropriate. Contrast this with the possession reading found in e.g. after I pay off the mortgage, the house will be mine, where ‘the house will belong to me’ is a much better paraphrase than the house will be my house. Furthermore, some speakers allow substitution of my one, your one, etc. for mine and yours, but most speakers who accept this construction (henceforth, poss one) at all find it acceptable only when a relationship reading is possible; Shorrock’s (2005) study of the use of one with possessives in Australian, British, and US English found that while many speakers 4

Payne and Huddleston (2002: 468) similarly demonstrate the need to distinguish between what they call the ‘fused subject determiner-head’ (essentially, the relationship construction) and the predicative (Zribi-Hertz’ possession ) reading.

Introduction

13

of all these varieties accepted (1-3a), all but a small number of speakers rejected (1-3b): 5 (1-3)

a. Our bags are on the table; can you pass me my one? b. ∗ ?After I pay off the mortgage, the house will be my one.

In LFG, no empty node could be used to indicate that there is an unexpressed head N in the relationship meaning, but it is possible to achieve the same effect by assuming that forms such as mine or John’s are equipped in the lexicon with statements to the effect that they are the adjuncts of a functional structure which has a pred feature with the value ‘pro’; for an analysis, see Shorrock (2005). 6 These statements must be optional, since otherwise an overt head as in John’s book would mean that the possessive phrase had two preds, one for book and the pred ‘Pro’ contributed by the genitive form, which is not possible, and also because the statement is not present in the possession reading. Whatever the details of the treatment, it seems clear that any analysis which must assume the presence of any empty noun for all independent possessives runs into difficulties, and I will assume that an understood possessum is not present in all uses of these forms.

1.5 Case: categories and form Given the focus in this book on the relationship between changes to the genitive case in English and other changes to the case system, it is essential to say something about what people mean when they refer to ‘case’, because this word is used in several different ways. What the different uses have in common is that they refer to the relationship between a NomP and some other part of the sentence, such as the verb or preposition which governs it. Different approaches to language differ, however, in such matters as what types of cases are recognized and what it means for a noun phrase to ‘have’ (or ‘be in’) a case. It is also important to be clear whether we are referring to case morphology 5 In the 1970s, linguists such as Baker (1978: 328), Jackendoff (1971) and Perlmutter (1970: 236, fn. 6) found it necessary to come up with ways of ruling out the poss one construction, which everyone agreed at the time was ungrammatical. But Panagiotidis (2003: 282) assumes that poss one is grammatical generally in most varieties of English, and Shorrock’s pilot study shows that at least some university-age people in all three countries find the construction acceptable. I reject the construction myself, although my Australian-raised sons (aged 25 and 27) use it frequently. The fact that the construction is judged to be ‘of rather questionable acceptability’ (Stirling and Huddleston 2002: 1513) by CGEL probably reflects the age of the authors who wrote this statement rather than dialect (both are Australian) or anything else. poss one appears to be a case of a syntactic change in progress, and, as such, deserves careful study. 6 To oversimplify, the pred feature in LFG essentially conveys the meaning of a lexical item. A functional structure may only have one pred feature.

14


(how the cases are realized) or to case syntax (what cases can appear in a given syntactic situation). As Taylor (1996: 117) comments, whether we will analyse the possessive morpheme of PDE as a marker of genitive case will depend on our definition of ‘case’. In this and the next section, I will discuss how some of these differences are relevant to the study of the history of case generally in English, and explain how I will be treating case in this book. Section 1.7 will look specifically at the genitive case. One approach to case is to take morphology as basic in determining the case categories of a language. For example, Priestley (1761: 4) says ‘Cases are those changes in the terminations of nouns which serve to express their relation to other words’ and considers that PDE only has two cases, the nominative and the genitive. By Priestley’s definition, there is a straightforward relationship between case categories and case forms; the case categories which are assumed to exist are determined by the formal oppositions. Other grammarians such as Cobbet (Nickerson and Osborne 1983: §230) set up three case categories for PDE nouns on the basis of the three distinctions found in the pronouns. More recently, Spencer (1992, 2005) supports the principle that case should not be assumed when there is no variation in form, and Spencer and Otoguro (2005) argue that case is not a universal attribute of languages, and suggest that the grammar of a given language only needs to make reference to case when it is needed (in the morphology or the syntax) to capture generalizations such as similar behaviour by forms belonging to different lexical classes (morphological case) or agreement phenomena etc. (syntactic case). There is a long tradition, however, of using the word ‘case’ in what Spencer and Otoguro refer to as ‘metagrammatical description’ and treating inflectional morphology as just one way of expressing case. Clitics, adpositions, and constituent order all may perform the function of signalling the grammatical relationship between a NomP and other parts of a sentence, and many recent linguistic treatments stress the need to distinguish between abstract case categories which may be universal and the way these categories are realized in a particular language. The earlier grammarians normally assumed that the categories needed for a description of Latin were naturally also the ones appropriate for the description of English grammar; Gill (1671: 4) for example comments that ‘a word is considered as nominative if it precedes the verb, accusative if it follows’ and considers that the preposition from can be considered to govern the ablative case, and Dilworth (1793: 100, 102) recognizes six cases in English and gives O Book as the vocative form of book. The better of the early normative grammarians, such as Wallis (1653), Priestley, and Johnson (1774) based their grammatical categories on the evidence available from English, but nevertheless differed in the number of nominal cases they

Introduction

15

recognized according to such considerations as whether nouns were assumed to have the same distinctions as pronouns. More recent structural linguistics also takes the evidence coming from a given language as crucial to determining the analysis of that language. However, evidence admitted for the case system of a language may be drawn not only from fairly concrete morphology but also from subtle syntactic evidence. In generative grammar, it is usual to make a distinction between morphological case and (abstract) syntactic case (for a discussion, see Ura 2001). The question of how directly syntactic cases must be related to overt morphology in a language is an area of current debate among generative grammarians and the question of how morphological changes which make this relationship less transparent may precipitate changes to the abstract case system is of particular interest to historical syntacticians; see for example the papers in Lightfoot (2002) and also Haeberli (2001). In this book, I will be adopting the view that morphological categories can only be assumed if there is some formal (morphological) distinction supporting a category distinction. Thus, I assume a distinction between accusative and dative case in some dialects of EME because the texts of those dialects show a consistent distinction between some accusative forms (e.g. hine) and dative forms (e.g. him), as discussed in Chapter 4. For other dialects, I assume that there is only a general oblique case, as in PDE.

1.6 Structural, inherent, and semantic case It is also usual to make a distinction between structural cases, which are assigned on the basis of the grammatical role (position or grammatical relation) of the NomP, and inherent cases, which are governed by particular lexical items. Information concerning the inherent cases, such as that a particular verb governs the dative case, must be supplied in the lexicon, while the distribution of structural cases is predictable from general principles of a grammar. In addition, there are semantic (uses of) cases such as the ‘local’ cases used by Finnish, where a case form has a specific meaning. In OE, the genitive was used as a semantic case for temporal expressions, as we shall see. Chomsky (1986) assumed that the inherent cases are assigned at a deeper level than the structural cases and that NomPs could be impelled to move from their underlying position in a sentence in order to receive case. In the more recent Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995) case features are not assumed to be assigned but rather checked in particular syntactic contexts, but the general idea of distinctions between syntactic and morphological case and structural and inherent case remain.

16


There is debate in the generative literature concerning how genitive case fits into case marking theory. Nominative and accusative case are uncontroversially structural cases, assigned to syntactic positions/functions without regard to semantic roles. Chomsky (1986) begins by treating genitive case within noun phrases as being assigned either by a poss phrase or by the semantically empty preposition of but ends up (p. 193) proposing that genitive case should be considered an inherent case, rather than a structural case, assigned by N. A good deal of more recent work has raised problems with this idea. As pointed out by Abney (1987), Alexiadou and Wilder (1998), and others, recent treatments of possessors as occupying a position in the DP parallel to the subject position in a sentence do not sit well with the idea that they are inherently case-marked, since subjects are structurally marked. De Wit (1997: 34) argues for a treatment of the genitive in Dutch as a structural case, and Clahsen, Eisenbeiss, and Vainikka’s (1994) treatment of German follows Abney (1987) in assuming that the genitive is assigned to Spec, DP in the same way that nominative is assigned to subject in IP. Longobardi (1995) also argues that adnominal genitive case is structurally assigned, accepting Benveniste’s (1966) arguments that genitive case in Latin patterns with typically structural cases in not being bound to a specific semantic function. Developing a theory of case that assumes that all languages have abstract case even if they lack morphological case marking, Chomsky (1986: 74), following Vergnaud (1982), assumed a case filter which requires every overtly expressed noun phrase to be assigned case. This case filter is assumed to be a universal, and so all languages have case although this may not be expressed in case morphology. In this approach, both Mary and John have abstract case in the sentence Mary saw John; Mary and John have nominative and accusative case, respectively, although there is no morphological expression of these cases. The proposed case filter has played an important role in generative discussions of possessives in English. Chomsky assumed that abstract genitive case is possible both prenominally and postnominally; in an expression such as the theory of Chomsky genitive case is realized morphologically by the preposition of, while in Chomsky’s theory the possessive marker spelled as ’s has this function. Because Chomsky assumed that genitive case was not a structural case, it could not be assigned to a position within a NomP without some overt morphology, such as -s or of. An alternative such as ∗ the theory Chomsky’s is not possible, and much recent work has assumed that the reason why PDE no longer has postnominal genitives is that as part of the deflexion which took place in ME, genitive case was lost as a morphological category. The ’s of the prenominal possessive had to be reanalysed as a clitic, rather than a case inflection. Since its position was at the end of a NomP before a head

Introduction

17

N, ∗ the theory Chomsky’s, where Chomsky is not in a position to be followed by a clitic, became impossible, leading to the rise of the of genitive to replace the old postnominal genitive. In Chapter 4, we will see that there are severe problems in making this story fit the facts, but here I will simply note that the generative literature has noted problems with the case filter which is the keystone of this account; for a discussion, see Haeberli (2001). Furthermore, it is clear that an overt marker of possession is by no means necessary typologically. There are many languages which have possessive constructions in which nouns are simply juxtaposed, and the relative order of the nouns indicates which is the possessor and which is the possessum. For example, Mundang, a Bantu language, has no marking whatsoever of possession and also uses simple juxtaposition for other genitive-like functions in what can be called an ‘associative’ construction (Elders 2000). There is thus no reason typologically to assume that the loss of postnominal possessives must be linked to a change in the morphological status of genitive case, although of course it may be.

1.7 Genitive case in this book The LFG framework which I adopt as the basis for the discussions in this book does not assume a case filter but recognizes the distinction between cases which are determined by grammatical functions (structural cases) and those which are selected by lexical items (inherent cases). For the reasons outlined in section 1.6, I will be assuming that the most common types of genitive phrases involved structural case marking in OE, that is, that the position in which they occurred was designated as carrying the poss function, as was outlined in section 1.4 for PDE. While there is no single agreed-on treatment in LFG for structural cases, we can assume that genitives are associated with functional structures which contain the attribute-value pair case gen. The lexical entry for the possessive marker -s contains this information, contributing it to the functional structure corresponding to the possessor phrase. 7 This is similar to the treatment I am assuming for PDE, with the important differences that the genitive case morphology is attached to the head of the possessor phrase, rather than being an edge-located inflection, that phrase-internal agreement must be enforced some way, and that genitive case must also be assigned by the phrase structure configuration in postnominal position. Another major difference between OE and PDE is that in OE, the genitive was not only a 7 The poss function must also be annotated with a ‘constraining equation’ ↓case= gen, which c ensures that some element must contribute the genitive case feature to the functional structure. I leave aside here the technical question of how the -s can be made to appear as a phrasal inflection, rather than an inflection of the head N.

18


structural case, since (for example) a given verb could specify lexically that its object must be in the genitive case. 8 The nature of genitive case in OE will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3. It will be the subject of Chapter 4 to examine just what changes took place in the nature of genitive case, and exactly when and how they took place, and to show how the changes to genitive case are related to other changes in the English case marking system. Nobody disputes that OE was a ‘case marking’ language or that the genitive was a morphological case at that stage. Any description of the morphosyntax of OE needs to refer to this case to make generalizations across inflectional classes, and elements of the NomP such as determiners and adjectives agreed with their head noun in case. While not all languages which are generally considered to have case as a morphological category have agreement for case within the NomP, when a language does have such agreement or ‘concordial case’, there is no avoiding making reference to a morphological category of case. Because of the deflexion which took place in EME, the status of morphological case after the OE period is a very different matter. Here, there is much room for debate, and the conclusions we reach will vary considerably according to our theoretical orientation. However, a major goal of Chapter 4 will be to establish the untenability of the widely held assumption that the possessive marker could only have been analysed as a clitic already in the EME period.

1.8 Case morphology and typology In assessing the case marking systems of ME, some assumptions have been made about case which are not warranted typologically. It is now time to turn to these assumptions, which have been used by some linguists to argue that the -s of ME should not be seen as encoding genitive case. One assumption which has been made concerning the nature of inflectional case marking is exemplified in the following quotation: It is also characteristic of case, thus also of the genitive, that it is assigned to a maximal projection DP and that this is reflected through means of morphology, which occurs not only on the head of the phrase—the noun—but also on its specifiers and modifiers. Weerman and de Wit (1999: 1166)

This argument is easily dismissed. First, case is not the only grammatical feature which may be marked more than once in a NomP. In many languages, 8 This is accomplished in LFG by equipping the lexical entry of the verb with a constraining equation requiring the value of the case attribute of its object to be gen.

Introduction

19

including OE, modifiers of nouns agree with their heads in not only case, but also number and gender, as is well known. ME saw the loss of number agreement with these modifiers, but number did not disappear as an inflectional category. No one assumes that the plural marker in PDE lacks the status of an inflectional affix because it is impossible to explain its distribution as anything else. In the same way, the morphological status of possessive -s in ME must be assessed on the basis of its distribution and other properties, and not solely on whether other elements of the NomP agree with it. Turkish is an example of a language which is generally agreed to use (agglutinating) inflection for case, but modifiers of the noun do not agree in case with the noun. 9 Furthermore, Csató and Johanson (1998: 227) state that when the conjunction ve is used in Turkish, case must be assigned to the second element but is optional on the first: 10 (1-4)

Sinan(’i) ve Ali’yi gördüm Sinan(.acc) and Ali.acc see.di.pst.1sg ‘I saw Sinan and Ali.’

Thus, the fact that there was a change between OE, where case inflection was found on modifiers of the possessor N and conjoined possessor nouns were all inflected for the genitive case, and ME, where agreement fell away and conjoined nouns only had the possessor marker on the second conjunct, does show a change in the nature of the case marking, from more synthetic to more agglutinating, but it does not necessarily indicate a shift from inflection to something else. Turkish is also a good illustration of the fact that invariant case markers are used in some languages in which case is undoubtedly represented by inflection; there is allomorphy due to phonological rules such as vowel harmony, but there is no need to divide nouns into inflectional classes. So the fact that the possessive marking (gradually) became invariant in ME does not by itself show that it is not an inflection. 11 Although the typological assumptions just discussed have been brought to bear as arguments against genitive case in ME, they have played an ancillary 9 Not all linguists agree with the use of the term ‘case’ for Turkish; see Spencer and Otoguro (2005) for a discussion. However, the status of these suffixes as representing morphological categories is not in question. The important point is not whether we use the term ‘case’ but the fact that lack of agreement does not prove that the formative is purely syntactic. 10 The use of this conjunction is apparently not as common as coordination with ile (which can be analysed as a postposition meaning ‘with’), where case suffixes are found only on the head (i.e. the rightmost NP). 11 One of Taylor’s (1996) objections to the idea that -s represents a case in PDE is that ‘In the IndoEuropean languages, it is very rare for a case category to have an invariant phonological realization’ (p. 119). Our concern must be with what is possible, rather than what is typical, however.

20


rather than central role. Another assumption, that there is a hierarchy of cases, has played a much more important role and merits its own subsection. 1.8.1 Genitive case and case hierarchies A widely adopted hierarchy (e.g. by Primus 1995, 1999 and Hawkins 2004) is presented in (1-5): (1-5) Nom > Acc > Dat > Other There is a widespread view, expressed for example by Janda (1980, 1981, 2001) and Weerman and de Wit (1999) that this implicational hierarchy, which puts the genitive case in the low-ranked ‘other’ category, rules out the possibility of genitive case as a category in ME once the dative/accusative distinction was lost. Lightfoot (1999) also assumes that the loss of the dative/accusative distinction made the retention of a genitive case impossible. The consequence is that what looks like a genitive inflection in many ME texts must be a clitic for purely theory-internal reasons. However, this conclusion assumes both that the hierarchy of (1-5) is truly universal and that it is applicable to adnominal genitive case. Neither assumption is correct. Let us first examine the question of the universality of this hierarchy. As with most linguistic ‘universals’, it appears that we are dealing here with a strong tendency, rather than an inviolable universal. Primus (1999), who adopts (1-5) as an implicational hierarchy, notes (p. 18) that the Case Hierarchy ‘holds for many languages, but it is not universally valid’. It should also be noted that although there is widespread support for a Case Hierarchy of some sort, there is disagreement on the crucial question of the relative ordering of dative and genitive. For example, Calabrese (1998: 85) places genitive higher on the hierarchy than dative, as does Blake (2001: 159). Primus (1999: 11) offers a solution to the question of why the hierarchies which she assumes behave as violable universal constraints, rather than inviolable ones: there is more than one hierarchy (she also proposes thematic, topic, person, and structural hierarchies), and sometimes two hierarchies are in conflict. Languages differ in which hierarchy is more important in such instances, and if the hierarchy is not inviolable, there is no reason why ME could not represent a typologically unusual but not impossible situation. The second faulty assumption is that where this hierarchy applies, it applies in the same way to adnominal genitives and genitive arguments of verbs. There is an important ambiguity in the formulation of (1-5): it can be interpreted as applying to case categories or case forms. Primus (1999) and Hawkins (2004) both assume that this hierarchy is applicable to both, but in different ways.

Introduction

21

Hawkins (2004: 66) formulates his Morphological Inventory Prediction (his 4.4) thus: (1-6)

Morphological Inventory Prediction For each hierarchy H if a language assigns at least one morpheme uniquely to a given position, then it assigns at least one uniquely to each higher position.

As Hawkins notes, we predict that if a language has a separate dative case, it will have a distinct accusative case. Those who have argued against a genitive case for ME have assumed that the Case Hierarchy predicts that a language will also simply not have a genitive if it has no dative case category. However, Hawkins stresses (p. 70) that the Case Hierarchy ‘refers to the arguments of the verb and the cases they assign’. He specifically states that the hierarchy has nothing to say about the continued existence of a genitive case used to mark possession, that is, within a noun phrase, which (as Hawkins notes) was its principal use in Germanic: Hence the correctness or otherwise of Nom>Acc>Dat>Gen must be established by looking at clause-level arguments only. The prediction to be derived from (4.4) [his Morphological Inventory Prediction—CLA] for this genitive is: if at least one uniquely genitive morpheme is assigned by a verb to a verbal argument, then at least one uniquely dative morpheme will be as well . . . Hawkins (2004: 71)

Thus, regardless of the violability or inviolability of the Case Hierarchy, this hierarchy has nothing to say about the possible status of genitive as a possible NomP-internal case in ME. Here, Hawkins is in agreement with Primus, who states: Apart from allomorphic realization of cases, most of the other observations in this and subsequent sections hold only for cases that are governed by the predicate of the clause. Noun-governed cases such as the possessive or adnominal genitive as well as ungoverned cases such as the vocative or the nominativus pendens (e.g. Mary, I have not seen her for ages) will not be dealt with. Primus (1999: 16, emphasis added)

Predictions stemming from the Case Hierarchy concerning the form of genitive case vis-à-vis other cases are no different for genitive case used adnominally or to mark verbal arguments, as the first part of Primus’ statement indicates. Such predictions are not problematic for the assumption of a genitive inflection in ME. Greenberg’s Universal 38 states: (1-7)

Where there is a case system, the only case which ever has only zero allomorphs is the one which includes among its meaning that of the subject of the intransitive verb. (Greenberg 1966: 95)

22


Greenberg also observed that the accusative was also more likely to have zero-encoding than the oblique cases, leading Primus (1999: 18) to propose a more general ‘preference principle’ whereby a higher-ranking case will be preferentially less complex morphophonologically than a lower-ranking case. This principle (of which (1-7) can now be treated as a corollary) would not be violated by a treatment of EME as having a genitive case, which would be more marked morphophonologically than the zero-marked forms which were used for the subjects and objects of verbs. In sum, there appears to be no typological argument against the existence in ME of a system which opposes a single genitive case, used within the NomP, and another case, used for verbal arguments. It must be admitted that such a system appears to be unusual, but languages of this sort appear to exist, even within the Indo-European family. Irish, according to Duffield (1995: 270), is traditionally analysed as having a genitive case opposed to a single common case for nouns which are not the object of adpositions (it also has a prepositional case). This genitive case is restricted to the last noun in recursive structures, but is clearly an inflection rather than a clitic, since it involves lenition, and adjectives agree with the genitive case. KoptjevskajaTamm (2003: 628) mentions Scottish Gaelic as another language in which ‘the case paradigm has shrunk and has (almost completely) been reduced to a binary opposition between the non-marked form and the genitive case form’. Other languages within the Indo-European family which oppose a genitive case to an unmarked general case include Megleno-Romanian, 12 judging by the discussion of Atanasov (1990: 195–7, 203) and Capidan (1925), although Atanasov’s and Capidan’s use of traditional case terminology, which is not based on the categorial distinctions which are formally distinguished, obscures this fact. Moving far outside the Indo-European family, an example of a language which has been described as having an inflectional genitive case while subjects and objects of verbs get the same lack of marking is Hanga Hundi, a Middle Sepik language of Papua New Guinea, as described by Wendel (1993). 13 Wendel makes a clear distinction between nominal inflections and nominal clitics, which the language also has: 12 I am grateful to Timothy Curnow for pointing me to Romanian dialects as having a genitive/other system, and to Martin Maiden for kindly pinpointing Megleno-Romanian and supplying references, as well as to Laura Daniliuc for translating the Romanian of the crucial bits of Capidan for me. Thanks also to Victor Friedman for helpful comments made concerning my interpretation of these references. Any errors I might have made in representing the Megleno-Romanian facts of course remain my own. 13 Hanga Hundi also has a vocative case inflection, but there is general agreement that vocative case lies outside the Case Hierarchy, as reflected in Primus’ statement quoted above concerning the ungoverned cases.

Introduction

23

. . . the noun phrase clitics can be found attached to virtually any part of speech. This distinguishes them from the possessor suffix -na which is only found attached to nouns, first and second person pronouns, and, infrequently, verbs. 14 (Wendel 1993: 88)

A survey of languages distinguishing a genitive case from only a single case marking verbal arguments is beyond the scope of this book and would be difficult to carry out in any event because it is common for grammars not to make it clear whether the genitive ‘case’ marker referred to is always attached to the possessor noun or simply found at the end of a NomP (and so could be a clitic, not an inflection). But the important point is that it appears to be by no means impossible for a language to have a genitive case which is used within the NomP but to have no case marking on arguments of verbs. Typologically unusual (but not impossible) situations can be expected to arise when an unusual conjunction of circumstances brings them about historically. Evidence from language acquisition has also been adduced to support the idea of a case marking hierarchy. For example, Weerman and de Wit (1999: 1179) note that (postnominal) genitives are acquired relatively late by German-speaking children, a fact consistent with their hierarchy. However, the low position of the genitive on the hierarchy is not necessarily the only reason for this fact. Other factors, such as the fact that other constructions are available to the German child to express possession and the fact that the postnominal genitive is now primarily a literary construction and would not have been frequent in the language a child hears, must be taken into account. Note also that Tracy (1986: 60) found in her study of case acquisition by German children that while the accusative form den of the definite article was acquired before the dative form and was overgeneralized to include dative functions, dative pronominal markers appeared even before the accusative form became recognizable in the indefinite article system; while the accusative category may be acquired before the dative category, that does not imply that all accusative forms are acquired before all dative forms. It is therefore too simplistic to say simply that the accusative case is acquired before the dative case and Tracy suggests that factors such as the prominence of particular forms such as den and the fact that child utterances are typically limited to at most two arguments play a role in the early emergence of the accusative category. It is furthermore important to keep in mind that it is one thing to say that 14

The verbs to which Wendel refers here appear to be nominalized verbs used to form relative clauses (p. 85) and therefore need not be treated as instances of the suffix applying to a non-nominal category.

24


cases, where they exist in the input data, are normally acquired in an order determined by their degree of markedness, and quite another to say that it is impossible for a child to acquire a given case if there is insufficient evidence for the existence of another case in their input data. The first position seems plausible enough, although the evidence for it which has been presented so far can hardly be called conclusive, but the latter position seems to have been adopted without argument by the researchers who have been mentioned above as assuming that ME language learners could not have acquired a genitive case once the dative/accusative distinction disappeared. The idea that the genitive is more ‘marked’ than other cases is echoed in Taylor’s (1996: 118) comment (repeated by Koike 2006) that genitive case is something of an anomaly, even in languages which are clearly ‘case marking’ languages. While the other cases prototypically construe a nominal with respect to its participation in a process, the prototypical function of the genitive case is to ‘symbolize a relation between nominals’. It seems odd to me to refer to the genitive case as ‘anomalous’ in case marking languages, since the languages which rely most on case marking to express grammatical relations typically use a genitive case to express the relationships between nouns (as well as for some other functions). Genitive case is certainly different from the other cases in its typical function, but all the cases differ from each other in some respects and if we regard case marking as ‘a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads’ (Blake 2001: 1), the genitive case is not anomalous. A theory of case which has to treat the genitive case as odd seems not to do a very good job of capturing the essence of case marking. It is true, however, that some languages shed the genitive case while still clearly retaining a system of inflectional case marking; in Chapter 2 we will see that Faroese is such a language. It seems to me that what is going on here is that the language has become one in which case marking is essentially restricted to what Taylor regards as its core function, namely to show how nominals are related to a process. If there are differences in the functions case marking may play in different languages, it does not seem odd that there should be a few languages, even if the number is not large, in which there are only two cases, the basic division being between the case which relates nominals to verbs and the case which relates nominals to other nominals. Given that most ‘universals’ are strong tendencies rather than absolute universals and also that most typological studies of case marking systems have been concerned with the marking of verbal arguments rather than NomPinternal marking, the evaluation of the status of the -s genitive in ME cannot be determined on the basis of typological considerations. Rather this

Introduction

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evaluation must be made on the evidence we can glean from the texts, and this will be the subject of Chapter 4.

1.9 The nature of the evidence Whatever our theoretical framework, any valid conclusions must rest on a strong empirical base. We must now consider the nature of the evidence at our disposal. How much can we hope to learn about the syntax of earlier stages of English through the study of texts? There are a number of interrelated questions here. First, in many instances we do not have the original version of a text. Instead, we have a copy, or a copy of a copy. Copied texts present special problems, and I will defer discussion of these problems until after I have discussed those surrounding the language of the best texts from the point of view of discovering what sort of grammatical system the author had internalized. I will refer to these texts as ‘original’ texts. By ‘original’, I mean simply that we have what is likely to be the first English version of the text, rather than a copy (or if it is a copy, it is one at only a very close remove) and so most likely to reflect the English of the time and place in which it was composed. I am therefore including some translations from other languages in my ‘original’ texts. 1.9.1 Spoken versus written language Turning to the original texts, we must first discuss the question of how similar the language of the texts is likely to be to the spoken language. This question is important to a historical linguist, when, for example, an analysis which is proposed for a particular period predicts that a given construction should be possible, but no examples of the construction are found in the texts at the ‘right’ time, but only much later. In this situation, it is not unusual to claim that the predicted construction would have been colloquial when it was first introduced into the language, and therefore would not have been used in writing (cf. the discussion of the absence of group genitives from the texts discussed in section 4.4). It is surely true that spoken and written language can never be exactly the same. It must also be kept in mind that ‘spoken language’ covers a range of styles, from very informal to highly formal. We can expect that certain constructions which are common in an informal spoken variety of a particular language may be absent or unusual in written texts and conversely, that some constructions found in writing are not very likely to be used in speech. However, in the period before the Renaissance, when authors attempted to follow the models given by classical authors and grammars of English began

26


to appear, there is little reason to believe that writers were self-consciously distorting their everyday syntax to conform to prescriptive norms about ‘proper’ English. To be sure, community norms apply to all languages, and conventions on how to represent the sounds and morphology of the language were often prescribed by the scriptorium. We certainly cannot assume that scribes generally wrote just as they spoke in any period. But leaving aside the question of Latin and French influence, layers of copying, etc. (questions which will be addressed below), it seems reasonable to assume that when a prose text was composed in OE or ME, the syntax used in it will not differ radically from the syntax used in ordinary (albeit probably not really informal) speech. I believe that this is especially true of the EME period, when the sociolinguistic status of English was quite low. In this period, most writing was done in Latin or in French, and anyone choosing to write in English would only have done so because they had a particular reason to use a pedestrian, everyday language rather than a ‘refined’ one. Of particular relevance to this study is the fact that there is no good reason to suggest that the texts do not give a good picture of the syntax surrounding adnominal genitives in EME. Although we must remember that we are dealing with language which may lack some features of the spoken language and have some not typical of informal language and use constructions with a different frequency from the spoken language, it remains true that the syntax of EME prose is likely to be as close to that of spoken language as we can hope to find in any period of English. We shall see that different types of adnominal genitives are in variation in the texts. Is this variation in written language likely to reflect variation in speech? In his admirably lucid explanation of the generative approach to syntactic change, Kroch (2001: 719) comments that ‘[s]tudies of syntactic change which trace the temporal evolution of the forms in flux universally report that change is gradual’ and that this gradualness poses problems for the usual generative view of syntactic change as resulting from a sudden change in the nature of the grammar which children acquire as they learn their language. Kroch proposes his own solution to how gradualness can be accommodated within generative syntax, namely that the same individual can internalize two competing grammars with different parameter settings (a hypothesis first presented in Kroch 1989). However, he also points out that the gradualness apparent in the ME texts might be essentially artefactual. That is, much syntactic change may start out in the vernacular, and apparent variation in the texts may be due to the scribe’s desire to write in a suitable register, possibly one which he does not completely command.

Introduction

27

My own view is that the sort of syntactic variation we find in the OE and ME texts is very similar to the variation which we find in PDE. Shorrock’s (2005) findings in her study of my one, mentioned in section 1.4, are more compatible with the view that this construction, which appears to have been introduced into English fairly recently, coexists in the grammars of the speakers who use it with the older mine, since no respondents consistently rejected the older construction. Since Shorrock’s study only used judgements of naturalness, further study is needed to see whether the speakers who accept both constructions actually use both, or just understand the older construction and find it acceptable although they do not use it themselves. However, the findings are certainly compatible with the idea of a single speaker having a grammar which allows both constructions (or having two grammars, in Kroch’s model), and the introduction of my one into English does not appear to be easily explained as a change in a parameter-setting in the grammars of some speakers which has made it impossible for them to use the possessive pronoun without the addition of one. Although Kroch comments that it is difficult to catch syntactic change ‘in the act’ and therefore difficult to study syntactic change in progress, the my one construction suggests that it is perhaps not so difficult to find syntactic change in progress. It is only by studies of changes in progress which take into account sociolinguistic considerations that we will eventually get a good picture of the role of variation in syntactic change. However, it is worth noting that the sort of variation found in possessive constructions in the ME texts is very similar to the sort of variation found in Low Saxon, discussed in section 2.4.2.2. What about the morphological variation found in some ME texts? EME texts in particular sometimes exhibit a bewildering number of case forms. The forms cannot simply be taken at face value, because it is clear enough that even at the OE stage writing conventions obscured some phonological changes which had taken place which were relevant to morphology, notably the neutralization of vowels in suffixes (see for example Hogg 1997). Some EME texts give the appearance of more radical changes than were probably the case precisely because the old conventions have been abandoned, giving a clearer idea of the state of case marking morphology in a given dialect. With enough knowledge concerning scribal habits and the circumstances surrounding the composition or copying of the text, however, it is often possible to get a good idea of the details of the morphological system underlying the forms used in the text. These systems will be discussed in section 4.2, where I will argue that we are justified in assuming that the patterns exhibited in the original texts of EME are not the result of the author trying to compose in a fairly artificial written language, allowing his vernacular to break through at

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some points, but rather are a reasonably faithful reflection of the author’s own language in a single register. Again, the sort of variation we find is similar to that found within the same dialect of Low Saxon. Although we can make up all sorts of stories about what was happening in the spoken language, the texts are all we have as evidence for the language of a given period. Particular sentences must sometimes be rejected as evidence, for example because they are difficult to explain except as the sorts of errors to which all humans are subject, but I believe that the evidence offered by the original texts can be dismissed only for a very cogent reason. 1.9.2 Corpus and system Even if we accept that we have a corpus which represents fairly natural language use in a reasonably accurate way, we must address the question of how much a corpus can be expected to tell us about the internalized grammars of the writers (or speakers) who generated the corpus. One problem is the scribal errors alluded to briefly in section 1.9.1. We can assume that scribes sometimes just made mistakes, and that some sentences which they wrote did not reflect the grammar which they had internalized, but are just performance errors in the same way that speech errors are. The problem, of course, is to decide if a given example represents such an error. We must resist the natural tendency to explain away an example as an error for the sole reason that it is a counterexample to a hypothesis we have about the grammar of a period. Equally, we must be careful not to use dubious examples as our sole evidence supporting a hypothesis. The first step in ensuring that we select only valid examples in drawing our conclusions and only reject truly dubious ones is to compile a corpus of examples systematically. In this way, it will be clear when a given example is an oddity rather than representative of a period. Too often, conclusions about the existence of a construction in a given period are based on one or two examples pulled from a handbook. Such examples face a host of problems, such as the question of how representative they are of the language of a given period, whether they come from an original text or a copy, etc. The advent of the electronic corpora discussed in section 1.10 has recently led to a big improvement in the quality of the empirical evidence which linguists use in their research into syntactic change in English, but, as discussed in that section, problems still arise from a lack of familiarity with the texts. One problem which often arises is that a corpus search may throw up a single example of a construction in a given period. Is this example to be accepted as

Introduction

29

genuine or not? The answer will depend on a number of factors, but unusuallooking examples must always be checked out. Does our single example come from a reliable original text, or is it from a corrupt text or a copy made long after the original was composed? If it is not from an original text, it is not good evidence for the grammar of either the author of the original text or of the scribe who copied it. Another relevant question is how the example fits into the historical record. If it is the only example found in this period, but more examples are found in the next period, the single example is probably to be taken as the earliest evidence for a change. On the other hand, if an example is in isolation for a couple of centuries, it is dubious. By such techniques, we can significantly reduce the problem of how to treat oddities. Even after we have decided on which examples to use, however, we face a major problem in the lack of negative evidence. Can we say that a construction was ungrammatical in some period of English on the basis of its absence? I think that we can make some judgements about whether a construction was ungrammatical in some instances if we exercise due caution, even though we cannot really prove our conclusion. We must not ignore the fact that some changes to the language found in our corpus may be changes in style rather than changes in grammatical possibility, but it is nevertheless reasonable to assume that a construction is not a grammatical possibility in an earlier period if it is absent from the corpus in the earlier period but shows up fairly frequently in a later period in similar text types. In this situation, it is not so hard to make a judgement. Things are more difficult when there is some reason to believe that the absence of a construction in a particular text or group of texts might just be the result of a data gap. If the construction in question is one which would not, by its nature, be expected to occur very frequently in a text, we cannot take the lack of examples of a construction to indicate that it was ungrammatical in a small corpus. A special instance of the grammaticality question arises in trying to assess the limits of a construction. An example discussed in this book is the poss det construction of OE mentioned in section 1.2. I am convinced that an adjective was a necessary part of this construction, because the number of examples of the construction is very large, and every one of them has an adjective. If we only had a small number, the lack of examples without an adjective would leave me much less certain. The question must be asked: how many examples are needed before we decide that the lack of a particular type reflects a grammatical fact, and is not a data gap? Statistical tests can sometimes help here in instances where we can calculate the likelihood of a particular type occurring given the number of examples where its occurrence would be possible. The unlikeliness of a data gap is increased when we find typological

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evidence that the proposed constraint is found in some spoken languages, as in the poss det case. The patchiness of the coverage of English dialects is another sort of gap in the data which we must contend with. There is a diatopic discontinuity between OE and ME texts; most of the extant OE texts are written in the West Saxon dialect, but the lengthiest texts of the twelfth century come from very different dialect areas. This means that some dramatic-looking differences between these texts and our OE texts may not be diachronic, but diatopic. Fortunately, syntactic differences between dialects are not likely to be as great as phonological and morphological differences. However, syntactic differences are a possibility, and the connection between morphology and syntax is particularly important here, because of the unfortunate fact that most of our twelfth-century corpus is from texts with advanced deflexion in the nominal system. This means that we can’t really be certain of whether a syntactic difference such as the rarity of postnominal genitives in the Peterborough Chronicle (PC) is due to the loss of inflection in the dialect of the composer or had always been a feature of that dialect. We can reduce the danger of comparing apples and pears by keeping in mind that a difference between two texts from different periods is not necessarily due to diachronic change, but the fact remains that because of the low sociolinguistic position of post-Conquest English, evidence is simply lacking on some questions. There is still much that can be learned from the surviving texts, however, and the evidence concerning the nature of the genitive case is quite strong even in the period when coverage is poorest. 1.9.3 Copied texts and originals We must now face the problem of copied texts. This is a serious problem because many of the texts which remain from OE and EME are found only in copies, some of which are far removed temporally and/or diatopically from the original composition. When we are dealing with a copied text, we cannot be certain whether we are dealing with the language of the original author, the language of the scribe who copied the text, or a mixture of the two. Unfortunately, studies of early English syntax often fail to distinguish the date of a manuscript and the presumed date of original composition of a text contained in that manuscript. A simple example must suffice to illustrate the problems caused by this fact. It is generally agreed that King Alfred, who died in 899, translated Boethius into English, specifically into Early West Saxon (EWS). However, the oldest manuscript we have of this text was badly damaged in a fire, and most of the standard edition of this

Introduction

31

text, Sedgefield (1899), is substantially based on Bodley 180, which dates from the early twelfth century (Ker 1957: item 180). Editions of this sort which mix manuscripts from different periods in order to piece together a coherent text present real problems to anyone using them to study their language, because examples from such a twelfth-century manuscript cannot be taken as evidence of EWS language. It is important to separate the parts of these editions which come from early manuscripts from the parts which are taken from later manuscripts, but this is not usually done. While some scholars are careful to give both the date of the manuscript and the assumed date of composition of the text in presenting examples, many studies fail to make any distinction between original texts and copies and use a single date, usually the assumed date of composition. Using examples from copied manuscripts can result in a confused and inaccurate picture of the language of the period being studied. Ideally, we would simply not use evidence from late copies, but for periods where evidence is sparse, we cannot pick and choose. Furthermore, the copies can sometimes give valuable information about how the language is changing, particularly when we have an earlier version of a given text for comparison; as Liuzza (2000: 165) comments, ‘scribes’ copying habits may tell us something, however indirectly, about their speaking habits’. The important thing is to distinguish copies from original compositions, and not to use examples from manuscripts of one period to illustrate the language of a very different period.

1.10 Methodology 1.10.1 Texts and corpora used The empirical claims made in this book about earlier stages of English are the result of a combination of searches make on electronic corpora and data gathering from my own reading. The electronic corpora used are described in the Appendix, where details given about texts not included in the corpora which I used for particular periods are also to be found. In the case of the parsed corpora, I have used Randall’s (2005) CorpusSearch program for my searches. For the other Germanic languages, I have had to depend on discussions found in the literature, and since most of the examples are taken from published literature rather than my own investigation, I have not generally provided information about the texts from which the examples are taken. However, the Appendix provides references for the few examples which are not taken from published literature, and also for some texts

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which provided examples which are not simply used in this book for illustration but are rather the subject of discussion concerning their correct analysis. In the preceding section, I discussed the problems presented by copied texts. Current students of the history of English syntax are fortunate to have easy access to the facts in the form of the documentation provided by the electronic corpora about the dates of composition and manuscript as well as information concerning whether the text is a translation from another language or not. Although these corpora provide wonderful tools, however, some caution must still be exercised in using them. For example, while the compilers of the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE, see Appendix for bibliographical information) have generally been at pains to inform the user when a text is based on more than one manuscript, there is at least one important slip-up, as is hardly surprising in an early edition of a corpus involving so many texts. YCOE text information document indicates that their file coboeth.o2 (Boethius) is based on the earlier manuscript Cotton Otho A.VI, but in fact all of Sedgefield’s edition seems to be contained in this file. As discussed in the preceding section, this edition uses both the Cotton manuscript and a much later one. For this reason, I have been careful to include only examples from the Cotton manuscript in my statistics for EWS. The corpora also do not provide information such as the fact that the editor of the Earliest Complete Prose Psalter comments that judging from the mechanical manner of his copying of this text, the scribe must have been ‘a very ignorant man, who understood neither much Latin nor English’ (Bülbring 1891: ix). Such comments are highly relevant to the weight we give to unusual examples from this text. Not every text is of equal quality in the evidence which it provides for the language of a period, and there is still no substitute for reading the introductions of the editors of the texts and familiarizing oneself with the editorial conventions used. The corpora sometimes have mistakes in the keying in of sentences (it would be amazing if they did not) and so I have checked unexpected examples against the editions used. Finally, the corpora cannot be better than the editions on which they are based, which are also subject to error. I have looked at facsimiles, where available, to verify the reading of the edition in questionable instances. As a result of these checks on the examples coming from searches on the corpora, I have excluded some apparent examples from my statistics or statements concerning the existence or not or nature of a construction in a period—but I have tried, without going into too much tedious detail, to be scrupulous in letting the reader know when such an exclusion has been made.

Introduction

33

1.10.2 Terminology and glossing of examples Some discussion of the terminology used in this book concerning the case systems and morphology of OE and ME, as well as the glossing conventions adopted, is necessary. Discussions of ME morphology have not always made it clear how they are using case terminology. For example, White’s glossary to the Ormulum (Holt 1878) lists kingess as dative plural in the phrase Þatt newe sterrne þatt he Zaff / Þa Kalldewisshe kingess ‘the new star that he gave the Chaldean kings’ (ll.11090–1). Since kingess is the general plural form which is used for subjects, objects, and possessors, it is clear that the reason for calling it ‘dative’ is that in this phrase it plays the grammatical role of indirect object, which appeared in the dative case in OE. What is not clear without a systematic investigation of the forms used in the Ormulum, however, is whether the old distinctive ending -um is also sometimes found with nouns in this function, which would indicate that the dative case still existed as a category for Orm, but that the form used for this category could be either the general plural form or a specifically dative form. More recently, Irvine’s (2004) grammatical introduction to her edition of PC gives us an example of how the interests of the philologist and the interest of the linguist may coincide in certain respects but diverge in others; her discussions of the morphology of various parts of the chronicle are directed more to showing how the scribes differed in their use of case forms compared to OE usage than to discovering a system behind the usage and so she makes comments such as (p. cliii) ‘[T]he dative case is virtually unused’ in the Final Continuation of PC without addressing the question of whether it is still appropriate to recognize a dative case in a text in which the dative/accusative distinction is no longer maintained formally in any part of the morphology, or whether the reflexes of the old dative case which are sometimes still used after prepositions would be best treated as a prepositional case, as is done by d’Ardenne (1961) in her discussion of the grammar of Dialect AB in her edition of Seinte Iuliene. The implicit assumption that the same case categories which can be justified for OE on the basis of formal oppositions are appropriate for the discussion of ME grammar, and also a lack of any discussion of how case terminology is used, is typical of many grammatical discussions accompanying editions of EME texts (but by no means all of them, as d’Ardenne’s excellent grammatical apparatus shows). Of course, a distinction between case categories and case forms is not important for the purposes of many readers of these grammatical discussions, but when we are trying to answer questions such as whether a given text has complete syncretism of the dative and accusative categories but nevertheless maintains the genitive as an inflectional case, it is absolutely crucial to make this distinction.

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For such reasons, it is not possible to rely only on the grammatical discussions of those who are most familiar with the texts and whose expertise must command our respect but whose training and focus lead them to view language in a different light from those whose interests lie in the nature of human language and linguistic change. In the discussions of case marking in this book, claims made about the case marking systems of different periods will be made on the basis of my own examination of the texts and/or discussions by other observers who have shown the attention necessary for our purposes to the distinctions discussed above. As discussed above, I will be referring to cases as morphological categories which can be determined on the basis of formal oppositions in inflectional morphology, except where a different meaning is otherwise specified. I have glossed grammatical features in the examples only where the glosses provide information which I consider to be relevant or helpful to the reader. No glosses, but only a translation, are given when the word order is the same as that of PDE and the morphology is simple. Because different morphological categories existed in different periods, no uniform system of glossing case morphology is appropriate for all periods, or for texts from different dialects in the same period. Furthermore, different glosses will sometimes be appropriate for different forms even for examples from the same text. The conventions used for the OE and ME are explained in the relevant chapters, and I have tried to make it clear in the text where the morphology explicitly signals the grammatical features glossed for a form and where the form is ambiguous as to grammatical features in a significant way. In examples quoted from other authors, I have retained the author’s glossing except where otherwise specified.

1.11 Organization The book is organized as follows. Chapter 2 offers an overview of some adnominal possessive constructions in the Germanic languages. No attempt is made to give equal coverage to all languages or to all constructions, but rather to provide background for the discussion of the English constructions discussed in later chapters and facts from the other Germanic languages which can be helpful in analysing those constructions. Information concerning Common Germanic particularly relevant to modern genitive constructions will be given, followed by an overview of the ‘Saxon genitive’ (the -s genitive) in the modern Germanic languages, along with a discussion of the case marking systems of those languages. The emphasis will be on examining the evidence for some assumptions which have been made concerning the

Introduction

35

relationship between case morphology and the type of adnominal possessives that a language may have. Chapter 3 provides the information concerning genitive case in OE necessary to any consideration of the development of genitive constructions in later English. In this chapter, it will be established that some of the developments of ME which are often assumed to have been triggered by deflexion were in fact already in train in OE before the collapse of the old case marking system. The chapter will look at the relationship between the possessives and phrasal genitives, and it will be argued that the possessives pattern with the phrasal genitives in OE, rather than with adjectives, as is often assumed, and that the view of English which has moved from being an ‘adjective genitive’ to a ‘determiner genitive’ language is incorrect, as is the assumption that possessives differed in ‘definiteness’ from modern possessives. Chapter 4 is devoted to the reflexes of the inflectional genitive in ME, paying particular attention to the morphological and syntactic evidence for the best analysis of the -es genitive in that period. Some widely held assumptions about the development of such constructions as the so-called ‘his genitive’ and the group genitive are largely due to a failure to make a proper differentiation between different periods of ME and the grammatical systems of the different periods and indeed different dialects within the same period. For this reason, the chapter begins with a rather lengthy discussion of texts, periods, and case marking systems. The loss of now-obsolete adnominal genitive types and the rise of the group genitive are documented, and because the putative change in status of the genitive from a case marker to a clitic is sometimes assumed to be the trigger for the loss of non-adnominal genitives some discussion is also made of the loss of genitive objects with verbs and the genitive complements to adjectives. While the ‘his genitive’ first appears in the ME period, its heyday was in EModE. Furthermore, the facts surrounding it are complicated. For these reasons, an entire chapter is devoted later in the book to this construction, for which I prefer the label ‘separated genitive’, which does not prejudge the analysis of the possessive element as identical to the third person possessive pronoun. Because the his genitive has usually been assumed to be parallel to similar-looking constructions in other Germanic languages in which a possessor phrase is ‘doubled’ by a ‘linking pronoun’, however, it is necessary to discuss these ‘possessor doubling’ constructions in the other languages before establishing the similarities to and differences from English. Accordingly, Chapter 5 is the only chapter of the book in which English is not the focus. One finding of this chapter is that some assumptions which have been

36


made about the ‘path of grammaticalization’ which the possessor doubling constructions follow are not borne out by a closer scrutiny of the facts. In Chapter 6, the focus shifts back to English, tracing the history of the separated genitive and making comparisons with the possessor doubling constructions discussed in the preceding chapter. In this chapter, it will be shown that the separated genitives of the different periods should not be given identical analyses. The relationship between the separated genitive and the rise of the group genitive is examined, and I argue that although the appearance of the separated genitive is probably a reflection of a change in status of the -s genitive of some sort, it does not provide evidence for the clitic status of the possessive marker. Chapter 7 completes the study of the history of genitive constructions in English by documenting the history of constructions in which a possessive and a determiner co-occur. Such co-occurrence has played a crucial role in arguments that English developed from an ‘adjective genitive’ to a ‘determiner genitive’ language, but the proponents of this view have typically ignored an OE construction in which the possessive preceded the determiner, in which an adjective was invariably present. The apparent incorrectness of the usual assumption of an unbroken history of the construction in which the determiner precedes the possessive (these our letters) will also be established. Chapter 8 summarizes the most important findings and points to some implications as well as to future avenues of research.

2 Genitive case and the Germanic languages: Overview 2.1 Introduction Common Germanic (CG), the ancestor of the modern Germanic languages, relied substantially on case marking to convey grammatical and semantic relationships. The case marking system was ‘concordial’; that is, modifiers such as determiners and adjectives agreed with the noun they modified in case, gender, and number. Of the modern Germanic languages, however, only Icelandic preserves a case marking system with a morphological complexity similar to that found in earlier Germanic languages such as OE. The decline of the CG case system has been assumed to be responsible for many grammatical developments. In this chapter, I present some background on NomPs and genitive case in CG as well as some observations on the historical development of the genitive case in some Germanic varieties. The main focus of the chapter will be to survey the reflexes of genitive case in the modern Germanic languages and to consider the evidence for how one particular type of construction (or rather, family of constructions) descending from the genitive case of CG is to be analysed. This is the construction in which a prenominal possessive is marked by -es. The term ‘Saxon genitive’ is sometimes used, especially in the generative literature, for this type of possessive construction, but in this chapter I will adopt the widely used term ‘-s genitive’, whether the form in question is -es or -s. We shall see that there is considerable variation in how complex the possessor in this construction may be in the different languages; even such similar-looking -s genitives as those of English and Swedish are subtly different. This discussion of the reflexes of genitive case in the modern Germanic languages will form the groundwork for the discussions of Chapters 3 and 4.

38


Before proceeding to a discussion of the -s genitives in the modern Germanic languages, I will present some background concerning genitive case and relevant aspects of the NomP in CG.

2.2 The Common Germanic background 2.2.1 Genitive case: general In CG, the genitive was part of a more elaborate system of cases than is found in any modern Germanic language; see Prokosch (1960 [1939]: §§80– 8) for a discussion of the CG declensions. Behaghel (1932: §§1565–6) says that non-partitive genitives were always prenominal in earlier Germanic, and the postnominal genitives found in Modern German (except with possessive pronouns) are a later development. According to Behaghel, the move to postnominal genitives in German developed in the following stages: first, genitives of things and abstracts could be postnominal, then all genitives could be after the head noun, even proper names. If Behaghel is correct, the development towards postnominal genitives took place much more quickly in the Scandinavian branch than it did in German. The default postnominal position found in Modern Icelandic (even with possessive pronouns) is already evident in Old Norse. 1 In contrast to Behaghel, Smith (1971: 250) was unable to find any clear evidence in the oldest Germanic documents that would point to one order or the other being basic in CG, although the fact that postnominal order is favoured in early runes, Gothic, and Old Norse inclined him to consider that this order was probably the older despite the favouring of prenominal genitives in the other dialects. Lanouette’s (1996) investigation shows also that both prenominal and postnominal genitives were used in Old High German. It seems likely to me that variation in the positioning of the genitive was probably a feature of CG, with the daughter languages favouring one order or the other over time. 2.2.2 The strong and the weak: nouns and adjectives In Chapter 3 in particular I will be making reference to ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ adjectives and nouns. The weak noun declension corresponds to the Latin and Greek -n stem declension (as in Latin nom. homo, acc. hominem), and as 1 Delsing (1998) comments that although prenominal possessive pronouns are found in all the Germanic languages, in the Scandinavian varieties with postnominal pronouns, prenominal position is used only emphatically. The same point about prenominal possessive pronouns being emphatic or contrastive is made for Gothic by Mossé (1952: §230) and for Old Norse by Heusler (1962: §516) and Barnes (2001: §3.9.2). For further discussion of postnominal pronominal possessors in the Scandinavian languages, see Julien (2005: §5.5).

Genitives in Germanic languages

39

Prokosch (1960 [1939]: §84) comments, the phonological processes which operated after stems ending in consonants were more destructive to the vowels that carried information about grammatical features than they were in the ‘strong’ stems which originally ended in a vowel. As far as deflexion in late OE and EME is concerned, it is this continued vulnerability to phonological erosion and consequent ambiguous signalling of grammatical features that gives the weak nouns their greatest importance. While nouns either belonged to a weak class or did not, most adjectives could be declined either weak or strong in Germanic, a fundamental distinction which still remains in the majority of Germanic languages, even those like Dutch which have suffered considerable deflexion. In English the distinction was maintained up until the end of the ME period. The weak adjectives have played an important role in argumentation concerning matters such as definiteness in the Germanic languages and so the presentation of some basic facts concerning them is necessary. Curme (1910: 441) states that the weak adjectival declension was new in Germanic and that ‘It was initially employed to convert an adjective into a substantive.’ Similarly, Wright and Wright (1982[1925]: §421) state that ‘The so-called weak declension of adjectives is a special Germanic formation by means of the suffixes -en-, -on-, which were originally used to form nomina agentis, and attributive nouns’ and Prokosch (1960[1939]: ¶89) comments that ‘the weak declension consists in a change of all adjectives to n-stems—that is, essentially in the addition of an n-determinant’. Prokosch and Wright and Wright use similar illustrations of a close counterpart in Latin: catus ‘sly’, cat¯o, cat¯onis ‘the sly one’. Wright and Wright assume that these sorts of nouns were used attributively at an early period, and then were used as adjectives. I will argue in Chapter 7 that the origins of weak adjectives as nominalizations is reflected in the ability of NomPs to have two determiners—one for the adjective, and one for the noun. The weak adjectives are associated with definiteness. CG had no definite article, but only a demonstrative pronoun/determiner, and it is sometimes assumed that the weak form of the adjective played an important role in signalling definiteness. For example, Funke (1949) says that it is generally agreed that in the articleless stage a strong adjective could be either definite or indefinite, but a weak one always had a definite meaning. Prokosch (§89) makes no such strong claim, saying only that the weak form of an adjective was primarily used in CG ‘when a pronominal adjective, especially the definite article, precedes’, with the strong form used in all other situations. Mitchell (1985: §137) warns that it should not be too readily assumed that the form of the adjective (still) had any significance in itself for OE, by which stage a

40


demonstrative was freely available to signal definiteness, whether or not we want to call it a definite article (see section 3.12). It should be noted that different Germanic languages have developed different rules concerning the use of weak forms, with German even developing a third ‘mixed’ declension which has more to do with morphology (i.e. the clear signalling of agreement features on either the determiner or the adjective) than with definiteness per se. Furthermore, some adjectives are simply declined strong in all situations in OE and other Germanic languages. Any argument that a NomP in OE (or any other Germanic language) is definite or indefinite on the basis of the weak or strong adjective morphology is likely to be unconvincing because of such considerations.

2.2.3 Possessive pronouns/adjectives In Chapter 3, I will argue against the frequently made assumption that English has changed from a language in which possessive phrases had an adjectival function to one in which they have a determiner function. The status of possessives such as min ‘my’ plays a crucial role in this discussion, and as background for the discussion of such forms in OE and also for some of the discussion of other Germanic languages in later chapters, it is necessary to set out some basic facts about possessive ‘pronouns’ in CG. Wright and Wright (1982[1925]: §458) comment ‘The most difficult chapter in works on comparative grammar is the one dealing with the pronouns.’ In this section I will only present a few relevant facts about genitive case and pronouns in CG, particularly facts relevant to the relationship between pronouns and attributive genitives. A distinction must be made between third person forms and the others. Prokosch (1960[1939]: §94) comments that the third person ‘anaphorical pronoun’ merits a separate treatment from the personal pronouns because it ‘is really a demonstrative pronoun with lessened deictic force’ (and furthermore four different stems are involved in the various early Germanic languages). The forms of this old deictic were used as anaphoric pronouns, e.g. OE he ‘he’, etc. The genitive forms (e.g. his) were naturally used with objects of verbs that governed the genitive case, and they were also used, without further inflection, as possessive forms. In contrast, the genitive forms of the personal pronouns served as stems for inflections creating special possessive forms; for the details of these forms and their origins, see Prokosch (§98). As is traditional, Prokosch describes the possessives as adjectives which, in general, are declined according to the


41

strong declension. 2 As will be discussed in detail in section 3.7.1, however, there is no justification from a syntactic point of view for treating the third person forms, when they are used as possessives, as belonging to a different word class from the forms of the other persons, and despite the adjectival morphology of the first and second person forms, their syntactic behaviour is not that of adjectives. Following Mitchell (1985: §239), I will avoid the terminological problem by referring to the forms which fit into this attributive position ‘possessives’. When it is important to make it clear that I am referring to both nominal possessives and these pronominal forms, I will use the terms ‘possessor phrase’ or ‘genitive construction’. The reflexes of one CG possessive form will play a particularly important role in Chapter 5, where possessor doubling constructions in the Germanic languages are discussed and will be relevant to the conclusions of Chapter 6. Besides the personal pronouns, CG had an epicene reflexive pronoun in the second and third persons; for forms see Prokosch (1960 [1939]: §98). I’ll refer to the third person reflexive possessive as the seins possessive after the (reconstructed) Gothic form. This seins form was different from the non-reflexive anaphor in distinguishing neither gender nor number, but like the first and second person pronouns in having a genitive form which could be further inflected to make a possessive form. The seins form sin ‘his/it/her/their’ in OE was restricted almost completely to poetry and vanished before ME, but the reflexes of seins are found in various Germanic varieties, as in Swedish, which has the forms sin, sitt modifying singular nouns of the common and neuter genders, respectively, and sina when modifying a plural noun. These forms all have the meaning ‘his/her/their own’, and are opposed to the non-reflexive forms hans ‘his’, hennes ‘her’, and deras ‘their’, which show the number of the possessor and the gender with a singular possessor, but are indeclinable and hence incapable of signalling any grammatical features of the possessum; for forms see for example Holmes and Hinchliffe (1997), and for detailed discussion of possessives in the Scandinavian varieties see Delsing (2003b) and Julien (2002) and the references in those works. Of particular importance to us is the fact that the erstwhile reflexive has lost its reflexivity in some varieties. In Standard German, for example, sein has lost its reflexive meaning but has acquired gender, being used as the base of the masculine and neuter possessive (for details, see Lockwood 1968: 68). In Standard German, inflecting feminine and plural possessives have developed from the personal pronouns, but in some less familiar Germanic dialects, this has not happened and reflexes of seins 2 For a summary of the reasons behind the traditional grammarians’ indeterminacy to call these forms ‘pronouns’ or ‘adjectives’, see Coene and d’Hulst (2003: 2–5).

42


have simply become the general third person possessive, continuing to show neither number nor gender of the possessor. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, some reports of possessor doubling constructions using only a masculine possessive form are untrustworthy because of a failure to ascertain whether such epicene forms are used in a given dialect in ‘ordinary’ possessives; only if a seins form signals gender and number (as in Standard German and Dutch) are we justified in concluding that the possessor doubling construction in a given variety uses a possessive ‘linker’ which is different from ordinary possessives in being invariant. More investigation into the grammar of the reflexes of seins in Flemish and Low Saxon dialects in particular is needed. One other relevant fact concerning possessive forms in the Germanic languages is that some of these languages have developed different forms for use in an attributive position when an overt head is expressed and for the predicative position and also for use when a head is understood but not expressed, such as English my versus mine. The history of such forms will not be traced in this book, but in the discussion of linker pronouns in Chapter 5, some attention will be paid to whether possessives can be used without a following N in the possessor doubling construction in the languages discussed, and if so, what form is used. For more discussion of the history of the use of possessives in independent or elliptical constructions in English, see Allen (2002b, 2004a).

2.3 Genitive/possessive constructions in the modern Germanic languages Two (standard) Germanic languages retain an indisputable genitive case, namely German and Icelandic. In these languages, the elements of the genitive possessor phrase agree in case with the genitive noun and some verbs and prepositions may select genitive objects. The adnominal genitive is postnominal in both languages. However, the genitive is not in a healthy state in German, where it is being replaced by other cases on the objects of verbs and the postnominal attributive genitives are pretty much confined to written language (see for example Di Meola 2004 and the references mentioned there). Further evidence that the genitive case is on its way out in German comes from the fact that German children do not acquire the genitive case until very late (see e.g. Tracy 1986 and Clahsen, Eisenbeiss, and Vainikka 1994). German is following a similar path to the majority of other Germanic languages in replacing the old concordial genitive with other constructions. 3 There is a 3 Recent references on the decline of the genitive include Weerman and de Wit (1998, 1999) (Dutch), Lanouette (1996) (German), Askedal (2003), Delsing (1991) and Norde (1997) (Swedish).


43

natural tendency to assume that the decline of the concordial genitive took place in the same way in all of the languages which have lost it, but if we concentrate too much on the overall similarities among these languages, we run the risk of not noticing differences which can teach us a good deal about the nature of language change. It is therefore worth looking at the -s genitives in various Germanic languages in some detail preparatory to discussing the loss of the old inflectional genitive in ME.

2.4 The invariant -s genitives The modern Germanic -s genitives are not generally treated as a case marker by linguists (although linguists often do use the term ‘genitive’ in a functional sense to describe them). In some Germanic languages, the -s genitive is very limited in its application, while in English, Swedish, and Norwegian, it is usual to treat the -s as a clitic-like element which attaches to the end of a phrase. However, as we shall see, even the most clitic-like of the -s genitives retain some characteristics of their origin as an inflection. Let us begin with a comparison of PDE and Swedish, two languages in which the -s genitive differs in striking ways from the CG genitive. 4 2.4.1 Swedish and PDE Of all the modern Germanic languages, Swedish is the one which has an -s genitive most similar to that of English. As in English, the possessive -s can be used at the end of ‘syntactic groups’ as in (2-1), presented by Norde (1997: 87, 2001b: 107): (2-1)

folket på gatans ondöme people.def on street.def.s opinion ‘the view of the man on the street’

The existence of such ‘group genitives’ (a term introduced by Jespersen 1894: Chapter 7) in English has widely been assumed to indicate that the possessive marker is a clitic, rather than an (inflectional) affix (see for example Janda 1980, 1981, 2001 and Harbert 2007: 163). The same logic has been applied to the Swedish -s genitive by e.g. Delsing (1998) and Norde (1997, 1998, 2001a, 2002: 56–63). 4 It should be noted here that this discussion will not deal with what have been called ‘low prenominal genitives’ (e.g. by Crisma, to appear) or ‘attributive genitives’ (Payne and Huddleston 2002: 469), e.g. an old folk’s home, in which the -s does not apply to a phrase preceding the head noun, but only to the noun. However, similar genitives in OE will be discussed at some length in Chapter 3.

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Zwicky and Pullum’s (1983) criteria remain the most widely used test for distinguishing affixes from clitics. The most important of these criteria for our purposes are repeated in (2-2): (2-2)

1. Clitics can exhibit a low degree of selection with respect to their hosts, while affixes exhibit a high degree of selection with respect to their stem. 2. Arbitrary gaps in the set of combinations are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitics. 3. Morphophonological idiosyncrasies are more characteristic of affixed words than of clitic groups. 4. Clitics can attach to material already containing clitics but affixes cannot.

By these criteria, both the English and Swedish possessive come out as more clitic-like than affix-like. A widely adopted structure for the -s genitive is exemplified by Toivonen’s (2001: 42) tree diagram for Swedish mannens hus ‘the man’s house’, given here as (2-3):

DP

(2-3)

D

NP

mannen

D

NP

-s

hus

This analysis of prenominal possessives for PDE was discussed in section 1.4. Toivonen’s discussion of the Swedish possessive is extremely brief, since she only mentions the construction to illustrate her proposal for a new typology of clitics, which involves two parameters: phonological dependence and projection. Toivonen analyses the -s of Swedish (and by implication, of PDE) as a phonologically dependent, projecting head (that is, it is a D which projects a DP). This type of clitic may be contrasted with clitics which are phonologically dependent and non-projecting heads, such as French pronouns le and la. However, there is not complete agreement on how the English -s genitive is to be analysed. Nevis (1985) treats it as a phrasal affix, that is, a clitic which is not simply a bound word (and therefore unlike ‘reduced’ forms of English auxiliaries, for example). Sadock (1991: 423), in his Autolexical


45

Framework, treats this affix as involving a mismatch of the syntax and the morphology; morphologically, the possessive marker is part of the word to which it attaches, but it is a separate syntactic entity. Zwicky (1987) argues, primarily on the basis of the sensitivity of the PDE -s to whether its host is plural or not, that this morpheme is an edge-located inflectional affix and raises the question of whether it is necessary to assume the existence of phrasal affixes at all. Whether we treat the English -s genitive as a phrasal affix or an edgelocated inflection, it is clearly towards the more ‘clitic-like’ than ‘affix-like’ on the Zwicky–Pullum criteria. That is, it is clear that the distribution of the possessive marker depends on syntax as well as morphology. It is also clear, however, that if it is to be called a clitic, it is one which exhibits the affixlike characteristic of sensitivity to the morphological nature of its host. Stump (2001: 126–129) treats the English possessive marker as being spelled out by a morphological realization rule, just as the plural affixes are; the difference is in the type of morphosyntactic properties that the realization rules realize. While the plural suffix realizes head properties, the possessive suffix realizes an edge property, the distribution of which is regulated by the edge feature principle (as formulated by Lapointe 1990). Edge properties are a subclass of ‘promiscuous’ properties, which are relatively unselective about the category of the word which realizes them morphologically. In Stump’s Paradigm Function Morphology, the inventory of promiscuously inflected forms is projected from the inflectional paradigm (but not part of that paradigm). That is, this sort of realization rule applies after the rules associated with Head Properties have done their work. Spencer and Otoguro (2005: 133) also treat -s as an edge-inflection. Askedal (2003) argues that the Swedish -s genitive is better treated as an agglutinative affix rather than a clitic, and Börjars (2003) presents compelling arguments that the Swedish -s possessive is less ‘clitic-like’ than its English counterpart, despite its ability to appear in group genitives. The Swedish -s genitive is fussier about the nature of its host than the English one; it does not attach ‘promiscuously’ to words of any category, since many speakers avoid group genitives which do not end in a noun that would be capable of being a possessor with an -s inflection. Börjars’ comments here are in line with Norde’s (2001b) observation that even young and linguistically trained Swedes have tried to convince her that group genitives are ungrammatical. Börjars (2003) comments that in very formal written language, it is possible to find an -s genitive on a head noun which is followed by modifiers, that is, not at the end of the syntactic group:

46 (2-4)

Genitives in Early English institutionens för slaviska språk prefekt Department.def.s for Slavonic languages head_of_department ‘the Head of the Department of Slavonic Languages’ Börjars (2003: 149)

For similar examples from earlier Swedish texts, see Norde (1997: 85–86). Corresponding examples are impossible in PDE, but not in ME (see section 4.4). Further motivation for treating the Swedish -s genitive as an affix rather than a clitic is the fact that there is some morphological interaction between it and its host, as with the English possessive (although the details are different). Börjars argues that instead of making a simple distinction between an affix and a clitic, it is necessary to distinguish degree of attachment and placement. She further suggests that another dimension of variation is onceonly marking versus agreement. Her suggested treatment for the Swedish -s genitive is that it is a once-only marker which realizes a phrase-level feature. This element is subject to conflicting constraints in the matter of placement, where there is a tension between the constraint that it should be placed at the edge of the phrase and the constraint that it should be placed on the head. When there is no postmodification, the head and the right edge coincide and there is no conflict. Börjars finds that the most successful group genitives are ones in which the postmodification has a close relationship with the head noun, as in folket på gatans ‘the man on the street’s’, where the -s is attached to a commonly-occurring phrase. Furthermore, in the most acceptable group genitives in Swedish the last word of the phrase is one which could serve as a possessor itself; in writing, at least, group genitives usually end in a noun. It is in the possibility of head-placement that the Swedish possessive is different from the PDE one, where the -s simply cannot be placed on the head if it is not phrase-final, as it was in earlier English (see section 4.4). 5 In terms of degree of attachment, the Swedish -s genitive is similar to the English one; since there is morphological interaction between the host and the possessive, the attachment is not entirely syntactic, as it would be for a pure clitic, that is, it is attached to a word, not to a phrase. However, as Börjars (2003: p. 154) comments, it appears that the degree of attachment with elements such as -s, which can at least potentially be placed on something other than the head, is less than with inflections which are always attached to the head. To sum up, even in the two modern Germanic languages in which the -s genitive is most ‘clitic-like’, it is necessary to account for the fact that the 5

That is not to say that PDE -s is not at all selective about its host, because NPs such as the dog that bit me’s owner would certainly be avoided in writing, where the owner of the dog that bit me would be used.


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possessive marker still has some inflection-like characteristics, and there seems to be a consensus among morphological theorists that the PDE possessive cannot be treated simply as a syntactic element. In section 4.4, I will argue that a single reanalysis of the old genitive inflection as a clitic cannot do justice to the facts of the different stages of ME. 2.4.2 Restricted -s genitives Let us turn now to some Germanic varieties which have a more restricted sort of -s genitive. I discuss German and Dutch in section 2.4.2.1 and Low Saxon in 2.4.2.2. Because of the similarities between these three varieties, I will summarize possible general approaches to analysing these -s genitives in section 2.4.3. 2.4.2.1 German and Dutch German and Dutch can be treated together here, since the -s genitive shows similar restrictions in the two languages and similar analyses have been proposed. In both languages, the -s genitive is almost completely restricted to proper nouns and kinship terms, which are often used in place of proper nouns. Furthermore, the -s genitive is used with feminine names and kinship terms as well as masculine ones and is invariant in form, having lost the association with masculine and neuter gender that it had in earlier Germanic, as pointed out for example by Sprouse (1985), who suggests that such possessors are special possessive adjectives. A rather similar treatment of these possessives as adjectives is offered more recently by Lindauer (1998). There is general agreement that -s should not be considered a case marker in German and Dutch; besides the restriction of -s to particular types of possessors, there are other differences between the ‘true’ German genitive and this possessive marker. For one thing, nouns in the genitive case can be governed by prepositions such as wegen ‘because of ’, but it is not possible to use -s possessives in the same way (see for example Lindauer 1998: 133). Furthermore, adnominal genitives, which can consist of entire phrases, are positioned postnominally, as in das Buch der Mutter ‘the mother’s book’ (lit. ‘the book the:gen mother:gen’), but it is generally not possible to postpose -s possessors in German. In these postposed genitives, the modifiers furthermore agree with the N in the genitive case, which does not happen with the -s genitive. For a summary of the characteristics of -s possessors in German see Lindauer and also Weerman and de Wit (1999: 1166). It is possible under some circumstances to attach -s to a possessor which consists of more than a simple noun. Plank (1992a) gives these examples of what might be considered a ‘group genitive’ in German:

48 (2-5)

Genitives in Early English Otto von Habsburg-s Gro‚vater Otto of Habsburg-gen grandfather ‘The grandfather of Otto of Habsburg’ (Plank 1992a: 46; ex. (i)a)

(2-6) der Gro‚vater Otto von Habsburg-s/ der Gro‚vater Otto-s the grandfather Otto of Habsburg-gen/ . . . Otto-gen von Habsburg of Habsburg ‘The grandfather of Otto of Habsburg’ (Plank 1992a: 46; ex. (i)b) The facts are complicated, as Plank shows, since some postnominal complex names allow for the genitive marking (as Plank calls it) at the end, as in (2-6), while in others, the genitive marking is more felicitous on the head N of the possessor phrase, as in (2-7), where Plank marks the first alternative as marginal but the second as acceptable: (2-7)

??die Rückkehr König Michael von Rumänien-s/ die ??the return King Michael of Rumania-gen/ the Rückkehr König Michael-s von Rumänien return King Michael-gen of Rumania ‘The return of King Michael of Rumania’ (Plank 1992a: 46; ex. (ii)b)

The phrase König Michael von Rumäniens is perfectly acceptable in prenominal position, however, according to Plank. Despite the complexity of the facts, it seems clear that German has no true group genitive similar to the PDE one, in which phrases of all sorts can appear in front of the possessive marker; in German, the possessive marker is in phrase-final position only with phrases that can be seen as complex names. One approach which has frequently been taken to account for the restriction of -s in German and Dutch to proper names is to assume that N (the name) moves to D, or is generated there. Demske (2001) assumes that possessives have only been incorporated into the determiner system fairly recently in both German and English. Working in a Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar framework, Demske (p. 243) follows Pollard and Sag (1994) in treating the -s genitives in modern German as determiners which require a complement, unlike the other determiners. Booij (2002: 35) also assumes that the similarly restricted -s possessors in Dutch function as determiners. De Wit (1997) proposes that Dutch -s attaches to N in the morphology, and this new N then moves up the tree to D, while others have proposed that -s is generated in D and N moves up to attach to it. Lanouette (1996: 101) similarly proposes to explain the restriction on prenominal possessors to names (and pronouns) in German by assuming that these possessors are in D and German has no Spec of


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DP for a possessive phrase to appear in. Such analyses can deal with titles such as Otto von Habsburg as internally complex compound nouns. Some scholars, however, such as Bhatt (1990) assume that the possessors in the -s genitive in German are to be analysed as phrasal, as in English, that is as a Spec of DP or some other phrase. By such analyses, the restrictions in German are to be handled in some other way; for example Julien (2002: 226) adopts Krause’s (1999) proposal that the restrictions on -s genitives in German are due to the fact that this possessive marker only follows a possessor that is one prosodic word. We now turn to Low Saxon, where such an analysis has been argued for in more detail. 2.4.2.2 Low Saxon Although ‘Low Saxon’ is not a widely known term, it is the term currently favoured by many speakers of varieties which descend from Old Saxon for their language. These varieties have gone by such names as ‘Low German’, ‘East Dutch’, ‘Plattdeutsch’, ‘Plautdietsch’, etc. (Strunk 2004b: 7–8). The term ‘Low Saxon’ includes not only varieties spoken in northern Germany and the eastern Netherlands but also emigrant varieties found in many parts of the world. There is naturally a good deal of variation among such farflung dialects, but they are similar enough to be treated together for our purposes. The differences which are of particular relevance to this study are the variation in the number of case categories which are marked in the different dialects and the related matter of how these categories are marked. Strunk (2004b: 60) indicates that in most Low Saxon dialects, the old dative and accusative case categories have merged into a single category, a situation which is reminiscent of some EME dialects, as we shall see in Chapter 4. In such dialects, the marking of this distinction in the nominal paradigm is likely to be restricted to masculine singular nouns, but some other elements, particularly the definite determiner, also mark the nominative/oblique distinction. In most such dialects, it is the reflex of the accusative form which is used to mark objects, but in Plautdietsch, it is the reflex of the dative case which is used. I will use the term ‘oblique case’ for such case marking, as ‘accusative’ and ‘dative’ suggest a category distinction between two cases, and I have changed Strunk’s glossing accordingly. 6 For some dialects of Southern Westphalia, however, such a category distinction survives, according to Strunk, so the terms ‘dative’ 6 No completely satisfactory term is current for a case form whose central function is to mark objects. Calling it ‘objective’ case has the disadvantage of increasing the likelihood of losing sight of the indirect nature of the relationship between case forms and grammatical functions. While ‘oblique’ avoids this problem, confusion results from the fact that it is sometimes convenient to extend the term to the genitive case. In this book, I will use ‘non-nominative’ when including the genitive, e.g. for the ambiguous -an of the weak adjectives in OE.

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and ‘accusative’ are appropriate. At the other extreme we have some ‘progressive’ dialects, e.g. East Frisian, which are like English in having lost the nominative/oblique distinction in case marking entirely except for pronouns (Strunk 2004b: 61). It is of particular interest to note that in some varieties, there is variation between some case-marked forms and forms which have no overt case marking. Strunk (p. 36) comments that possessive pronouns agree with their possessum in number, case, and gender ‘by carrying certain (optional) inflectional suffixes.’ According to Strunk, the choice between the agreeing and non-agreeing forms in some dialects ‘does not seem to depend on syntactic or morphological factors.’ This situation is highly reminiscent of the situation found in EME texts, and the fact that it is found in a living language lends support to the view that the variability found in these EME texts is likely to reflect a characteristic stage between obligatory agreement and no agreement at all. Like German and Dutch, Low Saxon has an -s genitive (Strunk’s ‘ ’s possessive’), which is invariant in form. However, somewhat more complex possessor phrases are allowed in Low Saxon than in either Dutch or German, e.g. (2-8): 7 (2-8) Duesse mansluets peer suend swatt these men=poss horses are black ‘These men’s horses are black.’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.252, p. 104) However, Strunk indicates (fn. 62, p. 106) that recursive possessives of the sort that are found in older Low Saxon, e.g. the Low Saxon equivalent of ‘my grandfather’s old grandmother’s N’ are ‘extremely marginal’, and he also comments (p. 206) that in his corpus the -s possessive ‘is almost exclusively used with proper names as possessor phrase’. 8 It is also interesting to note that example (2-8) apparently does not come from Strunk’s corpus but was accepted by an informant. Clearly, the -s possessive is used in very restrictive circumstances in Low Saxon; however, the fact that Strunk’s informants accepted some -s possessives of greater complexity than this is a good reminder that ‘textually infrequent’ is not the same as ‘ungrammatical’, and it appears that any grammar of Low Saxon must allow for this construction, although it is not frequently used. Strunk offers convincing arguments that -s is different from an ordinary case marker in modern Low Saxon, although this formative represented 7

I have retained Strunk’s glossing here. Strunk’s informants also accepted expressions such as höör ollens hus ‘her parents’ house’ (p. 104). Since Strunk analyses possessive pronoun phrases (i.e. expressions such as höör) as DPs, he would treat these as recursive. Similar -s possessives which are modified by a possessive pronoun are also possible in Dutch; Weerman and de Wit (1999: 1167) give the example mijn moeders boek ‘my mother’s book’. 8


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genitive case (limited to certain noun classes) in earlier Low Saxon. Most tellingly, a determiner modifying a possessor marked with the invariant -s is never inflected with genitive case to agree with the possessor, even in dialects where agreement with a dative or accusative head noun is possible. 9 If -s is not a case marker, how is it to be analysed? Strunk argues (pp. 107– 112) for phrase-final placement of -s, on the basis that an entire phrase may precede it. In Strunk’s analysis, the possessor phrase is in Spec, DP and the -s is in D, as in a common analysis of the -s possessive in English. It should first be noted that examples such as (2-8) do not provide evidence that the -s must be attached at the phrasal level, rather than at the N level. To demonstrate phrasefinal positioning of this morpheme, group genitives are necessary. However, Strunk’s examples (p. 109) of ‘group genitives’ are not terribly convincing. His examples can be divided into two types. In the first type, the possessor phrase has a prepositional phrase within it, so the -s is not attached directly to the possessor: (2-9)

Franz vun Assisis “Sünnensang” Francis of Assisi=poss ‘song of the sun’ ‘Francis of Assisi’s “song of the sun” ’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.274, p. 110)

The problem with such examples is that they are essentially proper names despite the prepositional phrase, and they do not demonstrate a general ability of the possessive marker to attach to the end of a complex phrase. As we saw in section 2.4.2.1, similar -s possessives are also possible in German, where group genitives are not generally possible. The second type of ‘group genitive’ has a coordinated structure ending in -s: (2-10) Hinnerk un Annas Huus ‘Hinnerk and Anna’s house’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.270, p. 109) Examples of this sort do indicate a change from the earlier stage when both conjuncts would have been inflected, but they are not terribly convincing examples of group genitives. It would be possible to analyse Hinnerk un Anna here as conjoined Ns, rather than conjoined NomPs, in which case we could 9 According to Strunk (2004b: 107) the determiner in an -s possessive is in the oblique case in dialects which have one. However, as Strunk notes, it is difficult to find determiners in -s possessives, which are avoided when the possessor consists of more than a single N. In the few examples in Strunk’s corpus that do have a determiner, the possessive phrase plays a grammatical role in which oblique case would be expected. Therefore, it is at least possible that the case marking on the determiner is due to the grammatical role of the possessive phrase, rather than to a rule that possessors are marked with oblique case (Jan Strunk, p.c.). Examples in which the possessive NP plays the role of subject, where nominative case would be expected, are necessary to settle the question of what determines the case of the determiner in an -s possessive.

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say that the -s has still attached to N, rather than to a larger NomP. Furthermore, it is clear that although Strunk’s informants accepted this example, the fact that he had to construct example (2-10) results from a lack of such examples in his corpus—in contrast to the existence of examples in which both conjuncts show the -s morpheme, e.g. (2-11): (2-11) Omas un Opas Goorn Grandma=poss and Grandpa=poss garden ‘Grandma and Grandpa’s garden’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.304, p. 119) Although Strunk is at pains to establish that -s comes at the end of potentially complex possessor phrases, it is apparent that the -s genitive of Low Saxon is clearly a much more restricted construction than it is in English or Swedish. 10 As we have seen, there are problems for treating the -s genitive of Swedish in particular as a clitic. The Low Saxon -s possessive requires some sort of analysis which allows for elements which are intermediate between prototypical inflections and prototypical clitics. 2.4.3 German, Dutch, and Low Saxon: analysis As has been discussed above, one ‘family’ of analyses of -s genitives in German, Dutch, and Low Saxon treats the possessor as phrasal, in the Spec of either DP or some other node such as PossP. In such analyses, the -s is assumed to have its own syntactic position as a functional head, such as D. The restrictions on the possessor phrase must be treated as an extrasyntactic fact. An alternative approach treats the restrictions on the possessor directly by assuming that the possessor is in D, whether it generated there or moved there. The apparent exceptions to this restriction can be dealt with by treating titles and conjoined Ns as internally complex names. A third possibility which has not been considered before, so far as I know, would be to assume that the -s possessive in these languages is a ‘nonprojecting head’ in the terminology of Toivonen (2001). Toivonen argues for a new classification of words using the parameters of phonological dependence and projection. She argues that some words are non-projecting heads, using Swedish particles as a case study. These non-projecting heads may belong to different word classes and are adjoined to heads of particular types. If we treated the restricted -s genitive as a non-projecting head, we could account for the clitic-like aspect of -s of adjoining to a noun regardless of its gender, and would also account for why conjoined nouns may either have a single -s at 10

Strunk offers a possible way to deal with the ‘almost categorical’ restriction of -s to names in Saxon, his fn. 116: the s- morpheme could project a feature-valued combination such as ntype proper into the poss function. A similar analysis could be used for Dutch and German.


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the end or may have the -s on each noun: conjoined nouns are dominated by a single N node, to which the -s may attach, or each noun may have -s attached to it. However, we have seen evidence that even in Swedish and English, where the case for a clitic -s is the strongest, there is some evidence to suggest that this element should not be given a position in the syntax, but is morphological. If we want to treat English and Swedish -s possessives as phrasal affixes, we will surely want to treat these more restricted possessives as involving some sort of inflection. Such an approach can easily deal with restrictions on the host to which this affix can attach. The sort of analysis we adopt for these three languages will have profound implications for how we analyse the -s genitive of EME, discussed in section 4.3. Whatever sort of analysis we adopt for these restricted possessives, however, one important fact that must be kept in mind is that although the -es of some dialects of EME is superficially very similar to the -s possessive of German, Dutch, and Low Saxon in being invariant and attaching only to the possessor N, it has some important differences, as will be established in section 4.3. In particular, it was never restricted to proper nouns in the same way as in these languages. 2.4.4 Faroese I will finish this section on -s genitives with a brief discussion of Faroese, in which an invariant prenominal possessive similar to those of German, Dutch, and Low Saxon exists but takes a form other than -s. Faroese is closely related to Icelandic and although it is like that language in retaining three grammatical genders and systematically using case marking, its case marking system is reduced in a way highly relevant to this investigation. Lockwood (1955: 28) reports that Faroese has three genders and four cases, but he notes that the use of the genitive case is limited. Although in writing this inflectional genitive is found both prenominally and postnominally, in the spoken language it is only found in a very few nouns. Lockwood reports that most nouns ‘do not exist as independent words in the genitive at all’, although genitive forms are frequently used in compounds. Thráinsson et al. (2004: 63) tell a similar story: although genitive forms are used with some prepositions, this use is (nearly) limited to unmodified nouns, as in oman til strandar ‘down to the shore(gen)’, where til, a preposition which governed the genitive case in Old Norse and still does so in Icelandic, causes the use of the genitive form strandar. This fixed expression can be compared with oman til hina strandina ‘down to the other shore(acc)’, where the same preposition governs the accusative when

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modification is added. But although genitive case has pretty much disappeared with nouns, pronouns in Faroese could be analysed as having a genitive case, since the genitive forms of the personal pronouns are used as the objects of genitive-governing prepositions such as til. 11 These genitive forms need to be distinguished from the possessive pronouns which are found only in certain person/number combinations. The third person pronouns, whether singular or plural, have no specific possessive form, a respect in which they are similar to OE. A difference with OE is that the first and second person plural also lacks a specifically possessive form which shows the person and number of the possessor and the person, number, and case of the possessum. Within an LFG framework, the difference between the ‘genitive pronouns’ and the ‘possessive pronouns’ can be regarded as a difference in the amount of information the forms provide in their lexical entries; for example the form hansara will provide the information that it is a pronoun, that its number is third person, its gender masculine, and its case genitive, and so it can be inserted into any position where genitive case is required, such as in a possessive construction or as the object of the preposition til. In contrast, the form mína provides not only the information that it is a first person singular pronoun in the genitive case, but also the information that it is the possessor of something which is neuter in gender and accusative in case. The form mína is therefore not able to be inserted where there is no possessum, and the genitive ‘personal pronoun’ mín must be used with prepositions such as til. The fact that particular prepositions can require genitive case when a genitive form is available but are used with accusative case when no genitive form exists raises some interesting theoretical questions. One general approach, which I will assume here, is to assume that terms such as ‘accusative’ are cover terms for a bundle of features, and that accusative and genitive case share certain features, with the genitive form being more highly specified than the accusative form. A preposition such as til will require its object to have certain features, which an accusative form is capable of supplying, while a genitive form, as more highly specified, will be required when it is available (for a discussion of ‘morphological blocking’, which requires a more highly specified form to be used when one is available, see Andrews 1990). Returning to the subject of pronominal possessors in Faroese, we note that where no specifically possessive form (i.e. a form which agrees with the possessum) exists, the genitive form may be used instead. Both these genitive forms and the specifically possessive forms have a default postnominal 11 Since the possessive pronouns are few in number, however, another possibility would be simply to list all the combinations of prepositions and possessive pronouns in the lexicon.


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position, although prenominal possessives are possible in emphatic use. As Delsing (2003b: 28) notes for the Scandinavian languages generally, the two types of pronouns can be considered syntactically equivalent, although morphologically distinct. Looking more closely at possessive constructions with nominal possessors, it is interesting to find that not even kinship terms normally appear in what looks like a genitive form, making Faroese different from Dutch or German. Instead, we get expressions which use a postnominal accusative for the possessor, such as pápi dreingin, lit. ‘father boy.def.acc’. There are two alternatives for expressing possession which are more usual than the moribund genitive case. Lockwood (1955: 104) and Thráinsson et al. (2004: 62) both state that the English genitive is most commonly rendered by the preposition hjá with a dative object: hugsjóninar hjá Jógvani ‘John’s ideals’. This prepositional possessive can be considered the unmarked construction with most kinds of nouns, and it is also used with pronouns, as an alternative to possessive forms. 12 The second alternative to the traditional genitive case appears to be a variant of the -s genitive found in other Germanic languages, but the form, -sa when preceding a consonant and -sar preceding a vowel, is different. Thráinsson et al. (2004: 411) say that it is unclear how old this type of genitive is and uncertain exactly how it developed, since it is a feature of the spoken language and generally not used in writing. However, a development from the masculine and neuter -s of Old Norse, parallel to developments in the other Germanic languages, seems plausible, and this is particularly so when we realize that Faroese frequently uses ‘linking phonemes’, as Thráinsson et al. call them, and that -a is used in this capacity. It is possible that -s first developed into -sa when the possessor preceded a word beginning with a consonant, and then that -sa became the usual form and was subsequently augmented with a linking -r before vowels. 13 Whatever the details, it is clear that phonological augmentation has played a significant role in possessive forms in Faroese, since the Faroese equivalent of the Old Norse genitive hennar ‘her’ is hennara and Old Norse hans ‘his’ has developed into hansara. It ‘therefore seems reasonable to treat -sa(r) as the reflex of the -s form of the genitive case, and so Faroese presents an interesting stage of development in which the old paradigm of 12 Delsing (2003b: 28) comments that the preposition seems to be preferred to possessive pronominal forms in spoken Faroese, except with kinship terms. 13 Thráinsson et al. also suggest attachment of -a to the -s genitive, but their suggestion differs from the one given here in proposing that analogy with the alternation between -a and -ar in the feminine possessive pronoun (henna before consonants, hennar before vowels) found in some older documents may be responsible for the -a/-ar alternation.

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genitive forms is not quite dead, a living memory for much of the population who understand it but do not use it themselves, at a time when the reflex of a particular member of this paradigm has been extended to use (in the colloquial language) with nouns of all genders. In this respect, Faroese is reminiscent of ME, where -es was spreading to all noun classes but had not yet extinguished the old system of genitive inflections which were lexically selected. However, -sa(r) is different from ME -es in some important respects. First, the -sa(r) construction is limited to ‘names, or nouns which are used as names’ (Lockwood 1955: §112), a restriction which is reminiscent of the -s genitive in Dutch and German. English never had such a restriction, although -s genitives have always been particularly common with names. Thráinsson et al. (2004: 64–65, 251) point out that despite its restriction to a particular semantic type of possessor, -sa(r) is not an inflection which is added to a single word, since it can be attached to entire phrases, such as Tummas á Dómarakontórinumsa bilur ‘Thomas at the legal office’s car’, and it also comes at the end of conjoined (proper noun) possessors. They conclude that -sa(r) is a clitic ‘similar to the English possessive ’s or Mainland Scandinavian -s’. The same conclusion is reached by Delsing (2003b: 37) and Julien (2005: 227). A second striking difference between the -sa(r) possessive and the -s genitive found either in EME or the Germanic languages generally is that it attaches to a case-marked form. The ins and outs of the form used as the stem are complicated (see Thráinsson et al. 2004: 64–65) but Delsing (2003a: 80, fn. 10) suggests that Faroese -sa(r) is best analysed as attaching to an accusative form, which is the general oblique form for weak nouns and the bare stem for strong proper nouns. When -sa(r) is attached to conjoined (weak) proper nouns, both nouns are inflected as obliques (Thráinsson et al. 2004: 65). In contrast, Germanic languages generally have no internal inflection of nouns in the -s possessive, even in German, where case marking is found in other positions. One intriguing fact is that the -sa(r) forms are not used only as possessives but also with the postposition vegna ‘because of ’, which requires a genitive complement (when a genitive form is available), as in systir min-sa vegna ‘because of my sister’ and hansara vegna ‘because of him’ (Thráinsson et al. 2004: 251). 14 On the other hand, -sa(r) forms are not possible as the objects of genitive-governing prepositions such as til (Thráinsson et al. 2004: 64), so matters are more complicated than that -sa(r) simply confers genitive case on the NomP it is attached to. One possible approach would be to assume that 14 With nouns other than names, vegna is used as a preposition, and it governs the accusative case (Thráinsson et al. 2004: 178).


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the ‘postposition’ vegna is to be treated as a noun. This would make this use of -sa(r) more parallel to its normal use with proper nouns. However the different constructions of Faroese are best analysed, this under-investigated language provides an excellent opportunity to investigate changes currently under way which are strikingly similar in some ways to changes which took place in ME but different in others and which are in some cases not attested in more commonly studied languages. The replacement of genitive forms with accusative ones as the objects of particular verbs and prepositions for example is also found in EME, while this replacement for genitive case in (some) adnominal possessives has no parallel in English. Of particular interest to this study is the fact that Faroese is losing the genitive case at a time when the dative/accusative distinction is not under threat; while this development is of course compatible with the idea that a language cannot have a genitive case without such a distinction, it shows that genitive case (even when its morphology was highly distinctive) can be disfavoured without language learners having any trouble figuring out that the acquisition data which they are hearing requires the postulation of dative and accusative case as separate categories. It is also interesting to note that a prepositional possessive has developed in Faroese even though speakers did not really seem to ‘need’ it; that is, the accusative case seems to have been available as a replacement for the genitive. Possibly syntactic or morphological theory can provide some reason why genitive case can only be used for kinship terms, but the simplest explanation seems to be that people simply tend to like to have more than one type of adnominal possessive, and when more than one morphosyntactic type is available, the different types tend to get associated with different semantic types.

2.5 Correlations between position and case systems? Delsing (1998: 98) notes that there seems to be a good correlation between postnominal genitives and the retention of case marking. The Germanic languages which have seriously reduced case marking systems do not have inflectional postnominal genitives. Furthermore, the two Germanic languages which retain a concordial genitive case, namely Icelandic and German, both put the genitive phrase in the postnominal position (although German puts possessive pronouns in the prenominal position). Delsing concludes that postnominal genitives are possible when there is appropriate case marking. It is tempting therefore to try to link the loss of case marking categories, specifically the loss of the genitive as a morphological case, with the loss of postnominal genitives. As we have seen, the non-concordial prenominal

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possessive phrases are generally not assumed to involve a true genitive case. If we treat the -s genitives as not involving genitive case, we can suggest that the reason why English, for example, does not have a postnominal genitive is that it simply does not have a genitive case, and it would be natural to suggest that the loss of the postnominal genitive in English was triggered by the loss of the genitive as a case category. As we shall see in Chapter 4, however, the postnominal genitive died out in English before concordial genitives died out in the prenominal position. Delsing (1998) similarly notes that for a period of about 150 years (roughly, 1300–1450), prenominal position was obligatory in Swedish, even though morphological case was retained. It appears then, that even if morphological case is a necessary condition for postnominal genitives, it is not a sufficient one.

2.6 Conclusions Besides laying some necessary groundwork for the following chapters, the discussion in this chapter has led to some general conclusions about the loss of case marking categories which should be kept in mind as we consider the more detailed evidence concerning the development of genitive constructions in English. I will only summarize two here. First, the sort of variability and optionality in case agreement that the textual evidence indicates for EME is very similar to the situation found currently in some Low Saxon dialects, where native speakers are available for grammaticality judgements and where there is little reason to believe that a conservative scribal tradition is obscuring the situation in speech. This must give us more confidence in the results of our corpus studies into deflexion for EME at least, although it is important to be aware that the divergence between spoken and written language will be not be the same in different periods. Second, the facts of the Germanic languages where we can see the genitive disappearing currently give no support to the idea that a lack of evidence for a dative/accusative category distinction is a trigger for the disappearance of the genitive as a morphological category. In some Low Saxon dialects, for example, the dative and accusative cases are still formally distinct, but the retention of these categories has not prevented the genitive case from disappearing, if we accept Strunk’s analysis that the -s possessor phrases do not encode case. The fact that the genitive has disappeared early does not disprove the idea that a dative/accusative distinction is necessary for the retention of a genitive case, but it weakens the strong version of the case marking hierarchy as an explanation for the loss of the genitive; it simply cannot be the case that it was the lack of evidence for a dative/accusative distinction in their language


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that caused speakers of these Low Saxon dialects to reinterpret the -s they heard in the speech of older speakers as something other than an ordinary case marker. On the other hand, the facts are consistent with the idea of a less deterministic case marking hierarchy in which the genitive ranks lower than the accusative and the dative. In German, the genitive is on its way out, and in Faroese and Low Saxon, it is clearly unlike the other cases if it is to be regarded as a case at all. The apparent vulnerability of the genitive case might be linked to the fact that its central use is to mark relationships within the NomP, rather than to mark the arguments of verbs or prepositions. However, a similar pattern in a few related languages does not establish a universal, and we cannot assume that deflexion has taken place in exactly the same way in all the Germanic languages. We shall see in Chapter 4 that the evidence of ME texts strongly suggests that the genitive remained as a case category in some dialects at least after the dative/accusative distinction disappeared. Only systematic investigations of the facts available to us will establish how the various Germanic languages have been similar to and different from each other in their development. In the following chapter, I lay the groundwork for an investigation of developments in English by presenting the results of such investigations into some important facts surrounding the genitive case in OE.

3 Genitive case in Old English 3.1 Periods, dialects, and the nature of the evidence Before surveying genitive case in OE, it is necessary to discuss, briefly, the nature of the evidence available to us. Because it is interesting to look at changes which may have taken place in the OE period, I divide the texts discussed here into Early and Late West Saxon (EWS and LWS). I will generally use short abbreviations for the OE texts referred to; these abbreviations will be explained when they are first introduced and a list is given in the Appendix. Space does not allow for a discussion of all the texts used in the examples presented in this chapter, and only the briefest of discussions of the texts used as the basis for these comparisons can be given. Only four manuscripts are the basis for our understanding of EWS (Bately 1980: xxxix; Campbell 1959: §16). MacIntosh et al. (1986) and Laing (1993) use the term ‘anchor texts’ for texts in manuscripts which can be dated and localized with certainty and therefore may be used to assign dates and dialects to other manuscripts of less certain provenance, and adopting this terminology, I will refer to these texts as my ‘anchor’ EWS texts. Unfortunately, two of these are only slightly different versions of the same text, namely Alfred’s translation of the Cura Pastoralis (CP), and so when it comes to counting instances of particular constructions, we must generally treat these two manuscripts as a single one. Only one of the manuscripts (Bodleian Manuscript Hatton 20, dated s.ixex by Ker 1957: item 324) 1 is included in YCOE, apart from a short bit supplied from the other manuscript where Hatton is defective. Also considered to be evidence for EWS is British Library Additional manuscript 47967, dated s.x1 by Ker (1957: item 133) and edited by Bately (1980) as manuscript L of the Orosius. 2 Bately (p. xxxix) notes that although L is 1

See the Appendix for an explanation of Ker’s (1957) system of dating. Bately uses British Library manuscript Cotton Tiberius B.i (her C, Ker 1957: item 191) as the basis of the text pp. 15/1–28/11, where L is defective. Because this manuscript is from the early eleventh century, I have excluded any examples from it in any figures specifically for EWS although it is not very likely that this amount of a later copy would make a significant difference in the statistics. Comparing the statistics for overall prenominal and postnominal positioning in the entire Orosius with those with the 2

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assumed to represent EWS, it has some linguistic features more typical of a later period than CP. Although King Alfred is usually assumed to have been the author of the OE translations of both the CP and the Orosius, Bately concludes (p. lxxxvi) that there is no foundation for the assumption of Alfredian authorship of the latter. The final anchor EWS text is part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) found in Corpus Christi College manuscript Cambridge, MS 173 (the ‘Parker manuscript’ and Bately’s 1986 manuscript A, henceforth ASC(A)). This part ends with the annal for 924 in Plummer’s (1962 [1892–1929]) edition (used by YCOE). 3 I will refer to this text as ASC(A1), to distinguish it from the later parts of ASC(A). I have used YCOE in compiling my statistics for ASC(A1), 4 and present examples with citations from YCOE, but have also provided annal and line number within the annal in Bately’s edition and have checked for any corrections in that edition. We have many more texts to choose from when it comes to LWS. Because Ælfric’s two series of Catholic Homilies (CH1 and CH2) are found in excellent manuscripts temporally very close to the time of their composition (s.x/xi; Ælfric d. 1010), I have chosen them as two of the four LWS texts to use as the basis for my comments about LWS and my statistical comparisons with EWS. 5 The third LWS text which I have used is the Benedictine Rule (BenRul), found in Cambridge Corpus Christi College manuscript 178, dated s.xi1 by Ker (1957: item 41B art 1). Finally, I have used the homilies of Wulfstan (Archbishop of York 1002–1023) presented in YCOE on the basis of Bethurum’s (1957) edition. Although I will generally be treating these as one text, they are not, coming from various manuscripts. Bethurum based her edition on Hatton 113 which is dated s.xi (3rd quarter) by Ker (1957: item 331), which is temporally fairly far removed from the time when Wulfstan was writing, although some of the homilies come from earlier manuscripts. Since my purpose was to look for possible changes in late OE, I did not consider that all my LWS texts had to be from exactly the same period. However, I have excluded any examples coming from WHom 8b, which comes from Cambridge Corpus Christi College manuscript 302, dated by Ker (1957: item 56 art 5) as s.xi/xii, since it is better regarded examples from the later manuscript removed, I found in fact that there was essentially no difference in the percentages. The same is true for the two-element genitives, suggesting that the later copyist generally preserved the order of the exemplar. 3 The numbering of the years is different in different versions of the ASC, and 924 in Plummer’s edition is 920∗ in Bately’s. 4 It is possible to compute the statistics for each hand using CorpusSearch. The hands for ASC(A1) are hands 1–2f. 5 My statistics do not cover the prefaces to each series, which are found in different files in the YCOE. For EWS, however, where the corpus is smaller, I have included the preface to CP.

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as an EME copy of an OE text. BenRul and the Wulfstan pieces were mainly added for comparison in case some patterns found in Ælfric’s homilies might represent the idiosyncrasies of one writer rather than being representative of LWS generally. In this book, examples which are extracted from YCOE will be cited with their reference as given by YCOE when they appear as numbered examples set off from the text. So for example (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_1:183.122.121) in example (3-1a) means that the example is from Ælfric’s first series of Catholic Homilies, specifically on page 183 of the edition used, in the sentence which begins at line 122. However, for some texts, as with ASC, YCOE’s referencing system is fairly opaque. Furthermore, I have sometimes used examples from editions other than the one used in that corpus. In these instances, I have departed from the YCOE system, but have provided information about the edition used and the system of referencing. I have also sometimes used examples not included in YCOE but cited from the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) Corpus, which will be referenced by the conventions of that corpus, which are based on Cameron (1973). 6 In the interests of space, some examples are given in the text rather than set off, and for such examples I have adopted the brief citations of Mitchell et al. (1975 and 1979). Because many of the OE texts are translations from Latin, something needs to be said about the possibility of Latin influence in the examples used from these texts. Briefly, it can be said that it is important to distinguish between interlinear glosses of Latin texts, which are certain to be heavily affected by the Latin syntax, from translations, some of which are quite free both in form and in content. The fact that a particular construction is found in a gloss cannot be taken as evidence by itself for OE syntax, although the glosses can be used for comparative purposes, and there are at times some interesting divergences from the syntax of the Latin in the OE which merit investigation. Restricting ourselves to the translations, we find that all of the constructions involving genitives which are discussed here are found in both the translations and in native poetry and may therefore be considered to be genuine OE constructions. This still leaves the question of whether the use of a particular alternative, when more than one construction would be possible, might not be influenced by a Latin exemplar. We will in fact see that it appears that the construction which I refer to as the det poss construction, e.g. se min sunu ‘that/the my son’ appears more frequently in translations than in native poetry or prose and seems to be part of a Latinate 6 See Appendix for bibliographical information on the DOE Corpus. See also the bibliography in the guide to Healey and Venezky’s (1980) Microfiche Concordance.

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style. However, investigations comparing the positioning of adnominal genitives before or after their heads by Nunnally (1985), Yerkes (1982), and others, have consistently found that the order found in the OE translation was highly independent of the order found in the Latin exemplar where it is available. The possibility of Latin influence will be discussed in specific places as relevant.

3.2 The OE case marking system 3.2.1 Categories and forms The six-case system of CG was already significantly affected by syncretism; the vocative and instrumental cases were rather marginal, having distinctive forms for only a small subset of noun classes. By the EWS stage, the vocative had completely disappeared as a category, the forms now always identical with the nominative, and the instrumental case was moribund, having a form distinct from the dative only for some masculine and neuter singular adjectives and demonstratives. Because the loss of the OE case marking system is sometimes presented as something which happened fairly precipitously in EME, due to a combination of phonological changes and contact with Scandinavian and French, it is important to appreciate that there was already a good deal of syncretism in case forms even in the earliest OE texts, due both to phonological changes and to analogy, whereby forms in the minor declensions conformed to the patterns of the larger classes, sometimes reducing the evidence for the case categories as some distinctive forms disappeared. Hogg (1997) argues that the syncretism in the case endings of nouns in particular was more advanced than is apparent from the paradigms typically given in handbooks such as Campbell (1959), and that conservative orthographical practices obscured the degree of syncretism. Nevertheless, despite this syncretism in forms, the nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative cases were healthy categories even in LWS, because, as Hogg emphasizes, the distinctive case forms were better preserved in some modifiers of nouns than on the nouns themselves (as in Modern German). Although nominative and accusative case forms often distinguished the subject and object, unmarked word orders were already in existence in OE; for example, when nominative and accusative were not distinguished by form in a given OE sentence, it can always be assumed that the first NomP is the subject and the second the object. Although the object could come before the subject when the case marking was unambiguous, the unmarked word order was still the most frequent.

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Following the principles outlined in section 1.4.2, I assume that the syncretism of case forms in some paradigms does not prevent us from treating the single form as representing two (or more) case categories. For example, for OE, I treat the form lare ‘doctrine’ as accusative, dative, or genitive singular, depending on the syntactic context, because all of these case categories are reflected in formal distinctions in some classes of nouns. I will use the following conventions in the glosses to the OE examples. Where relevant and helpful to understanding the syntax of an example, the values of the grammatical categories gender, case, and number will be represented in that order with glosses in small capitals, with the genders represented by the single letters m(asculine), f(eminine), and n(euter). Since gender is an inherent category for nouns, these glosses, when used with a noun, will be enclosed in parentheses, following the Leipzig Glossing Rules at http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/files/morpheme.html. Glosses used in OE examples in this book are nom(inative), acc(usative), gen(itive), dat(ive), and nnom (non-nominative) for the cases and sg (singular) and pl(ural) for number. 7 As will be discussed in section 3.5, the non-nominative and plural forms of ‘weak’ adjectives were highly ambiguous as to what values they signalled for case and gender. I have therefore given glosses for the grammatical features of the weak adjectives only when they can be expected to help the reader understand the syntax of a given example. To emphasize that an adjective is in a weak form, I have used ‘w’. While the strong forms were more distinctive, I have left them unglossed also unless a gloss adds to the easy understanding of the syntax. An adjective without glosses for these features can be assumed to be agreeing with the noun it modifies even though the form does not clearly signal this.

3.3 Genitive case in OE: overview The prototypical use of the genitive case was to express a relation of ‘possession’ (in a broad sense) between two nouns, but this case was used in a much wider range of ways than the modern -s possessive marker is used. One of these other uses which will be discussed in some detail in this book is the case of a NomP playing the role of object of a verb or a preposition; examples will be given in section 3.15, and the disappearance of the genitive in these functions 7 In glossing the OE examples, I have glossed forms which could actually represent more than one combination of grammatical features according to what would be expected in the position in the example at hand, except that in instances where the form is ambiguous even when context is taken into account, I have indicated this. So for example ‘f.dat/gen.sg’ indicates that a form is feminine and singular, but ambiguously dative or genitive.

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will be discussed in Chapter 4. The complements of some adjectives also appeared in the genitive case, as in godes beboda gemyndig ‘mindful of God’s commands’ (lit. ‘God:gen.sg command:gen.pl mindful’) at CH1 IX 14 and orwene heora lifes ‘despairing of their lives’ (lit. ‘despairing their life:gen.sg’) at CH 2 XVIII 19. 8 Since the major focus of this book is on the adnominal genitive, little will be said about these, but since the continued use of the genitive case in ME with adjectives provides evidence for the status of this case, some observations will be made in Chapter 4. Genitives could also be used ‘adverbially’ in various ways, particularly in temporal expressions. This type won’t be discussed in this chapter, but its disappearance will be touched on in the following chapter. Can a unitary meaning be given for the genitive case in OE? Koike (2006: 61) observes that while the treatment for Russian proposed by Jakobson (1984 [1936]) encounters various problems when we try to extend it to OE, nevertheless the similarities between genitive case in the two languages are striking. Koike, working in a Cognitive Grammar framework (p. 50), considers the genitive case ‘anomalous’ in comparison with other cases, echoing Taylor’s (1996) remarks mentioned in section 1.8.1. In Koike’s view (following Langacker 1991), a case takes some role archetype (such as Experiencer or Agent) as its prototypical value. A case therefore does not have a single meaning but ‘comprises a network of related senses’. Recasting Jakobson’s description in a Cognitive Grammar framework, Koike argues (pp. 64–5) that while nominals in the other cases ‘encode “things” construed as participants, fully manifested in the domain of instantiation’, a nominal in the genitive case ‘encodes a “thing” construed as manifested in the domain of instantiation to some extent’. Koike argues that this ‘schema’ covers all the disparate-looking uses of genitive case. He stresses, however, that the highly abstract semantic features he uses do not have any predictive power and the actual case which is used in a particular context will depend on many other factors as well. A problem with this general approach is that it is very difficult, if possible at all, to falsify the proposed schemas for the cases. The meanings are so abstract that just about any example in which a particular case is used can be construed as fitting into the meaning suggested for that case, and the tolerance for individual examples which fail to use the case we might expect makes it difficult to identify true counterexamples. It is a fact that the cases had prototypical uses which can be listed and it is true that genitive case was not simply used randomly. However, I will assume in this book that although genitive case may 8 Other adjectives such as leof ‘dear’ took complements in the dative case. On a similar situation in Modern German, see van Riemsdijk (1983).

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have had a more coherent meaning at an earlier stage, by the OE stage at least it is necessary to specify lexically the adjectives, nouns, quantifiers, and verbs which took genitive complements. I also assume the widely accepted distinction between this lexical case assignment and structural case assignment, and adopt the position that the genitive case which was assigned to modifiers of nouns was structural already at the OE stage, while the genitive complements of verbs, adjectives, etc. had inherent case. The LFG treatment which I will be assuming is briefly outlined in the next paragraph, but since the details are not crucial to the following discussion, the reader not interested in the details should feel free to skip over them. My LFG analysis essentially follows Neidle’s (1982) treatment of Russian case. I assume that a DP in the Spec position of a larger DP (the possessor phrase) is annotated in the phrase structure with the information that its functional structure bears the poss function to the functional structure of the larger DP (the possessive phrase). So for example in the possessive phrase þæs cyninges sunu ‘the king’s son’ the possessor phrase þæs cyninges has the role of poss, and comes equipped with a constraining equation requiring that the functional structure have the attribute-value pair case gen. This constraint is satisfied because the lexical entry for cyninges is equipped with an equation (↑case) = gen, which supplies the necessary case value to the functional structure corresponding to the node dominating this noun. 9 On the other hand, the genitive marking on the object of verbs, e.g. gieman ‘to care about’ will be required by a constraining equation (↑obj case) = c gen in the lexical entry of the verb, requiring case gen to be present in the functional structure of the object of this verb. As always, this case feature is contributed by the lexical entry of the N.

3.4 Genitive pronouns and possessives It is traditional to distinguish between genitive pronouns and possessive adjectives/pronouns in OE. Genitive pronouns such as min were used when a pronoun was the object of a verb which governed the genitive case and in partitive 9 The lexical entry of the determiner þæs also supplies genitive case, agreeing with the noun it modifies. If a form with any case other than the genitive were inserted here, it would supply a clashing case feature to the functional structure. Adjectives, which must bear some sort of modifier function, are assumed to be embedded more deeply in the functional structure than determiners are under the DP analysis, and so will need a rather different treatment. There are different approaches to dealing with agreement in LFG, but the approach I will take is to assume that adjectives supply information that they are the modifier of an element with a given case. See further the discussion of agreement on possessive pronouns in section 3.4.

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genitives (on these, see section 3.9). First and second person genitive pronouns in OE served as the base for the corresponding ‘possessive adjectives’, which inflected to agree with the possessum. There was no form which agreed with the possessum in the same way in the third person, however, and the genitive form of the third person pronouns (singular and plural) was used in the same positions that the inflected forms of the first and second person were used. As explained in section 2.2.3, the difference goes back to CG. Compare (3-1a, b): (3-1)

a. for urum synnum for our:dat.pl sin:dat.pl ‘for our sins’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_1:183.122.121) b. for his synnum for his sin:dat.pl ‘for his sins’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_12.2:125.517.2737)

As explained in section 2.2.3, I will call the forms which fit into this attributive position ‘possessives’. In section 3.7.1 I will argue that contrary to a widelyheld view, OE possessives were not adjectives. There is considerable dispute over the proper analysis of possessive ‘pronouns’ such as PDE his. I follow Bresnan’s (2001) LFG treatment, which treats them as determiners. 10 Because determiners are heads, an entire phrase may consist of only a determiner, in which case it acts as a pronoun. I will be assuming that possessives and genitive pronouns belong to the same word class and that they all have genitive case. The difference between the possessives and the genitive pronouns is simply that some possessives (i.e. those of the first and second person) also have inflection which conveys information concerning the head that they modify. They are thus morphologically similar to adjectives but are syntactically distinct, not occurring in an adjectival position. So the lexical entry for urum supplies the information that it is a determiner with the predicate ‘pro’ and the features first person, plural number, and genitive case. 11 It furthermore supplies the information that it is the modifier of something whose case is dative (and unless it is masculine or neuter, it is plural). I furthermore assume the possessives are parallel to genitive nouns in appearing as maximal projections in Spec, DP. This position requires genitive case, and the stem ursupplies it. The form ure on the other hand has only the first person, plural, 10 Under this sort of analysis, the difference between my and mine is not a difference of word class, since both are determiners. Mine is simply the form used when nothing follows it in the NP. To get the reading of an understood head, mine must be equipped in the lexicon with an optional equation that modifies a head with the ‘pro’ predicate. 11 Technically, this can be done using inside-out functional uncertainty, introduced in Halvorsen and Kaplan (1988) and developed in Dalrymple (1993). For an introduction to the concept see Bresnan (2001: 65–68). An LFG analysis of OE possessives using this concept is given in Allen (2007b).

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and genitive case features relating to the pronoun alone. The third person forms are parallel to forms such as ure; they simply lack information about the element they modify. Under this analysis, the difference between the possessives and the genitive pronouns is simply a morphological one, not a syntactic one (and with the third person forms, there is no difference at all). This means that we need some way to ensure that the two types of forms appear in the right places. First, we want to make sure that the more highly inflected forms appear when they are modifying something; we want to get urum, not ure, in (3-1a). This can be assured by assuming Morphological Blocking (Andrews 1990) or something along those lines which requires that a form which is more informative about grammatical features is chosen over one which is compatible with the syntactic context but is less informative. So while ure would not cause a clash of features in our example, urum gives the same information and more, and so is selected. We also need to rule out the use of the more highly inflected forms when they are not being used as modifiers, that is, object of verbs (3-2a) or prepositions (3-2b) which govern genitive objects, and in partitives (3-2c): (3-2)

a. help min help 1sg:gen ‘help me’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_8:67.15.1357) b. se hælend . . . sende me wið ðin the saviour . . . sent me against 2sg:gen ‘The Saviour sent me to you.’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_27:401.35.5255) c. eower sum nyte hwæt sy ymbsnidenys 2pl:gen some not-know what is circumcision ‘some of you do not know what circumcision is’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_6:225.49.1089)

Mines was not possible as a genitive object of (3-2a) because it did not fit that syntactic context; although it supplied the genitive case which the verb required, it also supplied the information that it was the possessor of a masculine singular something, which is not correct in this context. 12 Therefore the form min would be used, which supplied the necessary genitive case 12 However, Mitchell (1985: §301) comments ‘[b]ut inflected forms of the possessive are occasionally found where one would expect the genitive of the personal pronoun’, e.g. (3-i):

(3-i) þæt heo sylf geceose hwilcne eowerne heo wille that she self choose which:acc 2pl.acc she wants ‘that she choose for herself which of you she wants’ (coapollo,ApT:19.14.399)

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and nothing else. For a discussion of the genitive pronouns used in partitive constructions, see section 3.9. The possessive forms could also be used independently, that is, when there is no expressed head. The relationship and possession meanings are illustrated in (3-3a) and (3-3b), respectively: (3-3)

a. forlætan þinne god. & on minum gelyfan 13 forsake thy:m.acc.sg god and on my:m.dat.sg believe ‘to forsake your god and believe on mine’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_31:446.214.6254) b. Gif þæt land ðin is se ren is min If the land thine is the rain is mine ‘If the land is yours, the rain is mine’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_7:62.77.1244)

It has sometimes been claimed that ‘elliptical’ or ‘absolute’ nominal genitives were not possible in OE, but examples completely parallel to the examples in (3-3) but with genitive phrases with nouns are quite common (see Allen 2004a): (3-4)

a. na þurh his agene mihte, ah þurh godes ‘Not through his own power, but through God’s’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_11:272.182.2140) b. þæt seo eorþe is Godes ‘That the earth is God’s’ (coblick,HomS_14_[BlHom_4]:51.220.634)

In (3-4), Godes is in the genitive case. The only difference is that with possessive forms, the possibility of further inflection arises in the first and second persons. We certainly expect such further inflection, agreeing with the unexpressed head, in the (a) type examples. It is interesting to ask what happens in the examples in predicative position, which might refer to pure possession. Here, as Mitchell (1985: §300) notes, inflected forms are found, as in hi beoþ mine ‘they are mine’ as Gen. 48.5, where mine is a plural form. This inflection can be seen as similar to the inflection that a predicative adjective optionally takes—predicate adjectives may agree with the subject or may be uninflected. The problem is that we expect eower, the genitive pronoun, here, as the complement of hwilch ‘which’. Such examples do not seem so strange if we assume that the essential difference between a genitive pronoun and a possessive is simply that the latter conveys additional information about what it modifies. The examples just referred to can be treated as an extension of these forms to give information about the elements which a genitive form complements as well as modifies. 13 For simplicity, I do not break the possessive pronoun down into features when it is further inflected.

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As Mitchell notes, it is impossible to prove whether uninflected forms of the possessives are found in this position, since in the crucial examples the forms which occur happen to be ones where an agreeing form would have no inflection, as in (3-3b), where min would be the expected form agreeing with the neuter nominative singular land as well as the non-agreeing form.

3.5 The NomP in OE: overview Despite the fact that elements modifying a noun agreed with that noun in grammatical features, there was only limited freedom of positioning of such elements within the NomP already in OE, especially in prose. As is hardly surprising, in poetry we find more freedom, probably reflecting both more archaic possibilities and the pushing of the grammar to its limits in order to suit the demands of the metre, but there are limits here too. Of particular interest to us here is the fact that the positioning of determiners relative to other elements such as adjectives and possessives was strictly constrained, as will be discussed in more detail in the following sections. For a thorough description of the possible orders within the NomP, see Mitchell (1985: §§143–177). The distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ inflection on adjectives must be introduced here as it will play an important role in the ensuing discussion. The distinction goes back to the CG period, as discussed in Chapter 2, where it was noted that the rules regarding the use of these inflections are rather different in the various languages. For OE, Mitchell (1985: §102) says that the ‘basic rule’ is that ‘[t]he attributive adjective before a noun is declined weak if it is preceded by a demonstrative (se, þes) or by a possessive (e.g. min, his) but strong when without one of these elements . . . ’ He adds in §113 that an adjective following a genitive noun is also declined weak. As he notes, there are various qualifications and difficulties of classification, for example comparative adjectives were always inflected weak, regardless of whether a determiner preceded them, while oþer ‘other’ was always declined strong (Campbell 1959: §657, §695). Some of the facts concerning the use of weak and strong adjectives will be discussed in sections 3.12 and 3.13. At this point we can simply note that although there were exceptions which can be listed lexically, there was a real rule that an adjective which modified a definite noun was declined according to the weak declension. As Mitchell notes, this rule also held in the unusual situation when the adjective was postnominal. The weak adjectives were declined the same as the weak nouns (except for the distinctively adjectival ending -ra in the genitive plural, which varied with the nominal -ena) and it should be noted

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that the weak declension was by the OE stage not very informative about gender, case, or number; fourteen out of twenty-four combinations of these grammatical features used the suffix -an (see Campbell 1959: §156 for details). Furthermore, -an was beginning to supplant -um, the normal dative plural for all genders in both the weak and strong declension by the late OE stage (Hogg 1997). To illustrate the difference between strong and weak adjectives, consider the examples in (3-5): (3-5)

a. æfter gastlicum andgite after spiritual understanding ‘according to (the) spiritual understanding’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_15:151.38.3349) b. ure gastlican lac sind ure gebedu . . . our spiritual offerings are our prayers ‘our spiritual offerings are our prayers . . . ’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_3:204.163.602)

In (3-5a), the strong gastlicum is used instead of the weak gastlican because no determiner precedes it. In the (b) sentence, on the other hand, weak gastlican is used instead of a strong alternative because it follows a possessive. The weak form of the adjective was also naturally used when the adjective followed a definite determiner but no head noun was expressed: (3-6)

Se blinda him ondswerede the:m.nom.sg blind:m.w.nom.sg him answered ‘The blind man answered him’ (coblick,HomS_8_[BlHom_2]:15.23.198)

Of particular importance to us here is the fact that both possessives and genitive NomPs patterned with definite determiners in causing the adjective to be declined weak. The OE NomP was very similar in its structure to its PDE descendant, with some notable exceptions. One of these exceptions has to do with the co-occurrence of determiners and possessives and quantifiers; these matters will be discussed briefly for OE in section 3.13, and Chapter 7 will be devoted to a more detailed discussion of determiners used together with possessives. Another major difference is of course the behaviour of genitive nominals. In PDE, we make considerable use of prepositional phrases within NomPs. It was certainly possible to have a PP within a NomP already in OE:

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(3-7) ðæt sar innan ðære wambe the pain within the:f.dat.sg belly:(f)dat.sg ‘the pain within the belly’ (cocura,CP:36.259.15.1694) A major difference between OE and later English, however, is that at the earlier stage, genitives frequently appeared postnominally, as the continuation of the line in example (3-7) illustrates: (3-8) ðæt tacnað ða sorge ðæs modes. that signifies the pain the:n.gen.sg mind:(n)gen.sg ‘that signifies the pain of the mind’ (cocura,CP:36.259.15.1694) In PDE, we use an of phrase in this sort of situation. The of genitive did not simply replace the postnominal genitive, as we shall see, since postnominal genitives were on the decline before of genitives started to compete with them in any serious way. We also need to address the question of whether of phrases were used as alternatives to inflectional genitives already at the OE stage. There has been considerable debate surrounding the question of whether the replacement of some genitives by of phrases was due to French influence or a native development. While most have assumed that French de at least assisted this development, others, most notably Curme (1913, 1914) have been anxious to stress that the meaning of the preposition, along with the general decay of inflections, played the major role. In assessing the role of foreign influence in any syntactic change, it should be kept in mind that a change which can take place in one language can equally well take place, quite independently, in another. Also, the use of prepositions as alternatives to the genitive has gone even further in Dutch and German, where French influence cannot have been as strong (and in the case of German, the general loss of inflection is considerably less). But Mitchell (1985: §1202) judges that Curme went too far in overestimating the ‘nativeness’ of the of construction in English, since most of Curme’s examples come from interlinear glosses, which are undoubtedly affected by the Latin construction with the preposition ex. However, citing contrasts such as Ceolloh, se wæs eac Scotta cynnes ‘Ceolloh, who was also of the race of the Scots’ (Bede 210.26) and Wæs þes wer Furseus of þæm æþelestan cynne Scotta ‘this man Furseus was of the noblest families (kin) of the Scots’ (Bede 210.26) and others, Mitchell (1985: §1203) comments ‘There can be no doubt that the genitive and of + the dative overlapped in some functions, e.g. origin and material.’ Mitchell goes on to say that it is not at all clear whether of + dative was ever used to denote pure possession in OE. The difficulty arises from the fact that of originally meant ‘out of, from’, and all of the examples which have been adduced to

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illustrate of being used in the sense of pure possession in OE are capable of a different interpretation in which the preposition retains its original meaning. Although the interpretation of individual examples can be debated, there can be no doubt that the overlap in meaning of some functions of the genitive and the preposition of would have provided the ‘bridging context’ needed for the development of of in new uses in competition with the genitive. It is not difficult to find examples in which of is used in a partitive sense where a genitive would undoubtedly be an alternative: (3-9) he mænde þone ecan deað. þe sume he meant the:m.acc.sg eternal death:(m)acc.sg which some of ðam folce for heora geleafleaste of the:n.dat.sg people:(n)dat.sg for their faithlessness geearnodon; earned ‘he meant the eternal death which some of the people earned for their unbelief ’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_15:156.201.3465) Mitchell (1985: §1201) comments that he has found only one convincing example of partitive of in OE poetry and that many of the examples which are adduced to illustrate the existence of of partitives in OE come from texts which are heavily influenced by Latin. There is indeed little doubt that the highly unusual examples given in (3-10) are direct calques on the Latin exemplar: 14 (3-10)

a. eac sume wif of urum us bregdon. also some women of our:dat us amazed ‘Also some women of our people amazed us.’ Latin: et mulieres quedam ex nostris terruerunt nos (cowsgosp,Lk_[WSCp]:24.22.5677) b. þa ferdun sume of urum to þære byrgune. then went some of our:dat to the tomb ‘Then some of those who were with us went to the tomb.’ Latin: quidam ex nostris (cowsgosp,Lk_[WSCp]:24.24.5682)

On the other hand, I think that the fact that Ælfric used it in examples such as (3-9), where he was not directly rendering a Bible verse (where he might be expected to stick as close to the Latin syntax as OE idiom made possible) is 14

I agree with van der Gaaf (1927: 19) in rejecting these examples, both in a fairly close translation from Latin, as early examples of the double genitive construction. See also Hatcher (1950) and Allen (2002d) for discussions of the origin of this construction.

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a good indication that the use of of phrases in partitives already had a good foothold in at least late OE. My own opinion is that of phrases were starting to be used as alternatives to the genitive in at least the partitive function by late OE, and that English would surely have developed a prepositional genitive eventually, although the influence of French de almost certainly sped up the process. On the other hand, we must treat Thomas’ (1931) figures for periphrastic adnominal genitives (e.g. the figure given p. 65 of 0.5 per cent periphrastic in the works associated with King Alfred) with caution, since it is likely to contain examples in which of might be better interpreted as meaning ‘out of ’ than as a genitive replacement. Let us now turn to a descriptive survey of the attested patterns of genitives and possessives in OE. I will discuss partitive genitives in a separate section, since although there was a good deal of overlap between the behaviour of forms with genitive case in these genitives and others, there were also some important differences.

3.6 Adnominal genitives: semantic types Before looking in detail at the prenominal and postnominal attributive genitives, it should be noted that possessive phrases in PDE are used to express only a subset of the semantic relationships between nouns that were expressed by genitives in OE. Either a prenominal or a postnominal genitive could be used to express most of these relationships, although some semantic types are limited to prenominal genitives, and for others, the post-head position is most frequent, but not the only possibility (see section 3.9). I will make no attempt here to discuss all the sorts of relationships that the genitive case could convey. As Mitchell (1985: §1264) notes, there are numerous problems surrounding attempts to classify genitive into semantic or syntactic types, and many different terms and classification systems have been used. Two terms which are used by nearly everyone are subjective and objective, where the genitive plays a role corresponding to the subject or object of a nominalized verb. While ‘subjective’ genitives such as John’s love (for Mary) are still generally possible, and ‘objective’ genitives of some types, such as the president’s assassination are also still possible, some other types of objective genitives became impossible in ME or EModE, and I will focus here on one particular type: objective genitives in which the genitive refers to the target of an emotion. In PDE, an expression such as God’s love can only refer to the love which God has for someone, not the love which someone has for God. While such subjective genitives are also common in OE texts, the context of the examples in (3-11) and (3-12) makes

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it clear that the genitive refers to the target of the emotion, rather than the experiencer: (3-11)

a. mid micelre lufe þæs wealdendan with great:f.dat.sg love:(f)dat.sg the:m.gen.sg ruling cyninges king:(m)gen.sg ‘with great love for the ruling king’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_24:374.101.4729) b. nu we nellað bugan fram þissere now we not-will turn from this:f.dat/gen.sg andweardan worulde lufe present world:(f)dat/gen.sg love:(f)dat.sg ‘since we will not turn from the love of this transitory world’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_38:509.58.7585) (3-12) a. for his ege for 3.sg.gen fear ‘for the fear of him’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_12.1:120.357.2629) b. for his Drihtnes ege for his Lord:(m)gen.sg fear ‘for the fear of his Lord’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_17_[App]:537.83.3253) c. Witodlice mannes ege is smice gelic Truly man:(m)gen.sg fear is smoke like ‘Truly, the fear of (a) man is like vapour’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_38:515.242.7714) d. Me stent ege þysse andsware me stands fear this:f.gen.sg answer:(f)gen.sg ‘This answer fills me with fear’ (lit. ‘fear of this answer stands to me’) (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_38:281.27.6310) In (3-12c), for example, St. Andrew is exhorting his companions not to fear the transitory pain which men can inflict, but to focus on the eternal rewards which await them. As these examples illustrate, this type of genitive could appear either preverbally or postverbally. Only context will make it clear with such head nouns whether the genitive is objective or subjective, although as Mitchell (1985: §1278) notes, it is sometimes difficult to tell even with context whether a given example is to be interpreted as subjective or objective. A systematic investigation into the demise of the various types of now-obsolete possessives remains to be carried out. Such an investigation, done thoroughly, would be a dissertation-sized project, but in Chapter 4, I will look at the

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disappearance of the objective genitives with the (reflexes of) nouns of emotion ege, drede (which appears c1200), and lufu, with a view to testing some of the claims which have been made on the basis of the very sketchy data available at present.

3.7 Adnominal genitives: prenominal Example (3-13) illustrates the typical prenominal genitive which is called the ‘Saxon genitive’ in much of the generative literature: (3-13) ðæs cyninges gerefa the:m.gen.sg king:(m)gen.sg reeve:(m)nom.sg ‘the king’s reeve’ (cochronA-5,ChronA_[Plummer]:1001.18.1434) (ASC(A) 1001.21) In this type, the head N of the possessive phrase gets the case which is required by the syntax of the sentence; gerefa is nominative here because this phrase happens to be the subject of this sentence. Everything in the possessor phrase which is capable of indicating case is marked genitive. This genitive could be recursive: (3-14)

þæt he wære his fæder wuldres that he was his father:(m)gen.sg glory:(n)gen.sg beorhtnys brightness:(f)nom.sg ‘that he was the brightness of his Father’s glory’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_20:338.106.3941)

In this example, fæder must be construed as genitive although it happened to belong to a class of nouns which did not have a suffix for genitive case. As mentioned in section 3.5, an adjective following a genitive phrase is declined weak: (3-15) to þæs cyninges untruman bearne to the:m.gen.sg king:(m)gen.sg sick child:(n)dat.sg ‘to the king’s sick child’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_8:245.127.1497) Prenominal examples such as this with an adjective modifying the possessum are not very common; if the head of the whole possessive phrase was modified by an adjective, it was more common to postpose the possessor phrase, but examples become more common in later OE as postnominal genitives decrease in frequency in favour of prenominal ones (for some figures, see

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Crisma, to appear, and also section 3.11). Although such examples are not very common, they must be treated as structural possibilities. I will assume an analysis of these prenominal genitives parallel to the analysis given for PDE by Bresnan (2001: 133), by which the possessor phrase is in Spec, DP. I assume furthermore that this Spec position required genitive case, a requirement which would be satisfied by the selection of a noun inflected for that case. As explained in section 1.4, Bresnan assumes that the reason why the possessive phrase does not co-occur with a determiner modifying the possessor is that a definite determiner would be redundant because the possessive phrase marks the entire DP as definite. As will be discussed in section 3.14, there is actually disagreement on whether all genitive phrases should be seen as conferring definiteness on the phrase which contains them. Nevertheless, we can assume that the reason why possessive phrases and determiners didn’t usually co-occur is that they perform the same basic function, that of narrowing down the reference of a noun. 3.7.1 Possessives: determiners or adjectives Where do possessives fit into the phrase structure? There is considerable disagreement on details for PDE and the Germanic languages generally, but it is widely (but not universally) assumed by those adopting the DP hypothesis that pronouns, including the possessives, belong to the category of D. 15 However, many scholars have assumed that OE possessives were adjectives. Demske (2001: 190–197) presents detailed arguments, both morphological and syntactic, for this position. The syntactic argument concerns the co-occurrence of possessives and determiners and will be discussed in section 3.13. Here, I will discuss the morphological arguments. To start with, there is the fact that the inflections used by possessives are the same as the inflections of the strong adjectival declension. Demske notes that a similarity between adjectives and possessives is that both follow the strong declension when used predicatively. It would be more accurate to say that possessives (when they inflected at all, which the third person forms did not) always followed the strong adjective declension. Possessives could follow determiners in OE, as will be discussed in more detail below. Crucially, when they followed a determiner, they still had the strong inflection, as in example (3-44), as pointed out by Wood (2003: 116). If these possessives behaved like 15 However, there is disagreement about whether pronouns are heads only or are phrasal (either trivially, with the phrase consisting only of the D head, e.g. Julien 2002, or with a head and an empty complement, e.g. Panagiotidis 2003). If the possessive is considered to be phrasal, it can be assumed to be parallel to nominal genitives in being in the Spec of DP. In contrast, others, such as de Wit (1997) assume that possessives move to D, accounting for their complementary distribution with determiners.

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ordinary adjectives, we would expect weak inflection. Of course, it would be possible to say that most possessives were similar to oþer in always following the strong inflection, while the third person possessives were indeclinable adjectives (a few adjectives in OE belonged to this subclass). Such a treatment would weaken the argument that possessives behaved like other adjectives in their morphology. The fact that adjectives and first and second person possessives shared the forms of their suffixes does not, of course, show by itself that they belonged to the same word class; weak nouns and weak adjectives also had the same endings but are never treated as belonging to the same word class. Demske also claims that unlike determiners but like adjectives, possessives do not control whether a following adjective has weak or strong inflections. This is a surprising statement in view of the fact that the usual rule was that possessives did cause a following adjective to be inflected weak, a fact which is a stumbling block for the analysis of possessives as adjectives. Demske’s justification for her statement is that some examples are found in which an adjective following a possessive has the strong inflection. Since two adjectives occurring together (when not preceded by a determiner or a possessive/genitive) were also both inflected strong, the possessive is behaving like an adjective. It must be said first of all that Demske’s example does not prove her point: (3-16) mines agenes lifes my:n.gen.sg own:n.gen.sg life:(n)gen.sg ‘my own life’s’ (HomM 14 (Assman 8) 251) 16 The reason is that the adjective agen ‘own’ was not a typical adjective; it had the peculiarity that strong inflection after a possessive was normal for it (although weak forms are also found; see Mitchell 1985: §501). The strong form agenes is also found after genitive nouns: 17 (3-17) þurh miht ures drihtnes agenes through might our.m.gen.sg lord:(m)gen.sg own.n.gen.sg bebodes command:(n)gen.sg ‘through the power of our Lord’s own commandment’ (HomU 34(Nap 42) 235) 16 Even if this particular example were not rendered unconvincing by the use of agen, the fact that it is found in a manuscript which is an extremely late copy would do so. There was a good deal of use of strong forms in positions which historically required a weak form by the time this manuscript was created. 17 Mitchell does not mention this fact; he only discusses the inflection of agen after possessives. I found this example in Healey and Venezky’s Microfiche Concordance (1980).

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Since ures drihtnes can hardly be an adjective here, the fact that agenes appears after possessives cannot be taken as evidence that they belong to the adjective word class. If we wish to argue that possessives are not like determiners where morphology is concerned, what we need is evidence that strong forms which are not found after the determiners se and þes are found after possessives (and genitive phrases, which by this hypothesis are some sort of modifier phrase). Is such evidence forthcoming? Mitchell (1985: §§121–2) has a detailed discussion of the examples which have been adduced as illustrating the use of a strong adjective after a possessive. Mitchell shows that most of the putative examples (all of the Ælfrician ones, in fact) are to be attributed to the confusion between -um and -an in late OE. Because of phonological changes, these forms were becoming indistinguishable. It would be natural for scribes trying to maintain the old distinction hypercorrectly to use strong -um where weak -an would be correct historically. Mitchell does admit, however, that there are a very small number of examples which cannot be explained away in this way, and which must be treated as genuine. And in fact it does appear that the possessives and the demonstratives were slightly different in this respect, because Mitchell did not find any truly convincing examples of strong inflection after a demonstrative; he says (§118) that the existence of genuine cases is ‘a matter of considerable doubt’. While only most of the apparent examples can be explained as instances of -um/an confusion with the possessives, with the demonstratives this explanation covers all putative examples. Mitchell states without qualification (§112) that an adjective following a genitive phrase was declined weak. So although possessives and genitive phrases usually patterned the same way, it appears that there was a slight difference between the two in this respect. This difference is not hard to explain; since possessives were declined like strong adjectives, analogy might cause speakers/writers to treat them as the same occasionally; that is, an adjective following another adjective was normally declined strong, so the same pattern might be applied to an adjective following a strong-looking inflected possessive. It must be stressed, however, that the overwhelming pattern was that the weak inflection was used after a possessive; Mitchell (§122) notes that only 5.5 per cent of the adjectives which Heltveit (1977) found in his study have the unexpected strong inflection, and most of these are in situations where -um/an confusion is possible. With figures like these, it can hardly be said that possessives did not control the inflection of a following adjective. At any rate, we have seen that although the strong/weak distinction was based on definiteness, usage depended on several factors. To sum up, the morphological arguments that possessives were adjectives are not convincing, and the fact that adjectives following possessive

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constructions are quite regularly declined weak makes possessives similar to definite determiners, in comparison with the strong inflection found on an adjective following another adjective. At any rate, arguments based solely on morphology are not terribly convincing as evidence for syntax in general, and in section 3.13 I will show that the syntactic arguments which Demske and others have provided that OE possessives pattern with adjectives rather than determiners do not bear close scrutiny. 3.7.2 Low Prenominal As noted by Crisma (to appear), the fact that prenominal genitives in OE fell into two quite distinct types is frequently overlooked. We have already discussed the Saxon genitive, in which the possessor phrase is clearly a maximal projection, with the determiner agreeing in gender, case, and number with its genitive head. I will refer to this case marking pattern as ‘genitive agreement’. In what Crisma calls the ‘low prenominal’ genitive, however, the possessor has genitive case, but any determiner preceding it agrees not with it, but rather with the head of the larger possessive phrase. I will refer to this case marking pattern as ‘head agreement’. The difference is illustrated by (3-18a, b), both found in the same homily concerning the parable of the man who hired labourers at different times during the day. (3-18)

a. Witodlice ðæs hiredes truly the.m.gen.sg household:(m)gen.sg ealdor gehyrde wyrhtan head:(m)nom.sg hired workers ‘Truly, the head of the house hired workers’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_5:43.50.939) b. To swilcum sleacum cwæð se to such slack said the:m.nom.sg hiredes ealdor household:(m)gen.sg head:(m)nom.sg ‘to such slack workers the head of the house said . . . ’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_5:45.122.969)

With the expressions hiredes ealdor and hundredes ealdor, genitive agreement is rare; in fact (3-18a) is the only example which I found of this agreement pattern with hiredes ealdor in both volumes of Ælfric’s CH. I also found one example of genitive agreement with hundredes ealdor (ðæs hundredes ealldor at CHI 8.104, in subject position). This contrasts sharply with the twenty-two examples I found of these two expressions with head agreement, as in (3-18b). Crisma, looking at a much wider range of data, found that low prenominal

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genitive (i.e. head agreement) formed only seven per cent of the genitives she found overall in the OE texts which she studied. 18 In Chapter 4, we will look briefly at the question of whether these agreement patterns changed in those EME manuscripts in which agreement is still found. The different agreement patterns reflect different phrase structure arrangements, since the genitive noun in the (a) example must be at a higher level than the one in the (b) example. Crisma’s term ‘low prenominal genitive’ for the latter construction is apt, and while adopting ‘head agreement’ when focusing specifically on case marking patterns, I will adopt her terminology when focusing on the syntactic structure involved. I believe that the head agreement pattern can be considered the forerunner of the ‘descriptive genitives’ discussed in section 1.4. As with the descriptive genitive, the head agreement pattern was used when the combination of the possessor and the possessum formed an easily recognized ‘type’ of thing (Rosenbach 2006: 104 refers to them as ‘classifying genitives’). The expression hiredes ealdor referred to such a well-known type that it was used to translate Latin pater familias, and hundredes ealdor was the normal expression for ‘centurion’. It is hardly surprising, then, to find that the determiner usually agreed with the head of the possessive phrase in these expressions; the emphasis is not on the man (ealdor ‘person in authority’) as being associated with a particular hired or hundred but belonging to a particular class of person. Like the descriptive genitive of PDE, the genitive with head agreement was somewhere between a compound and a possessive phrase. Rosenbach (2006) discusses the fact that there is a sort of cline from true possessor phrase to compound in PDE, and the same seems to have been true in OE, with the difference being that the case marking of OE usually made it clear whether the Saxon or low prenominal construction was being used. While head agreement was usual with hiredes/hundredes ealdor, the same is not true with combinations of words which were not such fixed expressions and which sometimes show up with head agreement but more often appear as ordinary Saxon genitives (i.e. with genitive agreement). It is simply a matter of whether the writer was focusing on the combination as representing a recognizable type. In ME, the low prenominal genitive became considerably less frequent and has by now to a considerable extent been replaced by simple compounds such as homeowner, but the construction has not disappeared, and as Rosenbach shows, is more productive in PDE than is sometimes assumed. 18

Thomas (1931: 139–68) has a thorough discussion of head agreement patterns in OE and EME, but while he presents statistics for his head agreement types, he gives no figures for genitive agreement which would provide a comparison.

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I assume that in the low prenominal genitive, the genitive-marked noun was adjoined to an N, giving a structure N [[N] [N]]. 19 This sort of structure explains why the genitive N has no determiner of its own and also why no adjective intervenes between the two nouns. In the Saxon genitive, an adjective preceding the genitive possessor agrees with it and modifies the possessor, rather than the head of the larger possessive phrase. If the speaker wanted to modify the possessum with an adjective, it would be placed after the entire genitive phrase; if the meaning were ‘a certain man’s other son’, it would have come out as sumes mannes oðer sunu, where nominative oðer would agree with sunu. In the low prenominal genitive, an adjective agrees with this higher head, just as the determiner does, as in (3-19): (3-19) Se ylca Godes sunu the:m.nom.sg same:m.nom.sg God:(m)gen.sg son:(m)nom.sg ‘the same son of God’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_1:5.70.52) In this NomP, ylca agrees with sunu, the subject of the sentence, in case. Analysing the low prenominal genitive as having an N [[N] [N]] structure treats this construction as a sort of compounding that is regulated by phrase structure, which seems like the best way to account for the fact that the low prenominal genitive was highly productive (although less common than the Saxon genitive) and that the case marking of the first element was not idiosyncratic, as might be expected of a lexical process. Nouns in the low prenominal position get exactly the same case marking as they get in the Saxon genitive, varying with their inflectional class; we get in þæm fæmena mystre ‘in the women’s monastery’ (Gregory’s Dialogues, edited by Hecht 1965; GD_1[C]:4.28.20), where the determiner is inflected to agree with the dative neuter mystre while fæmena is the normal genitive plural inflection of fæmne ‘woman’. The noun in the low prenominal genitive takes the genitive inflection appropriate to its class and number: (3-20) Þas twa ælmessana cynn us sind to beganne these two alms:gen.pl kinds:(n)nom.pl us are to practise ‘We are to practise these two kinds of alms-giving’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_7:61.40.1208) 19 Crisma (to appear) notes that only non-branching genitives are admitted into the low prenominal construction in general, as is expected by this analysis. However, she found sixteen counterexamples which she considered to be genuine. There is therefore a possibility that we need to allow for N , not just for N, to be adjoined to N. Cf. the similar restriction on descriptive genitives in PDE, which is also occasionally violated (e.g. his old man’s belly), as Rosenbach (2006: 82) notes.

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In contrast, ordinary N+N compounds in OE such as sciprap ‘shiprope’ were formed without any case marking on the first element. While it would be possible to formulate a lexical compounding rule that combined a noun in the genitive case with another noun, there is no real difficulty in assuming annotations in the phrase structure which specify that the first N has genitive case and bears a poss function, parallel to the treatment outlined in section 3.3 for the more common Saxon genitive. The difference with the Saxon genitive would then be that the determiner, being outside the poss function, would get the case which was assigned (whether structurally or lexically) to the larger DP. However, nothing discussed here hinges on the technical details of how to get genitive case assigned in the low prenominal genitive; of most importance is the recognition of the head agreement case marking pattern and its relevance to the development of the modern descriptive genitive. The low prenominal genitive construction is one that merits further study.

3.8 Post-head genitives Possessor phrases in the genitive case could also be positioned after their heads in OE: (3-21)

a. of ðære foresædan cyrcan þæs of the:f.dat.sg aforesaid church:(f)dat.sg the:m.gen.sg eadigan Stephanes blessed:m.sg Stephen:(m)gen.sg ‘from the aforementioned church of the blessed Stephen’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_2:12.14.263) b. þæt wæron þa ærestan scipu deniscra monna that were the first ships Danish:gen.pl man.gen.pl þe . . . which . . . ‘those were the first ships of Danish men which . . . ’ (cochronA-1,ChronA_[Plummer]:787.4.582 (ASC(A) 787.5))

I assume that post-head possessives received their case from their structural position as NomPs inside larger NomPs, similar to prenominal possessives. On the other hand, partitives, in any position, got their case lexically. Since the post-head genitive was a full NomP, it is no surprise to find that post-head genitives could be recursive, that is, that they could contain another post-head genitive within them:

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(3-22) ðære ungemetgunge ðæs ymbehogan the:f.dat.sg excess:(f)dat.sg the:m.gen.sg care ðara uterra ðinga the:n.gen.pl outer:gen.pl thing:gen.pl ‘the excess of the care about the outer things’ (cocura,CP:18.141.2.957) The fact that the post-head genitive was a full NomP and so could have a Spec position also meant of course that a pre-head genitive could occur within a post-head genitive, and so we commonly find both low prenominal genitives, e.g. (3-23a) and Saxon genitives, such as (3-23b), within post-head genitives: (3-23)

a. ða trumnesse ðære Godes the:f.acc.sg strength:(f)acc.sg the:f.gen.sg God:(m)gen.sg giefe grace:(f)gen.sg ‘the strength of God’s grace’ (cocura,CP:36.247.6.1614) b. ðone tohopan deadra monna the:m.acc.sg hope:(m)acc.sg dead:gen.pl man:gen.pl ærestes resurrection:(m)gen.sg ‘the hope of the resurrection of dead men’ (cocura,CP:47.363.3.2456)

In (3-23a), the postnominal possessive phrase is ðære Godes giefe. The head of this phrase, giefe, must be construed as genitive in this postnominal position. 20 The example shows head agreement, because the specifically feminine ðære can only be agreeing with the feminine head giefe, not with the masculine genitive Godes. In (3-23b), ærestes, as the head of the postnominal possessor phrase deadra monna ærestes, is similarly in the genitive case, but this postnominal phrase itself contains a prenominal possessor phrase deadra monna. The adjective deadra agrees in number with monna, the head of this genitive possessor phrase, rather than with the singular ærestes. The different possibilities are similar to the possibilities we get in PDE with the option of using either another of phrase or a prenominal possessor phrase within an of genitive; i.e. the house of the friend of the girl or the house of the girl’s friend, but there is a crucial difference. Whenever we use an of genitive, we know that this of phrase relates directly to the noun which precedes it. We also know that a prenominal possessor phrase relates directly to the noun 20 In fact the feminine forms giefe and ðære could also be dative as far as the case marking goes, but a dative interpretation for either is impossible in this construction.

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which follows it. This makes either type of possessive within an of genitive relatively straightforward to process. 21 With the postnominal genitive in OE, however, processing would have been more complicated because it would not be immediately clear whether a postnominal genitive related to the noun which it followed or to another noun which was following it, that is, whether a genitive determiner following a noun began a phrase on the same level with that noun or the Spec of the sister phrase of the noun. This processing difficulty may have contributed to the disfavouring of the post-head genitive.

3.9 Partitive genitives Many knotty problems surround partitives, but it can be said briefly that the essence of partitive is relationship between sets and subsets. In the narrowest sense, the word partitive refers to a relationship of set and proper subset, for example five of the men refers to a subset of the larger set men. But it is convenient (and common practice) to use the term for a much wider range of relationships between sets, so for example Altenberg (1982) uses the term qualifying partitive for expressions like a kind of snake, where reference is made to the fact that snakes can be divided into subsets, and the referent in question is a member of one of those subsets. Partitives are usually regarded as involving a relationship of complementation rather than modification. Although distinction between complementation and modification is sometimes problematic, this distinction is reflected in the fact that genitive pronouns, rather than possessive forms, were used in partitives, as mentioned before and illustrated again in (3-24): (3-24)

Gif ure ænigum sum ungelimp becume If 1pl:gen any:dat.pl some mishap comes ‘If a mishap befalls any of us’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_35:267.234.6022)

Here, the uninflected genitive form ure is used instead of the agreeing form urum. The quantifier can be treated as requiring a complement in the genitive case, and so the simple genitive form is used, rather than the agreeing form, which would give the incorrect information that there was a relation of modification (but see footnote 12). 21 Processing complications arise, however, due to the fact that the possessive marker ’s is placed at the end of an entire NP, making a phrase such as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter structurally ambiguous, as pointed out by Jespersen (1942: §17.2). In this phrase, the possessor phrase could be either Pharaoh or the son of Pharaoh.

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I make no attempt here to cover all the uses of the partitive genitive in OE (such as its regular use with numbers over 19, which goes back to the origins of these numbers as noun groups). 22 My purpose here is to focus on some important differences between OE and PDE partitives to set the stage for a discussion of some changes which took place in ME. In PDE, it is not possible to use an -s possessive in partitives; it is impossible to say ∗ the men’s five instead of five of the men or ∗ a blameless reputation’s woman for a woman of blameless reputation (which can be seen as a partitive in a wider sense; it says that in reference to the class of women, this woman falls into the ‘blameless reputation’ subcategory). In OE, however, the genitive case was used in expressions of these types: (3-25)

a. ac hine ne mihte nanes cynnes but 3sg:m.acc.sg not might no:n.gen.sg kind:(n)gen.sg hæftnung gehealdan captivity:(f)nom.sg hold ‘but no kind of captivity could hold him’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_24:204.168.4542) b. and fægeres andwlitan menn and fair:m.gen.sg face:(m)gen.sg men ‘and men of fair countenance’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_9:74.56.1478)

The use of cynnes in (3-25) is so alien to PDE that it requires some discussion. The word kind has replaced kin in the meaning of ‘type, sort’, and it usually plays the role of head in a partitive construction. In this usage, we are following the more common partitive pattern of referring to the subset or partition first, then moving on to the larger set; any kind of restraint is parallel to any part of the prison. But it is also possible to start out with a noun referring to the larger class as the head, as in restraints of any kind or a woman of blameless reputation. In an important sense, the OE construction with cynn was similar to this later usage in PDE. There are two important differences. First, the genitive case, instead of an of phrase, was used. Second, since it is impossible for an of phrase to precede the noun of which it is the complement in PDE, the reference to the subset must follow in this construction. In OE, on the other hand, the genitive always came first. 23 22 Sprockel (1972: Chapter 8) has a useful discussion of the uses of the genitive case in the ASC(A), as well as information about the historical background of some uses of the genitive case. 23 This statement is based on searches for variants of cynn in the usual EWS and LWS texts and so may not hold true for some other texts. It was also possible, but less common, for cynn to be used as the head, as in þas twa ælmessana cynn ‘these two kinds of alms-giving’ (ÆCHom II, 7:61.40). In this example, it is the larger noun ælmessana which is in the genitive case, in a low prenominal genitive

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In having the reference to the smaller set come before the mention of the larger set, these special sorts of partitives are similar to ‘proper partitives’ in OE, where the quantifier or quantifying noun (such as dæl ‘part’) usually comes first and the genitive is in post-head position: (3-26) se mæsta dæl þæra arleasra the greatest part the:gen.pl impious:gen.pl ‘the greatest part of the impious’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_28:412.52.5492) With these ‘partitives proper’, however, the positioning of the reference to the larger set (in this case the genitive phrase) second was not obligatory, but just a tendency. In her study of genitives in Ælfric’s second series of Catholic Homilies, McLagan (2004: 61) found post-position in nearly 99 per cent (256 examples) of nominal genitives with quantifier heads, as in (3-21b). 24 Koike’s (2004: 243) findings are similar. There were some regular exceptions to these generalizations. One regular exception to the very robust restriction on pronouns occurring in the pre-head position is when the head is an interrogative pronoun: (3-27)

Hwilc eower ðreað me which 2pl:gen accuses me ‘Which of you accuses me?’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_13:127.13.2778)

This general exception is quite easy to understand in terms of processing, since the positioning of the interrogative word as near the beginning of the sentence as possible ensures that the listener/reader will know right away that a question is being asked. It is worth noting that Ælfric quotes the Latin Quis ex vobis arguet me before giving the OE translation of (3-27), where he does not follow the Latin in using a preposition for the partitive, but rather uses the more native genitive. In another type of partitive, sometimes called the ‘elective genitive’, which Mitchell (1985: §1295) characterizes as designating ‘one of a kind’, the genitive is regularly in the prenominal position: (3-28) Crist is soðlice ealra biscopa biscop Christ is truly all:gen.pl bishop:gen.pl bishop:nom.sg ‘Christ is truly the bishop of all bishops’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_1:7.166.138) construction, þas agreeing with the head cynn. The reason why cynn is made to be the head in this example is because Ælfric’s focus was precisely on the fact that almsgiving could be divided into types. 24 But my own study of the Orosius found that nominal pre-head partitive genitives were not infrequent in the Orosius. For a discussion of a possible shift from EWS to LWS, see section 3.16.

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In this case, however, this positioning has the effect of mentioning the larger class first, before designating the relationship to this set. McLagan (2004: 22) found that prenominal position was an absolute rule for this type in Ælfric’s Second Series. Although the positioning puts the larger class before the individual, it also puts the quantifier first, and this genitive quantifier is a clear signal that a partitive relationship is about to be expressed. One characteristic which distinguishes partitive in the prenominal position from other prenominal genitives is the ability of the head N to have its own determiner: (3-29) þæs oþres þone mæstan the:m.gen.sg other:m.gen.sg the:m.acc.sg greatest dæl hie geridon, part:(m)acc.sg they overtook ‘And they overtook the greatest part of the other’ (cochronA-1,ChronA_[Plummer]:878.1.878) (ASC(A) 878.4) In fact, when the partitive complement of an inherently partitive noun is in pre-head position and the noun-head has no determiner, it must be interpreted as indefinite: (3-30) and him of anim þæs fisces dæl ðe he and him of take the:gen.sg fish:gen.sg part that he gefangen hæfð caught has ‘and take from him a part of the fish which he has caught’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_10:84.108.1689) Note also that partitive genitives do not cause a following modifier to be declined weak, as the strong micelne in (3-31) illustrates: (3-31) & abiton þæs folces micelne and bit the:n.gen.sg people:(n)gen.sg great:m.acc.sg dæl part:(m)acc.sg ‘and bit a great part of the people’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_18:317.5.3379) There are three possible approaches that I can think of for dealing with the possibility of having two determiners in partitives such as (3-29). The first is to say that the partitive is dislocated to the left, but left in a position adjacent to the phrase containing the head, where it is impossible to tell that it does not

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form a constituent with that phrase. This approach has its attractions, especially since clear dislocation of a partitive phrase to the left is not uncommon (see section 3.10), but it is impossible to test whether the genitive phrase and the following determiner and noun form a constituent in examples such as (3-29), where no material intervenes between the genitive and its head. The second possible approach is to say that the partitive phrase is indeed inside a larger phrase which also contains the head and the determiner which goes with it, but it is in a position other than the Spec of DP, where the other genitives are found. Finally, we could say that the partitive is in the Spec of the DP as with all prenominal genitives. By the analysis which I suggested above of prenominal genitives, the D position is normally not filled for some reason or other when the Spec is filled (with a genitive phrase); we could suggest that in ‘normal’ genitive constructions the head essentially inherits the definiteness of the genitive (an analysis suggested for PDE by Jackendoff 1968) and so the determiner is not filled, but in partitives this sharing does not happen, allowing a separate determiner for the head. I will not attempt to argue the pros and cons of these approaches, but will merely observe that the ease of separability of partitive (discussed in the following section) and the possibility of a second determiner are both consistent with the fact that the partitive genitive did not have a determinative function, that is, its purpose was not to help the speaker/reader to identify the head noun. The usual post-head position of partitive genitives contrasts with the growing tendency towards prenominal position with other adnominal genitive types (see section 3.16 for further discussion).

3.10 Dislocated genitives and split genitives So far, we have seen that genitive NomPs could either precede or follow their heads. But there were three other basic possibilities. The first is that the genitive phrase might not be adjacent to its head at all, but external to the NomP which contained the head. I will refer to these as ‘dislocated’ genitives, without suggesting that any actual movement out of the possessive phrase takes place. The dislocation might be to the left or the right, as the examples of (3-32) show: (3-32)

a. Sum dæl eac þæs sædes befeoll some part also the:n.gen.sg seed:(n)gen.sg fell ‘A part of the seed also fell’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_6:52.10.1069)

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Genitives in Early English b. þæra worda wæron ðreo on anre tabelan the:gen.pl word:gen.pl were three on one tablet awritene written ‘Of these words, three were written on one tablet’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_12.1:114.135.2474) c. Ða hæþenan eac . . . heora leasra goda the heathen also . . . their false:gen.pl god:gen.pl gecneordlice munde & gescyldnysse bædon zealously guardianship and protection asked ‘the heathens also in like manner diligently implored the guardianship and protection of their false gods’25 (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_34:466.45.6715) d. þæt he sceal ðæra goda þe him God that he shall those:gen.pl goods:gen.pl that him God alænde agyldan gescead hu he ða atuge loaned yield account how he them used ‘that he shall render an account to God of those goods which God lent him, how he used them’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_19:333.231.3811)

The dislocations to the right are reminiscent of the possibility of extraposing prepositional phrases from the NomP where they belong semantically, as in a report has just appeared about corruption in the police force, and the translation which I have given for the (b) example shows the fronting of an of phrase which is still possible in some partitives. Although it is convenient to think of dislocations as processes, within an LFG framework they are of course not movements, and the information which is contributed by the different bits of a phrase is unified in the functional structure. Dislocation to the right, e.g. (3-32a), was by far the more common; in Ælfric’s two series of Catholic Homilies I found forty examples of dislocation to the right compared to only fourteen of dislocation towards the front of the sentence (the figures include partitive genitives with N head, but not ones with quantifier heads as defined by YCOE). 26 It is also notable that extraposition to the right was generally to the clause boundary. 25 Note that heora leasra goda ‘their false gods’ cannot be construed as a genitive object here (i.e. ‘they asked for guardianship and protection from their false gods’ because although the verb biddan sometimes appeared with a genitive object, it was the thing which was requested which could be in the genitive case, not the recipient of the request. 26 Koike (2004: 183) says that he found in his corpus (Ælfric’s CH1) that when an adnominal genitive was dislocated from its head, it was always dislocated to the right. However, my own investigation

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To what extent is it possible to generalize about when dislocation is possible? It is first of all particularly interesting to compare (3-32d) with a very similar warning about Doomsday given by Ælfric: (3-33)

Ælc lareow sceal agyldan gescead Gode ealra each teacher shall give account God:dat.sg all:gen.pl ðæra manna sawla ðe him betæhte the:gen.pl man:gen.pl soul:gen.pl that him entrusted syndon are ‘each teacher shall give account to God of all the souls which are entrusted to him’ (cocathom2, ÆCHom_II,_3:26.238.624)

The head gescead is identical in the two examples and the (dislocated) genitive phrases are parallel, but in (3-32d) the genitive phrase occurs to the left, while in (3-33), it occurs to the right. In the face of facts like this, it would appear that any attempt to account for what sorts of genitives appear dislocated to the left or to the right in purely structural terms is doomed to failure. On the other hand, it does appear possible to make some generalizations about the semantic types which appear in the dislocated genitives. To start with, partitives account for a high proportion of these genitives. To the examples which have already been presented in (3-32a, b) can be added (3-34): (3-34) Twa cynn sind martirdomes. two kinds are martyrdom:(m)gen.sg ‘There are two kinds of martyrdom.’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_42:314.132.7111) This example is of particular interest because when a genitive is adjacent to cynn as a head noun, that genitive is invariably preposed, as in example (3-20). I take this fact as evidence that the genitives which are extraposed to the right cannot be taken simply as variants of the postnominal genitive, and accordingly, I have not included any dislocated genitives in the figures I give for prenominal and postnominal genitives; unless otherwise specified, when I refer to ‘prenominal’ or ‘postnominal’ genitives, I am referring to ones which form a constituent with their heads. found three examples of separation to the left of adnominal genitives (and more examples of partitive genitives with a quantifier head) in this text, two of which I have reproduced as (3-32 c,d), along with four more examples in CH2. Koike treats this putative restriction on the dislocation of genitives from their heads to postnominal genitives as significant, reflecting the fact that postnominal genitives did not determine the head in the same way prenominal genitives did, but since the fact is not correct, the interpretation cannot be.

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Apart from partitives, it is possible to make some other generalizations about the semantic types of the genitives which appear in dislocated positions. Koike (2004: 224) observes that in his corpus when the genitive belongs to the type which he refers to as ‘process’ (or ‘processual’), that is, it is the nominalization of some action, the separation of the genitive from its head is found when the genitive refers to some semantic roles but not to others. Dislocation is found with genitives which play the role of theme or patient (as in the examples given in (3-32c,d)), but it is not found when the genitive phrase has the semantic role of agent or experiencer. Another place where dislocation never occurs is with a kinship relation (2004: 194). 27 I have confirmed these observations of Koike’s for both series of CH. The second instance in which the genitive cannot be said either to precede or follow the head is when it does both—that is, when it is ‘split’ around the head. Splitting a genitive was the norm when the genitive involved conjunction: (3-35) butan ðæs cyninges leafe & his without the:m.gen.sg king:(m)gen.sg leave and his witena advisers:gen.pl ‘without the permission of the king and his advisers’ (cochronA-2b,ChronA_[Plummer]:901.6.1163) (ASC(A) 900.7) A genitive was also likely to be split around the head when it involved apposition: (3-36) & þæs oþres eorles broþor and the:m.gen.sg other:m.gen.sg earl:(m)gen.sg brother Ohteres, Ohtor:(m)gen.sg ‘and the brother of the other earl, Ohtor’ (cochronA-2c,ChronA_[Plummer]:918.11.1241) (ASC(A) 914.13) There is an important difference between the ‘split’ genitive, where genitive inflection is used on both of the separated parts, and what I will refer to as the ‘combined’ genitive of ME, where a genitive inflection is combined with an of genitive, as in the kinges daughter of France. In the combined genitive, the of phrase does not modify the head daughter but rather the genitive kinges. 27 I think that Koike is correct in suggesting that the small number of apparent counterexamples to the generalization that dislocation does not occur with kinship relationships is to be explained by the fact that a kinship term such as father can also be used in a ‘processual’ way; the difference is essentially between being someone’s father (where pure kinship is expressed) and being a father to someone— where being a father refers to engaging in some sort of father-like activities.

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That is, such constructions could be paraphrased by a recursive structure such as Frances kinges daughter or the daughter of the king of France. 28 In the split genitive, however, the second genitive is nearly always either conjoined to or an appositive to the first one, rather than a modifier of it, as in (3-36). The qualification ‘nearly always’ is necessary because Crisma (to appear) points out a small number of examples in which the second genitive is not in fact in apposition to the first: (3-37)

Ðara abbuda stær & spel þisses the:gen.pl abbot:gen.pl histories and stories this:n.gen.sg mynstres, . . . on twam bocum ic awrat minster:(n)gen.sg on two books I wrote ‘I wrote the histories and stories of the abbots of this monastery in two books’ (cobede,Bede_5:22.484.15.4856)

In this example, þisses mynstres is a modifier of ðara abbuda. Crisma indicates that she found seven such examples (although she only illustrates with two examples and does not give the references for the others). Extending ‘appositive’ to include the conjoined examples, I will use the term ‘non-appositive split genitive’ to refer to such examples. I have searched for all non-appositive split genitives using the YCOE corpus and have located what I believe to be Crisma’s seven examples, without finding any more. 29 One generalization of interest which can be made about these seven examples is that it is the right side of the head that is the modifier of the other genitive; if the genitive were not split, the genitive which appears on the right would be lower in the phrase structure tree than the one on the left in the split genitive. So for example consider one of Crisma’s examples, presented here as (3-38): (3-38) Hi ða becomon to ðæs mynstres geate they then came to the:n.gen.sg minster:(n)gen.sg gate þæs halgan weres the:m.gen.sg holy man:(m)gen.sg ‘They then came to the gate of the holy man’s monastery’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_11:105.454.2257) We could paraphrase the split genitive in (3-38) with þam geate ðæs mynstres þæs halgan weres or possibly þæs halgan weres mynstres geate (although such 28 In this particular instance, the prenominal paraphrase would never be found simply because Frances king was not normally used—in OE, kings were spoken of as kings of people, rather than kings of regions, so we get francna cyning ‘the Frenchmen’s king’ (i.e. king of the French). 29 The five examples of these not given here are at Bede 4:31.378.5, Bede 5:8.406.23, Bede 5:13.430.2, BenR:73.133.20, and Mk_[WSCp]:1.1.

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a heavy phrase was unusual in the prenominal position), but ðæs mynstres þæs halgan weres geate would have a different and nonsensical meaning, ‘the monastery of the gate of the holy man’. Putting it differently, the generalization that the genitive directly preceding the head always relates semantically to that head, while a genitive following it need not, holds. When we have a small number of counterexamples to an otherwise valid generalization (in this case, that a split genitive involves apposition or conjunction) we have to ask whether the examples are to be counted as evidence of a genuine grammatical pattern or something else. For this reason, I have taken a closer look at the seven apparent examples of non-appositive split genitives. Of these seven, (3-37) is one of only three that cannot be alternatively explained as dislocation to the right out of the NomP to the clause boundary. Example (3-38), the only apparent non-appositive split genitive in Ælfric’s works that I know of, falls into this category. In this example, þæs halgan weres is at the end of the clause, making it impossible to say for certain whether it forms a constituent with the rest of the possessive phrase or should be considered a case of extraposition to the end of the clause. It is well known that extraposition applied more freely in general in OE than in PDE, and so the latter interpretation is certainly possible. It is also interesting to note that all three of the examples which cannot be explained in this way come from a single text: the OE translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Although this translation is not a slavish one, there are instances of rather awkward constructions in it which could be due to difficulties in rendering the Latin, and so the possibility that these split genitives are following the Latin arises. However, a comparison with the Latin version published by Colgrave and Mynors (1969) shows that the English order is quite independent of the Latin in these examples. I have already expressed my view that a Latinate style may be in use even when a given example may not be a direct calque on the Latin original, and it is certainly possible that the greater freedom of word order found in the Latin inspired the translator to stretch the normal grammar of his language a bit. It seems to me possible that the non-appositive split genitives would have seemed a bit un-English to an OE reader, an extension of the usual possible relationship between the genitive before the head and the one after it. I don’t think the non-appositive split genitive should be considered a genuine part of OE ‘core’ grammar, but it is interesting to note that all of the examples, including the ones at the clause boundary, are from manuscripts of the late OE period; all of them are from c1000 or later. It seems to me quite possible that extraposition of genitives to the clause boundary provided a ‘bridging context’ which paved the way for the combined

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genitive of ME, where the of genitive was semantically subordinate to the prenominal genitive. Split genitives at the end of the clause which could be analysed as either extraposed from the possessive phrase or inside it may or may not have increased in frequency in later OE; we simply can’t tell from the small number of examples. What we can say, however, is that if what were originally extraposed genitives were analysed by some speakers/writers as part of the possessive phrase in later OE, an extension to of phrases in EME would have been straightforward. Both the dislocated and the split genitives were made possible by the concord which was found on all elements of the NomP, allowing the relationships between the various elements to be signalled. However, as we shall see, these constructions became less common before the deflexion of EME which made them entirely impossible, as with the postnominal genitives generally. Superficially similar to the ‘split’ genitives are what might be called ‘double genitives’, in which both a prenominal and a postnominal genitive relate to the same head N: (3-39)

þæt he þæs landes wæstmbærnesse that he the:n.gen.sg land:(n)gen.sg fruitfulness:(f)gen.sg þara syfan geara ær beforan sæde, the:gen.pl seven:gen.pl year:gen.pl earlier before said & þara oþera syfan geara and the:gen.pl other:gen.pl seven:gen.pl year:gen.pl wædle barrenness ‘that he foretold the land’s fruitfulness of the seven earlier years, and the barrenness of the other seven years’ (coorosiu,Or_1:5.23.31.469)

The difference with the split genitives is that neither genitive is a modifier of or in apposition to the other. With the loss of postnominal genitives, it remained possible to relate two arguments to the head N by using both a prenominal possessive phrase and an of genitive, as in Mary’s picture of John.

3.11 What determined position? In some instances, as in the ‘elective’ genitive, the position of the genitive phrase in OE appears to have been completely fixed. With most semantic types, however, both prenominal and postnominal position were structurally possible, although one or the other might be strongly favoured. With these types, it does not seem possible to predict with complete accuracy whether a

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genitive will be pre-head or post-head (or indeed dislocated or split around the head), but some factors can be isolated which strongly favour or disfavour a particular position. I will make no attempt to discuss all these factors here, but will restrict myself to a few remarks on some particularly important points. The comments below refer only to non-partitive adnominal genitives, since the main facts concerning the placement of partitive genitives have already been discussed in section 3.9. Two parameters which are most likely to have a predictive value are animacy and ‘weight’. These factors are not easy to separate from each other, because animate genitives are most often ‘light’ in weight, consisting most frequently of a single (proper) noun or a pronoun, while inanimate genitives are more likely to consist of more than a single word to make the reference clear, resulting in a ‘heavier’ NomP. Rosenbach (2005: 634) argues that although there is a correlation between animacy and weight, they cannot be reduced to a single factor. Similarly, an animate genitive is more likely to be topical than an inanimate one, and there is some correlation between weight and topicality, since a highly topical referent is likely to need only a single word, while a nontopical one requires a ‘heavier’ phrase. When a genitive consisted of a human referent with high topicality and light weight, prenominal positioning was nearly 100 per cent predictable, at least by the late OE stage. There is general agreement that possessive forms were always in prenominal position, except in vocatives, e.g. Drihten min ‘my Lord’ (CH1 17.185). Mitchell (1985: §163) notes that the possessive is ‘sometimes’ found postnominally in the vocative and gives one example each from an early OE text and a late one. In §295, Mitchell states that postnominal possessives are essentially restricted to the vocative use in OE prose. Koike (2004: passim) and McLagan (2004: 13) give figures for Ælfric’s first and second series of CH, respectively. With proper noun possessors, the genitive occasionally appears postnominally, but prenominal position was the overwhelming rule; McLagan (p.18) gives a figure of 97 per cent. The peculiarities of the positioning of partitive genitives were discussed in section 3.9. The following discussion concerns genitive phrases headed by nouns, rather than by quantifiers. McLagan’s and Koike’s studies both show that only a couple of factors resulted in complete (or nearly complete) predictability concerning positioning, but various (sometimes conflicting) tendencies, some stronger and some weaker, can be separated out. McLagan found that animacy was a strong predictor of prenominal position, but with inanimate possessor phrases, positioning seemed to depend more on other factors, especially whether the

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genitive noun was accompanied by a determiner and an adjective. 30 She found (p. 39) that when animate and inanimate genitives were considered together, ones preceded only by a determiner were prenominal 69 per cent of the time, but when an adjective was added to the determiner, postnominal position was more common, occurring in 66 per cent of her examples. Separating out inanimate genitives, she found (p. 72a) that prenominality was still more common for the animate nouns, but had dropped to 53 per cent, while only 11 per cent of inanimate genitives preceded by both a determiner and an adjective were prenominal. Since roughly half (52 per cent) of possessor phrases consisting of only a determiner and an inanimate genitive noun were in prenominal position, McLagan concluded that inanimacy itself was essentially a neutral factor. Besides weight, another factor which favoured postnominal position was the presence of an adjective modifying the head of the possessive phrase, as in (3-21a,b). McLagan found such postposition of the genitive in 69 per cent of her examples in which the possessum was modified by an adjective, and also that in the minority with prenominal position, the genitive usually consisted of a single noun. However, examples such as to ðæs cyninges untruman bearne ‘to the king’s sick son’, presented above as (3-15), show that a branching genitive phrase in this position must be treated as a structural possibility. The disfavouring of the prenominal position in this circumstance probably had more to do with processing difficulties and discourse factors than with syntactic possibilities. One question of particular interest is whether any correlation can be made between semantic type and position of the genitive. For example, we might suppose that with the nouns of emotion ege and lufu, objective genitives might be found postnominally more often than was the case with other types of genitives. It appears, however, that the nature of the relationship of the genitive phrase to the head noun as a subject or object of the corresponding action does not affect the positioning of the genitive phrase, which is affected by the same considerations which affect the positioning of more obviously ‘possessive’ genitives. Looking at the overall percentage of non-adnominal genitives headed by nouns, 31 I found prenominal position with nominal 30 Crisma (to appear) gives figures to indicate that ‘heaviness’ of the possessor phrase did not have a discernible effect on positioning, but this appears to be because she did not differentiate between possessor phrases that consisted of only two elements (e.g. a determiner and a noun) and ones which contained three elements (determiner, adjective, and noun). McLagan’s figures show that in her corpus the degree of ‘heaviness’, not just the fact of branching or not, really mattered. 31 In this very rough count, I excluded quantifiers and numerals, but made no attempt to separate out other partitive uses with the remaining nominal heads. The figures do not include possessive forms (=pronouns).

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genitives in 61 per cent of the examples in the EWS texts and 80 per cent in the four LWS texts (80 per cent in CH, 77 per cent for BenRule, and 90 per cent in Wulfstan). The percentages of prenominal position for objective genitives with ege and lufu are similar but even higher: 66 per cent prenominal for the EWS texts and 89 per cent for LWS (87 per cent in CH, 90 per cent for BenRule and 95 per cent for Wulfstan. 32 It should be noted that subjective genitives may follow their head nouns, even in Late OE: (3-40) on tocyme þæs ecan deman at arrival the:m.gen.sg eternal judge:(m)gen.sg ‘at the coming of the eternal judge’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_40:530.177.8040) The postnominal positioning here presumably results from the fact that the genitive phrase is ‘heavy’. The conclusion must be that the semantic relationship between the head of the NomP and the genitive phrase was not important in determining the positioning of the latter.

3.12 Determiners in OE As is discussed in Ackles (1997), there is some debate over whether determiners had the same status in OE as in PDE, and in particular whether genitive phrases performed a ‘determiner-like’ function in OE, as they do in later English. It is first important to note that people do not always mean the same thing when they use the word determiner. Taylor (1996: 184) comments that determiners comprise items such as the articles, demonstratives, and quantifiers which ‘make a distinctive semantic contribution to the meaning of an NP’. An N or N denotes a kind of entity, and the determiner establishes reference (with the possible references being definite, indefinite-specific, or non-specific). A prenominal possessor phrase can be seen as a determiner because it has a similar function—it picks out a particular instance of a type of thing. This is a function-based definition of determiners. Others, however, reserve the word determiner for a word class, so possessor phrases could not be determiners in this sense although they are universally agreed to perform a similar function. CGEL (Payne and Huddleston 2002: 330) distinguishes the word class determinative from the determiner function which this word class 32 If anything, the objective genitives seem to have moved even further in the direction of prenominality than other genitives, although this apparent result is probably not statistically significant, and probably due to the fact that so many of the instances involve a single noun, since it is the love of God and the fear of God that are most often referred to. If the genitives consisting of only a possessive form were added to the figures, the prenominal figure would be even higher, since none of these are postnominal.

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typically performs. Koike (2004: 56, n. 9) makes the same distinction between form and function but uses the terminology in exactly the opposite way, as he notes. Like Koike, I will follow what I consider to be the more usual practice of using determiner for the grammatical category (word class). Before discussing the question of whether genitives in OE had a determinative function, it is necessary to have a look at the determiner system of the language at that stage. There is also some debate over whether a language which does not have a ‘real’ definite article has DPs, or only NPs, and this is pertinent to our discussion because OE did not have a word which was completely equivalent to PDE the (see below, and for an important discussion of the historical background, see Christophersen 1939). It is also generally accepted that OE had no indefinite article; an, the ancestor of PDE a(n) meant ‘one’. The word sum (>some) probably came closest to being an indefinite article; it is frequently translated as ‘a certain’. See Ackles (1997) and Wood (2007b) for arguments that OE had a DP. I will assume here without argument that if we are to adopt the DP analysis for PDE, it should be extended to OE, and will refer to the lexemes se and þes as determiners, following common practice. One question which has been much debated is whether OE had a definite article. The word se is sometimes best translated as ‘the’ but other times has a clearly deictic force, in opposition to þes ‘this’, which is unproblematically a proximal demonstrative. 33 Example (3-41) provides an excellent illustration of how se was sometimes merely used to establish definiteness and was at other times used as a deictic, by the same author in the same passage: (3-41) Men ða leofostan nu for feawum dagum we oferræddon þis godspel ætforan eow; þe belimpð to þyses dæges þenunge ac we ne hrepodon þone traht na wiðor þonne to þæs dæges wurðmynte belamp; Nu wille we eft oferyrnan þa ylcan godspellican endebyrdnysse; & be ðissere andweardan freolstide trahtnian. ‘Most beloved people, a few days ago we read over this gospel before you, which belongs to the service of this day, but we did not touch on the exposition further than belonged to the dignity of that day. We will now again run over that/the same evangelical narrative, and expound it with regard to this present festival.’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_7:232.1.1190) 33 Ðes is also sometimes referred to as the ‘compound’ demonstrative since it developed historically from the attachment of a deictic particle to an inflected form of the ‘simple demonstrative’ se (Wright and Wright 1982[1925]: §466). As with PDE this and that, the demonstratives se and þes could also be used as pronouns meaning ‘that one’ and ‘this one’, and se could be used instead of the personal pronoun he.

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As is clear from this passage, se and Þes were in opposition to each other as distal and proximal demonstratives, respectively. However, the only function of the use of a form of se with þone traht seems to be to indicate definiteness; the referent of traht ‘exposition’ is recoverable to the listener from the context. It is important to emphasize that although se was sometimes not used where the would be in PDE, it was by no means optional to mark definiteness; rather the sort of definiteness which had to be marked was a bit different, but se could not simply be left out where it was appropriate. þes is more easily dealt with than is se, since it is presumably to be treated in the same way as PDE this. However, there is no complete agreement in the generative literature on whether demonstratives should be treated as ‘maximal projections’ or as heads (D). Giusti (1997) argues that typologically, demonstratives and articles are quite different: demonstratives are maximal projections, while articles are heads; that is, demonstratives will be in a Spec position in a DP rather than the head of that phrase. One possible approach, by such an analysis, is to assume that while þes is always in a Spec position, se is variably in a Spec position (a demonstrative) or a head (a determiner). 34 The translation ‘that/the same evangelical narrative’ for þa ylcan godspellican endebyrdnysse would then reflect the fact that context leaves it unclear which position þa occupies in this phrase. Another approach to this ambiguity which does not tie the meanings to the phrase structure is to say our perspective from PDE is causing us to foist a dichotomy upon Ælfric and his listeners which was not actually part of their language; because we have two forms that and the expressing two clearly different meanings, we make the unwarranted assumption that OE speakers differentiated the two meanings just as sharply. The question of how clearly the different possible meanings of se were differentiated in the minds of OE speakers is related to, but not quite the same as, the question of whether there is only one position for this element, which would presumably be the same position as for þes, or two positions. Himmelmann (1997: 23) uses cross-linguistic data to argue that there is a cline (following the suggestion of Lehmann 1995) along which definite articles develop from pure deictic particles (and may undergo further development); (3-42) DEICTIC PARTICLE + CATEGORIAL NOUN → DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUN → DEMONSTRATIVE DETERMINER → WEAKLY DEMONSTRATIVE DEFINITE DETERMINER → DEFINITE ARTICLE → AFFIXAL ARTICLE → NOUN MARKER Adopting a cline of this sort, we can say that OE had developed from a language in which the demonstrative was purely a pronoun to one in which it 34

A similar suggestion was made independently by Wood (2007a).

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could still be used as a pronoun or a ‘weakly demonstrative determiner’. The cline approach can be married to the phrase structure approach if we assume that there is a point in the cline at which an element shifts from being phrasal to being a head. It is also typical of grammaticalization that an old construction will co-exist with a new one, so we can assume OE se was sometimes in one position, sometimes in the other, and sometimes not clearly in either. There is in fact a good reason to assume that se, unlike þes, had two positions in the phrase structure. This is the fact that se could follow possessive forms: (3-43) to minum þam ecan life to my:n.dat.sg the:n.dat.sg eternal life:(n)dat.sg ‘to my eternal life’ (coverhom,HomS_3_[ScraggVerc_8]:74.1214) I found 256 examples of this construction, which I will call the poss det construction, with se. In contrast, I found no convincing examples of this construction involving þes. On the other hand, both se and þes are found in the det poss construction, with the opposite order of demonstrative + possessive: (3-44)

a. Willaþ ge þæt ic eow agife þysne eowerne Will ye that I you give this:m.acc.sg your:m.acc.sg cyning king:(m)acc.sg ‘Do you wish me to give you your king/this king of yours?’ (coverhom,HomS_24_[ScraggVerc_1]:135.134) b. ðær ðu ðæt þin halige where thou that:n.acc.sg thy:n.acc.sg holy:n.acc.sg blod on eorðan agute blood:(n)acc.sg on earth shed ‘where you shed your holy blood/that holy blood of yours onto the earth’ (coverhom,HomS_40.3_[ScraggVerc_10]:94.1437)

The poss det examples furthermore always have an adjective; in (3-43) it is ecan ‘eternal’. 35 These facts will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7, where typological evidence will be used to support the evidence from the texts, but for now I will simply observe that the array of facts makes sense if we treat se as being able to occupy the D head position and make a couple of other assumptions. The first is that attributive adjective phrases also have a D position. When we recall that the weak adjectives were originally 35 A couple of possible counterexamples to this claim in very late manuscripts will be discussed in Chapter 7.

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nominalizations, it does not seem so surprising that they might retain nounlike characteristics in OE. Suppose the se in the poss det construction is the determiner which goes with the adjective. This leaves another position for the determiner that goes with the noun. If we extend the common assumption that possessives such as my belong to the category of determiner in PDE to OE, we can assume that the poss det construction was possible because there were two determiner slots in a NomP that contained an adjective phrase. We can furthermore explain why þes is never found in the poss det construction; it is always phrasal and cannot fit into the D slot of the adjective phrase. On the other hand, det poss is possible with both demonstratives, which are in the Spec position, leaving a D slot for the possessive to occupy.

3.13 Genitives and determiners in OE The poss det and det poss constructions provide good evidence for a welldefined D position in OE. Without reference to such a position, it seems impossible to give any account of the restrictions on the poss det and the differences with det poss. However, Koike (2004: 57) argues that the category of determiner, although it existed in OE, was not very sharply defined. Koike’s position on genitives as determiners in OE is that although some genitives did perform a determinative function, others did not. In particular, prenominal genitives could have the determinative function of narrowing down the reference of a NomP and making it definite, while postnominal ones never did. As Koike notes, there can be little doubt that the most frequently occurring types of possessives/genitives had the same sort of function that they do in PDE. If we agree that min in min sunu or min cyning had a determinative function, there seems to be no reason against the assumption that min was positioned in D in this sort of possessive phrase at least, given the arguments above that it was not an adjective, as is commonly assumed. The fact that we might want to give another analysis for e.g. partitives, where the function is not determinative, is another matter. There also seems to be no reason to assume that a phrasal possessor in a typical possessive phrase had a position different from the position which is commonly assumed for possessor phrases in PDE, namely in Spec, DP. The restrictions on the determiners se and þes seem to indicate that there was indeed a well-defined word class of determiners in OE. The question of a reanalysis of -s as a determiner in ME is a separate question which will be addressed in Chapter 4, but I find Koike’s argument that the deflexion which both the demonstratives and the genitive inflection underwent in EME made the -s and the demonstratives look more similar, leading to a more sharply defined class, unconvincing, since the distribution

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of -es (after a noun) was completely different from that of the demonstratives, which were not preceded by nouns. We will see in Chapter 4 that there are serious problems when we attempt to pinpoint any period when possessives started acting more like determiners in ME. However, Koike is following a well-worn path in suggesting that possessives/genitives were reanalysed as determiners in ME; variations on this general theme are suggested by Heltveit (1977), Nunnally (1985), Taylor (1996), Demske (2001), Rosenbach (2002), and Fischer and van der Wurff (2006: 120) among others. We have already dealt with the morphological arguments that have been brought forward to support the analysis of possessives as adjectives in OE, and it is now time to turn to syntactic arguments. Lyons (1986) argued that languages can be divided into two types: those that treat possessives like adjectives, e.g. Italian, and those in which a possessive is a determiner, e.g. PDE. In DG (determiner genitive) languages, a determiner and a possessive cannot co-occur, since they play the same function (or occupy the same slot), while in AG (adjective genitive) languages, co-occurrence is possible, as in Italian il mio libro ‘the my book’. Determiner-genitives establish reference (definiteness) within the NomP. A distinction between languages with an ‘adjective-like’ possessor and those with a ‘determiner-like’ possessor is also made in some highly formal treatments such as Longobardi (1996). Plank (1992b) shows that a simple dichotomy between AG and DG languages is problematic and that some languages, such as Spanish, where prenominal possessives are like determiners but postnominal ones are like modifiers, could be considered to be both AG and DG languages. However, Plank also assumes that OE has moved from being an AG to a DG language. The usual syntactic argument that OE had AG possessives is the fact that possessives and determiners co-occur in the det poss construction. But this co-occurrence can be explained if we assume that the determiner in this construction is a demonstrative, that is, a phrase in the Spec of DP, leaving a D slot for the definite determiner to occupy. The problem now becomes how to explain the lack of co-occurrence in PDE. In fact, as will be discussed in Chapter 7, it is not entirely impossible for a demonstrative to precede a possessive in PDE. There is no doubt that the det poss construction was a real grammatical possibility in OE, but it must be emphasized that it was very much a minority construction. The poss det construction was much more common, although still less common than a simple possessive. This means that the det poss construction of OE, which was not only optional but unusual, cannot be equated with the similar-looking combination of a determiner and a possessive in Italian. In Italian, it is simply not possible

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to leave the determiner out in il mio libro. 36 It is also notable that the det poss construction is used by some speakers of German, where it has a marked status, as discussed in Plank (1992b): (3-45)

diese meine Bücher these:n.nom.pl my:n.nom.pl books:(n)nom.pl ‘these books of mine’

Because of the marked status of such expressions in German, Demske does not consider them to be evidence against her analysis of German possessives as determiners in the unmarked expressions with a simple possessive in Modern German. I agree with Demske on this point, but it seems to me that the same logic applies to OE. The co-occurrence of determiners and possessives is the strongest argument that Demske (2001) uses to argue that possessives were not determiners in OE, but, as we have seen, it is not convincing. It becomes even less convincing when we realize that Demske (like most observers) does not even mention the existence of the poss det construction. This construction is highly problematic for the idea that the distribution of possessives and adjectives was the same in OE. While poss det is fairly common, and found in nearly every text of reasonable length, the order Adj Det is extremely rare in OE with what Mitchell (1985: §148) refers to as ‘central’ adjectives such as god ‘good’. 37 If possessives are ordinary adjectives, we need an explanation for why they come so freely before determiners. The existence of the poss det construction is problematic also for another syntactic argument which Demske brings forward. She notes that although the usual order for possessives and adjectives is Poss Adj, the order Adj Poss is sometimes found; she gives a single example: (3-46) of inneweardre his heortan of inward his heart ‘from his innermost heart’ (cogregdH,GD_1_[H]:2.21.21.187) The reason why this is supposed to show that the possessive is an adjective is that it was normal for two adjectives to occur together, but it would be odd for an adjective to occur before a determiner. As we have seen, the poss det construction plays havoc with this argument—if adjectives did not occur before determiners and possessives were adjectives, why could they occur before 36 Constructions which do not use a determiner, e.g. Gianni mio ‘my Gianni’, are possible with proper names and kinship terms if the possessum precedes the possessive form, but this fact is not relevant to the argument being made here. For a detailed discussion, see Longobardi (1996). 37 However, the order Adj Poss is common in some ME poetry, but in such poetry the order Adj Det is also found; see Chapter 4.

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determiners? Aside from this problem, however, it must be noted that all the examples with the putative order of an adjective before a possessive involve a very limited class of ‘adjectives’ referring to directions such as innweard ‘inner’, forweard ‘forward’, eastweard, ‘eastward’ etc. Mitchell (1985: §148) notes that these ‘adjectives’ occur in varying positions. 38 Most importantly for us, they can occur before determiners, as in (3-47): (3-47)

of inneweardre þære byrgenne from inner/inside the:f.dat/gen.sg town:(f)dat/gen.sg ‘from within the town’ (cobede,Bede_3:6.174.28.1716)

This is enough to show that a combination of such an ‘adjective’ and a possessive is not incompatible with an analysis whereby the possessive is a determiner, rather than another adjective. In fact, so far as I know, the -weard adjectives, although they may precede determiners, do not precede ‘ordinary’ adjectives, so their co-occurrence with possessives seems more an argument for the determiner status of possessives than otherwise. I suggest that although these words are certainly adjectives in some uses, they might also be nouns (or possibly prepositions) meaning things like ‘inner part’ etc. 39 Such nouns would take genitive complements, explaining why we have e.g. æt foreweardan his gesceapes ‘at the front part of his penis’ at CH1 6.53, where gesceapes is unambiguously the genitive form of gesceap ‘penis’; an analysis whereby foreweardan is a noun seems at least as plausible as one in which it is an adjective here. Similarly, in (3-47) þære byrgenne is ambiguously dative or genitive in case, so it could be a genitive complement of inneweardre, which could be treated as a feminine noun (in the dative case because it is the object of of ). At any rate, the behaviour of possessives with such elements does not establish a difference with determiners, but rather a similarity. The other syntactic argument which Demske gives is similarly weak. She notes that possessives can sometimes follow nouns, the same as ordinary adjectives. This argument fails for a number of reasons. It will only work if we can show that possessives and determiners were different in this respect but possessives and adjectives were the same. To start with, we note Mitchell’s (1985: §163) observation that demonstratives and possessives both sometimes follow the noun in poetry—so there is no argument to distinguish possessives from determiners. It is true that more of a difference between demonstratives and possessives seems to be found in prose, where postnominal 38 It must be noted that Mitchell does not actually mention innweard in his list, but it seems to belong in this group. 39 Wood (2007b) similarly argues that the -weard examples do not involve true adjectives; her suggestion is that they were used adverbially, but this would not seem to explain their case marking.

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demonstratives are not found. But as discussed in section 3.11, the postnominal position of possessive forms in OE prose was essentially restricted to vocative use. The postnominal position for adjectives was not common, but there was no restriction similar to the restriction on possessive forms in the postnominal position. It is simply not possible to say that adjectives and possessives patterned the same way. Proper nouns in the genitive case are also found in the postnominal position, although not commonly. While these genitive nouns did not have the same restriction on them (to vocative use) as did pronouns, an analysis of possessive pronouns in postnominal position as similar to genitive nominals seems more plausible than an analysis of them as adjectives. That is, genitive nouns are to be analysed as phrases and although possessives could be heads (D), there is nothing to prevent them from occurring as phrases consisting only of the head. The restrictions on the various types of postnominal genitives are better explained in terms of factors such as topicality, animacy, and weight than in terms of word class. 3.13.1 Quantifiers, determiners, and genitives in OE One matter which should be mentioned here is how genitives interacted with words such as eall ‘all’, sum ‘some’, feawa ‘few’, manig ‘many’, etc., and the cardinal numerals. Most of these words are traditionally classed as adjectives (or pronouns, according to their position), but their descendants are usually called ‘quantifiers’ by linguists, although grammars such as CGEL (Payne and Huddleston 2002: 356) treat such words as ‘determiners’, a cover term for three word classes which includes pre-determiners (e.g. all), central determiners (e.g. the) and post-determiners (e.g. numerals). The facts surrounding these words are very complex in PDE and they were no less so in OE, and no attempt will be made here to describe the behaviour of all of them, but only to mention some facts which are of particular relevance to the behaviour of genitives in OE. I shall refer to them all as quantifiers, reserving determiner for the demonstratives se and þes. The first fact to mention is that these words were highly constrained in their positioning already in OE. As in PDE, words referring to parts of sets (including the whole set, i.e. eall) preceded the determiners (se and þes in OE), while numerals followed the determiners. This is not to say, of course, that the rules governing their positioning were the same in all respects. Most strikingly, in PDE although either all the men or all of the men is possible, ∗ all they is completely out; we must use a partitive with of and say all of them (or they all). In OE however, ealle hi, literally ‘all they’ was the normal way to express this idea.

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We furthermore find sume hi, literally ‘some they’. While all and some are parallel in PDE in requiring a partitive construction with of when modifying a pronoun, the parallelism does not extend to all definite NPs; it is not possible to say ∗ some the men although all the men is fine. This was not the case in earlier English, however; what Mitchell (1985: §402) refers to as partitive apposition, that is, the juxtaposition of a quantifier and a NomP to convey a partitive meaning, was possible even into EModE, as in Shakespeare’s to some my standers by (Tr. & Cr. IV. v. 190) (for details on OE, see also Heltveit 1969 and for some EModE examples see Rissanen 1999: 205; see also Mustanoja 1958). The same construction is found with cardinal numerals, for example twegen his halgan ‘two of his saints’ at ÆLS 4.65, as discussed by Mitchell (1985: §550). In PDE some men and five men, where the set of men is not further delimited by the use of a determiner, are still possible, but partitive of must normally be used when a determiner (including a possessive phrase, e.g. five of John’s books) is present. Partitive apposition is now limited to all and both (e.g. both the books) which share the characteristic that they refer to a set in its totality, rather than to part of a set. For a thorough discussion of the use of the genitive partitive or partitive of apposition with sum, see Mitchell (1985: §401–414). Mitchell shows that the normal rule is that singular sum is followed by the genitive, for example sum his þegna ‘a certain thane of his/belonging to him’ (ÆHom 8.151), while plural sume is normally used in partitive apposition, e.g. sume hi ‘some of them’, although the plural is also occasionally found with a partitive genitive (§395). NomPs follow the same general rule as pronouns, so we get sume þa boceras, where everything is in the nominative case, used in some translations of Matthew 9.3 to render the Latin quidam de scribis ‘some of the scribes’. The combination of a quantifier and a determiner or possessive construction to convey a partitive meaning must be considered a genuine OE usage, strong enough to override Latin models in close but not slavish translations.

3.14 Definiteness and genitives in OE The question of whether OE possessives/genitives are to be treated as having a determiner function is connected to the question of whether they caused the possessor phrase to be definite. It is frequently assumed that prenominal possessives cause the entire possessive phrase to be definite in PDE, but did not have this property in OE, for example by Heltveit (1977) and Wood (2003, 2007a). It is therefore necessary to discuss the interaction of definiteness and possessives in PDE.

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Taylor (1996: Chapter 7) reviews the literature on the question of what sort of reference prenominal possessor phrases bring to a NomP in PDE; while it has often been assumed that these phrases are inherently definite (and therefore lend themselves to an account whereby definiteness is a property of certain structural positions), Jackendoff (1968) argues that a possessive phrase with an indefinite possessor could itself be indefinite, and Langacker (1991: 168) used examples such as We want some teenager’s car to enter in a demolition derby, but up to now we weren’t able to find one to make a similar argument—the acceptability of one establishes non-specificity, while it, which requires a definite antecedent, is not an acceptable alternative to one. I agree with Taylor’s conclusion that prenominal possessives are normally compatible with definite reference, but that definiteness and specificity cannot be regarded as inherent properties of the construction but come rather from the usual use of the possessor phrase, which is to identify which possible referent(s) of a class of things are being referred to. If we agree that definiteness is not a property which is acquired by being in a particular position (i.e. D), then there cannot have been a general change from OE to later English in the ‘inherent definiteness’ of prenominal possessives. Even if we do regard definiteness as a property residing in a particular structural position, however, the most common argument which is made that OE possessor phrases were different from later English ones in the matter of definiteness simply does not work. This is the fact that possessives could co-occur with indefinite elements in the low prenominal genitive discussed in section 3.7.2. As I have shown, this is a very different construction from the majority of prenominal genitives. The fact that it was possible to say an cyninges þegn sometimes translated as ‘a thane of the king’s’ (but probably better rendered as ‘one thane of the king’) in OE does not prove that þæs cyninges þegn ‘the:gen king:gen thane’ was indefinite any more than the fact that we can say ‘an old persons’ home’ proves that ‘those old persons’ home’ (i.e. the home of those old persons) is indefinite in PDE. In both the low prenominal genitive of OE and its descendant the descriptive genitive, the genitive is low in the phrase structure tree, and no one would claim that it is in a determiner position, since the determiner in the construction goes with the head, not with the genitive. Wood (2003: 119) makes an interesting but unsuccessful argument that possessives were not definite in OE on the basis of interlinear glosses in the Vespasian Psalter (VP, edited by Kuhn 1965), and repeats the suggestion in Wood (2007a: 358). Wood notes that a combination of a demonstrative before the possessed noun and a possessive after the noun is found only in glosses, as in (3-48):

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(3-48) ðone halgan his that/the:m.acc saint:nnom his Latin:sanctum eius ‘his saint’ (PsGlA (Kuhn) 446) The demonstrative is an addition; halgan his would adequately gloss sanctum eius, but the scribe has added ðone. This leads Wood to suggest that the glossator felt a need to add a demonstrative to render the definiteness of the Latin possessive, since the English possessive by itself could not do this. There are several problems with this argument. For one thing, one or two examples cannot be taken to prove that the scribe felt a demonstrative was necessary as a general rule to render Latin possessives. I have not carried out a systematic investigation into the co-occurrence of demonstratives and possessives in VP, but a quick look shows that the overwhelming majority of possessives are used without a ‘supporting’ demonstrative. Second, it is not only with possessives that a demonstrative is added; at Psalm 7.6 we have inimicus translated as ‘se feond’, where there is no possibility that it is used to convey a definiteness that the Latin had, since Latin had no definite article. Latin inimicus could mean either ‘an enemy’ or ‘the enemy’, but the context makes the latter one the correct one here, leading the scribe to insert a determiner. I believe that it is likely that the scribe added a determiner in (3-48) because the ambiguous case and number marking of the weak noun (or adjective) halgan, which could be plural of two cases and singular in any case except the nominative, could have caused problems of interpretation of a sort that were not present in the Latin, where the case and number of sanctum are unambiguous. It is always interesting when a scribe adds words to an otherwise slavish gloss of Latin, and a systematic investigation into the situations where a determiner is added in VP would be highly desirable, but the addition of a determiner to a Latin possessive form cannot be taken as evidence that a scribe felt a need to make the corresponding English form more definite. I see no reason at all to assume that Latin possessives were any more definite than OE ones—after all, Latin was also a language in which demonstratives and possessives could co-occur, so therefore an AG language by the standard reasoning. As I have stressed above, morphology is not a completely reliable guide to definiteness in OE. The fact that adjectives declined weak after both possessives and nominal genitive phrases suggests that possessive phrases were definite rather than otherwise. It should be kept in mind, however, that a postnominal genitive did not affect the morphology of an adjective preceding it; Mitchell (1985: §113) gives the example of yðigendre sæ þissere worulde ‘from

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the surging sea of this world’ (ÆCHomII 17:166.181) 40 to illustrate this point. In this example, sæ ‘sea’ rather unusually lacks a determiner, and so the adjective yðigendre ‘surging, wave-tossed’ has the strong dative feminine singular suffix -re instead of weak -an. The noun sæ is presumably to be thought of as definite, however, and so the form of the adjective does not seem to indicate definiteness directly, at least at the late OE stage, but simply syntactic position after an element of the right type.

3.15 Adverbal genitives As mentioned in section 3.2, a few prepositions and several verbs in OE governed genitive objects. I will not discuss the objects of prepositions here, but will make a few remarks on the objects of verbs. See section 3.16 on the development of these verbs in EME. One important point to be made is that genitive case was by far the least common case for an object; in his more comprehensive study into a single text, Koike (2004: 26) gives a figure of 236 genitive objects (of monotransitive verbs) in Ælfric’s CH1, as opposed to 675 dative objects and 3523 accusative objects. Another important point is that with some of the verbs which took genitive objects, alternatives had appeared even in the EWS texts. So for example we find that although ehtan ‘to persecute’ is found only with genitive objects even in late OE, others, such as tweonian ‘doubt’ and wilnian ‘desire’, are found with alternatives to genitive objects already in the EWS texts. One generalization that can be made about verbs which can govern genitive objects is that these are never highly transitive verbs. With some verbs, such as tweonian, the alternative which is sometimes found to a genitive object is a prepositional phrase: (3-49)

a. hu mæig ðe nu twynian þæs ecan how may 2sg:dat now doubt the:n.gen.sg eternal leohtes light:(n)gen.sg ‘how may you now doubt concerning the eternal light?’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_10:263.130.1924) b. Gif hwam twynige be æriste if who:dat doubts about resurrection ‘If anyone doubts about the resurrection’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_35:482.198.7058) 40

Mitchell’s reference of ÆCHom ii. 290.33 to an earlier edition.

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With some verbs, such as helpan ‘help’, the alternative to a genitive object was a dative object. It is of interest to note that despite the low transitivity of the verbs allowing genitive objects, an accusative object was also an alternative for some. The alternation with geliefan ‘to believe’ is illustrated in (3-50): 41 (3-50)

a. & we his gelyfað þe hit ne gesawon: and we 3sg:n.gen believe who 3sg:n.acc not saw ‘and we believe it who did not see it’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_12:280.137.2310) b. Se þe understandan ne mæg. he hit sceal he that understand not may he 3sg:n.acc shall gelyfan. believe ‘He who cannot understand, he shall believe it’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_20:337.69.3902)

It does not seem to be possible to predict with certainty which verbs will appear with only a genitive object, or when a genitive object will be used when an alternative is available, although certain observations can be made. For example, with the verb geliefan ‘to believe’, the essential difference between a prepositional complement and an object which exists in PDE was already in place in OE: we find a preposition (on) only when the meaning is ‘believe in’ (e.g. in God or idols) while an object of the verb, usually genitive or accusative, is used in the meaning of ‘believe a fact’, ‘believe a proposition’. The converse is not quite true, however, since there is at least one example in Ælfric’s writings of the dative used in the ‘believe in’ meaning: (3-51) hi ne þurh godcundum tacnum ne þurh liflice not through living they not through divine signs lare þam soðfæstan hælende instruction the:m.dat.sg true m.dat.sg Saviour:(m)dat.sg gelyfan noldon believe not-would ‘They would not believe in the true Saviour, either through divine signs or through living instruction.’ (cocathom1,ÆCHom_I,_28:413.102.5527) It seems impossible to explain why Ælfric chose to use a dative object here when his normal usage in his very frequent discussions of belief in Christ is to use the expression geliefan on. 41 Parallelism with the accusative object of understandan may have encouraged the use of the accusative in (3-50b), but the (a) example shows that parallel case use was not essential.

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It seems equally impossible to explain why a genitive object is used in (350a) while the accusative case is used in (3-50b). Koike (2004: 265) mentions the ‘entrenchment of a transitive clause structure’ as one factor which interferes in OE with the use of genitive case where one might expect it according to its meaning. I agree that change in the direction of more prototypical patterns (nominative subject, accusative object) was probably a factor in the disappearance of genitive objects, but I also believe that the original meanings of the cases had become less sharp over time, partly because of the syncretism of some cases and possibly also because of changes in the semantics of some verbs. By the OE stage we are seeing the results of centuries of changes such as the fixing of a given case with a particular verb which may then undergo a shift in meaning which makes the reason for the use of that case with that verb seem exceptional. I believe that one reason why prepositions were being employed as an alternative to the genitive with some verbs already by the OE stage is that these prepositions were more capable of giving a specific meaning than the genitive case was by then.

3.16 Changes from EWS to LWS? There is general agreement that there was a gradual change in the positioning of genitives in OE, with postposition becoming less common. Evidence for the move away from postnominal genitives comes from two basic sources. The first is a comparison of earlier and later versions of the same text. Here, the translation into English of Gregory’s Dialogues (GD) has been a favourite hunting ground for scholars looking for changes from earlier to later OE. GD was translated from Latin by Bishop Wærferth of Worcester at King Alfred’s command sometime between the early 870s and early 890s (Yerkes 1982: 9). An anonymous revision was made roughly a century to a century and a half later, between 950 and 1050. Yerkes comments that the two versions may be separated by as little as 60 or 70 years or as much as 175. Since the reviser made some substantial changes, it is natural to ask whether these are due to diachronic change. The answer is not necessarily ‘yes’ because when we only have one text from two different periods to compare, differences could be due to a simple difference in style between the two writers, especially when we are dealing with a translation from Latin, where the translators might differ in how closely they followed the syntax of the Latin text. To make matters worse, we can’t even really say that the language of the two manuscripts represents earlier versus later English. The reason is that the original version is preserved only in manuscripts a century or more after its composition, so it is possible that intervening scribes have altered the syntax of the original text in ways

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which would make it more like LWS. Nevertheless, if a comparison of the versions shows a difference which is consistent with the differences between the anchor EWS texts and LWS texts, diachronic change is a plausible explanation. Yerkes (1982: §33b) notes that the Reviser of GD moves ‘all or part’ of an attributive genitive (or dative) noun or noun phrase ‘on almost every page’ from after its head to before, and that such changes greatly outnumber the revisions in the other direction. While some of these changes could be attributed to a desire to make the wording closer to that of the Latin original, more often the change has the opposite effect. Yerkes does not give figures, but Timmer (1939: 51–52) gives an exhaustive comparison of genitives in the two versions, and Mitchell (1985: §1305) presents figures based on Timmer’s examples showing a decrease in the frequency of postnominal genitive NomPs (excluding proper names) from 46 to 34 per cent. A comparison of two texts is suggestive but cannot by itself establish a diachronic change. However, in this instance the evidence from GD tells the same story as evidence of the second sort, namely a comparison of the anchor EWS texts and selected LWS texts, and so it may be taken as established that at least in the matter of the positioning of the genitives, the differences between the GD versions represent real differences between EWS and LWS. The most complete figures comparing EWS and LWS are given by Thomas (1931). Although Thomas’ exact figures might need to undergo some modification in the face of the considerations discussed in section 1.1, his general conclusions in this respect have been confirmed by later studies. Most recently, Crisma’s (to appear) study stresses that the reduction in frequency of postnominal genitives was well under way in OE, before the reduction of case inflection was seriously under way. One problem with both these studies is that they do not distinguish between the date of composition of a text and the date of the manuscript containing a text. They also do not separate out the ‘anchor’ EWS texts described in section 3.1 from the others. For this reason, I have used CorpusSearch on the anchor EWS texts and the four LWS texts discussed in section 3.1 to find prenominal and postnominal genitives of various types. Figures for recent investigations into CH1 and CH2 are available in Koike (2004) and McLagan (2004), respectively, and I will also draw on these where possible, but statistics must always depend on the questions being asked, and so the figures from these works cannot always be used in answering the particular questions which I wanted to ask. For Ælfric CH1, Koike (2004: 11) found that 87 per cent of adnominal genitives overall were in the prenominal position, and McLagan (2004: 12) gives a similar figure of 84 per cent in CH2. Such overall figures are very useful for giving a picture of the prototypical adnominal genitive, but it is also necessary

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Genitives in Early English Table 3.1 Two-element genitives in the EWS texts

ASC(A1) Oros CP curaC curaPref EWS Total

Prenom

Postnom

Total

% pre

% post

15 85 181 2 0 283

13 30 256 13 2 314

28 115 437 15 2 597

54% 74% 41% 13% – 47%

46% 26% 59% 87% – 53%

to separate out the types for which positioning was almost completely predictable from ones in which there was a good deal of variation. We have seen that the branching genitives are one type where there was variation between prenominal and postnominal position. It is therefore of interest to consider whether there is a difference in frequency of the two positions with this type between my standard EWS and the LWS texts which have been discussed in the literature. Since genitives consisting of more than two elements tend to be postnominal in both periods, I considered that looking at what happens with genitives consisting of only two elements, a Det + N, should give a good idea of whether a change took place. Table 3.1 shows the results of my investigation into the EWS texts for this type of genitive. One striking fact about these figures is the amount of variation in the EWS texts, ranging from 41 per cent prenominal in CP to 74 per cent prenominal in Oros. In contrast, much less variation is found in the LWS texts, as indicated in Table 3.2, where the preference for prenominal genitives is simply a matter of degree. The range of variation in these texts is only from 77 per cent to 86 per cent, and a chi-square test on the overall prenominal and postnominal figures for the two periods gives a value of 208.483, p = .0001, leaving no possibility that the difference is due to chance. Table 3.2 Two-element genitives in four LWS texts

CH1 CH2 Wulf BenR LWS Total

Prenom

Postnom

Total

% pre

% post

389 373 18 89 869

77 77 3 24 181

466 450 21 113 1050

83% 83% 86% 79% 83%

17% 17% 14% 23% 17%

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Table 3.3 Positioning of genitives with dæl and healf in EWS and LWS texts PartN

Prenom

Postnom

Total

% Pre

% Post

ASC (A1) Oros CP Total EWS

5 10 1 16

8 11 1 20

13 21 2 36

38% 48% – 44%

62% 52% – 56%

CH1 CH2 Wulfstan BenRule Total LWS

1 1 0 1 3

22 35 1 1 59

23 36 1 2 62

4% 3% – – 5%

96% 97% – – 95%

Partitives, whether dependent on a quantifier or an inherently partitive noun, did not participate in the general move towards pre-head position. As noted in section 3.9, McLagan and Koike both found that post-head positioning was the rule with partitive genitives in Ælfric’s writings. It is noteworthy that the nearly absolute rule in Ælfric’s writings that partitive genitive nouns should be in post-head position even overcame his usual tendency to put single nouns in the pre-head position: (3-52)

An subdiacon bæd þone halgan wer sumne a subdeacon asked the holy man some:m.acc.sg dæl eles part:(m)acc.sg oil:gen.sg ‘A subdeacon asked the holy man for a portion of oil’ (cocathom2,ÆCHom_II,_11:104.413.2222)

In fact, Ælfric’s usage here forms a contrast with the EWS texts. Table 3.3 compares the positioning of genitives with two partitive noun heads, dæl ‘part’ and healf ‘half ’ in EWS and LWS texts. 42 In the texts of both periods, post-head position is common with the partitives headed by dæl, but the EWS texts yield some examples of fairly ‘heavy’ partitive genitives in prenominal position: 42 When the total number of examples is very small in a particular text, percentages for that text are meaningless, so I have inserted a dash in the cell for the percentage.

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(3-53) & eac hira horsa & hira wæpna and also their horse:gen.pl and their weapon:gen.pl micelne dæl great:m.acc.sg part:(m)acc.sg ‘and also a large part of their horses and their weapons’ (cochronA-2c,ChronA_[Plummer]:917.3.1230) (ASC(A) 913.8) It is unfortunate that the two non-Ælfrician texts yield too few examples to rule out the possibility that Ælfric’s use was idiosyncratic, 43 but if Ælfric was typical, it appears that the shift was not simply towards prenominal position for genitives, but also towards a greater differentiation of genitive functions by position: by LWS partitive genitives normally belonged in the post-head position while the other genitives belonged in the prenominal position. Since the partitives show a shift to post-head position, it is of interest to note that no similar change took place with the ‘objective’ genitives with the nouns of emotion: lufu ‘love’ and ege ‘fear’. Instead, these genitives participated in the general tendency toward more prenominal genitives, as the figures for the two periods presented in section 3.11 indicate. It is interesting also to note the clear evidence of independence from Latin models in this respect provided by Wulfstan’s comment timor Domini on Leden, Godes ege on Englisc ‘timor Domini in Latin, that is, Godes ege in English’ (WHom 9:21.699). Partitive genitives differ from the others in that the genitive case is clearly lexically assigned here, since the head, whether it is a quantifier or a partitive noun, determines that it has a complement in the genitive case. On the other hand, nouns of emotion are similar to other nouns which have verbal counterparts in being able to take complements which are the equivalent of subject and object. For such complements within the NomP, genitive case is predictable, and not dependent on the nature of the head. If we consider that we are dealing with structural case marking with nonpartitive genitives, we can make the generalization that by the LWS period the postnominal position had become the normal one for lexically assigned genitive case, while prenominal position was favoured for structurally assigned genitives. 43 It is particularly unfortunate that we do not have more examples from BenRul since the one prenominal example from that text, þæs pundmætan hlafes se þridda dæl, ‘the third part of the poundweight loaf ’ (cobenrul,BenR:39.63.15.782) involves a three-element genitive as well as a definite determiner and an adjective before the head; either of these factors usually favoured a postnominal position.

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Table 3.4 Percentage of dislocated genitives in EWS and LWS texts Total Genitives

Dislocated Genitives

2857 6952

128 68

EWS LWS

% Dislocated 4% 1%

Given that all the examples of ‘split’ genitives which are not appositive, such as (3-38), come from manuscripts later than our EWS texts, it seems possible that this type of split genitive increased in late OE, paving the way for expressions such as the king’s daughter of France in EME, but because of the small numbers it is impossible to be certain. On the other hand, the frequency of dislocated genitives dropped between EWS and LWS. As Table 3.4 shows, there are more examples of dislocated genitives in the EWS texts than in the LWS texts, even though the overall number of genitives in the earlier period is less than half of that in the later period. Although the percentage difference is small, it is highly significant due to the large number of genitives overall. In the following chapter, I will document the disappearance of genitive objects in EME. It appears that the increase in use of alternatives to objects in the genitive case—that is, the use of the accusative (or sometimes dative) case or of a prepositional phrase—may have begun in the OE period. Table 3.5 shows the occurrence of (non-clausal) genitive objects and alternatives in Table 3.5 Genitive objects vs. alternatives in EWS and LWS

EWS ASC (A1) Oros CP Total EWS LWS CH1 CH2 BenR Wulf Total LWS

Gen Obj

Other

Total

% Gen

% Other

3 21 47 71

0 1 9 10

3 22 56 81

100% 95% 84% 88%

0% 5% 16% 12%

24 13 10 16 63

3 5 1 6 15

27 18 11 22 78

89% 72% 91% 73% 81%

11% 28% 9% 27% 19%

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the EWS and LWS texts for selected verbs. 44 Although the percentage of alternatives to genitive objects is a bit higher in the later OE period, the difference is too small to rule out chance because of the small proportion of examples using alternatives to genitive objects in both periods. It should also be kept in mind that some of these verbs are found with alternatives already in the EWS texts. Given that alternatives to genitive objects become frequent in EME even in the texts in which the case marking system is fairly well preserved, however, it seems likely that the appearance of an increase in LWS is not an illusion, and that the only reason why a chi-square test does not yield a more impressive result is that although the trend away from genitive objects had begun by LWS, it was not yet very strong. As is well known, phonological processes operating during the OE period, especially the coalescence of unstressed vowels and the neutralization of final nasals, created syncretism of some case forms. It should also be noted that while case agreement was not optional on modifiers in LWS, phonological changes which rendered some agreeing forms identical to non-agreeing ones had been going on for a long time. Developments within the OE period of this sort added to the number of forms with no discernible suffix; for example, the feminine genitive/dative singular first person plural possessive form was historically urre, but simplification of the geminate rr frequently resulted in ure (Campbell 1959: §707). Alternations such as ure∼urre could be mistaken as optional agreement marking instead of the operation of an optional phonological process by children learning English, and probably were important in the introduction of the general optionality of agreement marking that developed in EME.

3.17 Conclusions One finding of particular interest in this chapter is that at least some of the constructions which later became obsolete were on the decline already by the late OE stage. In particular, we find a statistically highly significant trend towards favouring the prenominal position for structurally assigned genitive case. It is therefore possible that the postnominal genitive might 44 The verbs are gieman ‘care for, attend to’, giernan ‘yearn, desire’, sceamian ‘to be ashamed of ’, tweonian ‘doubt’, wilnian ‘to desire’, and beniman ‘to deprive’. With all of these except for the last, the argument which can appear as a genitive object is the single object of the verb. With beniman the potential genitive object is the second and usually non-human object. I have excluded examples in which the relevant argument is either ambiguous in case between genitive and something else or which consists only of a clause, but have included examples in which a clausal argument is introduced by a case-marked demonstrative pronoun. Because of the small numbers, I have grouped all the alternatives to a genitive object together.

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have disappeared in English even if the deflexion of ME had never occurred. Although the distinctiveness of the inflections decreased during the OE period due to phonological changes, the case marking categories were the same in LWS as they had been in EWS, and so it is not possible that the loss of the postnominal genitives was triggered by the loss of case categories. I don’t think we can definitively answer the question of why this movement towards prenominal position took place, especially given the fact that it was postnominal position which became favoured in Icelandic and German, typologically so similar to OE. However, some observations can be made. The first observation has to do with the reasons why this variation was found in the first place. When a language has constructions as similar in their meaning as active and passive voice or the prenominal and postnominal genitives of OE, it must be because each construction is useful in some ways, but also has its disadvantages. With the prenominal genitive, the hearer/reader got information early on which helped to identify the head N, ‘anchoring’ the NomP in the phrase of Cognitive Grammar, but because the early material was in the genitive case, the grammatical relation of the entire possessive phrase was not made clear until the head N was reached, where the case of this N would make this clear. On the other hand, with the postnominal genitive, this information concerning grammatical relations could be given right away with the case marking of the modifiers of the noun (or of the noun itself), but the speaker or hearer had to wait a bit to get the information which narrowed the reference of the noun. It should be noted, however, that syncretism had rendered case marking less useful in sorting out grammatical relations by the OE stage than it would have been in CG or earlier. Grammatical relations in OE could to a significant extent be predicted on the basis of word order, which would to some extent nullify one advantage of the postnominal genitive. This could have been a factor in the decreasing frequency of use of the postnominal non-partitive genitive in the OE period: one of the advantages which the postnominal genitive offered was not as strong as it had been. Furthermore, an advantage which the prenominal genitive had in terms of processing was that the hearer/reader knew that as soon as the head N was reached, the end of the NomP had also been reached and could be closed off. With the postnominal genitive, however, except in the case of partitives, where the quantifier or partitive noun head signalled that a genitive must be following, the listener/reader had to determine whether a following NomP was a sister of the N which preceded it or a sister of the NomP containing that N. Two other advantages of the postnominal genitive were that it was capable of indicating that the possessum was indefinite, unlike the Saxon genitive, and

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that ‘heavy’ possessors could be placed in phrase-final position, making the processing of the possessive phrase simpler. These advantages probably are the main reason why the postnominal genitive, although not favoured, was still possible in LWS. These functions of postnominal genitives were essentially taken over by the of genitive in ME, but since this new construction was still rare in LWS, the decline of the postnominal genitive cannot be attributed to any general replacement by the periphrastic construction. The second observation is that the trend towards prenominal structurally assigned genitives and postnominal lexically assigned case can be viewed as part of a more general trend towards unmarked patterns becoming even more prevalent, prior to becoming the only possibility. The reduction in the use of dislocated genitives is also part of a general trend to relying primarily on word order to determine grammatical relations at a time when the case marking system was still healthy.

4 Genitive case in Middle English 4.1 Introduction By the end of the ME period, around 1400, there can be no doubt that -es, historically the inflection for genitive case for most masculine and neuter nouns in the singular but now a possessive marker which could be used with all nouns in both the singular and the plural, has changed its status in some important ways. 1 In determining how the changes were implemented it is essential to look at -es in the context of the morphological systems for which we have evidence from texts before the late fourteenth century. This chapter examines the evidence for how this possessive marker is best analysed at different stages in ME and for how the changes took place. I will pay particular attention to the question of whether there is any qualitative difference in the behaviour of the -es genitive in texts which differ in the richness of their case inflection morphology. The discussion in this chapter is restricted to possessive forms in which the possessive marker is written attached to its host, e.g. kinges (henceforth ‘attached genitive’). To get a complete picture of the development of the possessive marker from a pure inflection to a more clitic-like element, it is necessary to consider also the evidence which comes from the so-called ‘his genitive’ of ME, in which a possessive marker ys or a variant thereof is written as a separate word. However, the facts surrounding the latter construction (or rather, constructions) in the various stages of ME are quite complex and the evidence can most fruitfully be examined with reference to similar-looking constructions in other Germanic languages, particularly in living varieties which are subject to investigation through native speakers. The discussion of the ‘his genitive’ (or ‘separated genitive’) and related constructions will in fact require two separate chapters; in Chapter 5 we will look at the constructions involving a ‘pleonastic’ possessive pronoun in the Germanic languages other 1 The loss of the vowel in inflectional -es in English was only starting at the beginning of LME; see Lass (1992: 81), who comments ‘the plural and the genitive do not stabilize in their present forms until at least the sixteenth century’, for a discussion. In this chapter, I will refer to the ME genitive as the -es genitive rather than the -s genitive.

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than English, and Chapter 6 will be devoted to an examination of the characteristics of the similar-looking constructions in different periods of English. It is frequently assumed that the disappearance of now-obsolete genitive types was triggered by morphological change. For example, Lightfoot (1999: 117–125), following the suggestion of Janda (1980, 1981), assumes that the disappearance of postnominal genitives such as se sunu þæs cyninges ‘the son of the king’ must be due to the loss of the genitive as a case in EME. The general idea is that postnominal NomPs need (syntactic) case and cannot be licensed without some sort of morphological marking, such as a case inflection or a ‘dummy’ preposition such as English of. Lightfoot assumes that children learning English in what I will call ‘case-impoverished’ dialects of EME were no longer able to analyse -es as an inflection because they were acquiring a ‘caseless’ grammar due to the loss of inflectional morphology that gave evidence for a distinction between the accusative and dative cases. Lightfoot’s treatment is one variant of what I will refer to as the ‘Early Reanalysis Hypothesis’, namely that in EME the genitive suffix could no longer be analysed as a case inflection, so it had to be analysed as something else. 2 By the Early Reanalysis Hypothesis, EME -es already had the status that the phrasal -s has in PDE, that is, it was a clitic or phrasal affix. There are possible variations of the Early Reanalysis Hypothesis. One possibility is to assume that as agreement morphology was lost, the only marker of genitive case, now generalized to -es, was typically at the end of the NomP and was therefore easily interpreted as a clitic, rather than a case inflection. By this less deterministic variant, the reanalysis wasn’t forced by the loss of inflection but only made probable. By the more deterministic variant assumed by Janda and Lightfoot, the reanalysis was forced because it was no longer possible for language learners to interpret -es as a case suffix. We saw in section 1.8.1 that the typological assumption behind this deterministic variant, namely that no language can have a genitive case if it lacks a dative/accusative distinction, is without foundation. This leaves the less deterministic variant as a possibility, and it is the main purpose of this chapter to explore the nature of the -es reflex of the Old English genitive case in Early and Late Middle English, focusing particularly on the question of how tight the attachment of this marker to its host was at different stages. Given the important role the accusative/dative distinction is sometimes assumed to have played in the disappearance of the genitive as a morphological 2 Chapter 6 will be aimed at demonstrating the unsustainability of the popular notion that it was reanalysed as the pronoun his. For the purposes of the discussion of whether genitive case was retained as a morphological category in EME, it is not important whether a his genitive was an intermediate stage in the development of a clitic.

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case, this exploration into the status of -es will necessarily involve some discussion of the decline of the other case inflections as well. The texts of the EME period varied greatly in their case morphology, and to see how -es fits into the morphosyntax of the language embodied in a given text, we have to look at the evidence for case categories in that text. Only after we have a good idea of the systems behind the texts can we hope to make generalizations about such matters as how degree of attachment of -es or the possibility of using a post-head genitive correlates with the state of case morphology. I will therefore devote section 4.2 to a discussion of the texts examined and an overview of case morphology in those texts, focusing on the evidence for an accusative/dative distinction, before looking specifically at genitive constructions in later sections. A secondary focus of the chapter will be the disappearance of types of genitives which are now obsolete. It is a widely adopted but as yet untested hypothesis that a single triggering event caused the disappearance of all these types. Therefore, as well as an examination of postnominal genitives and other now-obsolete adnominal types such as objective genitives with nouns of emotion, there will be some discussion in section 4.6 of the disappearance of non-adnominal genitives. 3

4.2 ME periods, texts, and morphological systems The syncretism of case forms which is found in ME texts creates a situation in which it is no easy matter to sort out whether there has also been a loss of category distinctions. For example, Burrow and Turville-Petre (1996: 22) set out ‘typical’ paradigms for nouns in early Southern Middle English in which engel and nome are given as ‘nom./acc.’ forms of ‘angel’ and ‘name’, respectively. They note that ‘in neither pattern is the nominative distinguished from the accusative’ but do not indicate why they are nevertheless making this category distinction. There is in fact good reason to make such a distinction for some of the texts, since the definite article still had distinctive forms in the nominative and the accusative. But in some fairly early texts no nouns show a distinction in form between the nominative and accusative cases, either in the singular or the plural, and neither do their modifiers. Do we want to say that the distinction between nominative and accusative has disappeared from the grammar of people writing such texts and treat engel as having the same 3 It should be noted that the genitive inflection disappeared from adnominal (but not predicative) possessives in some Northern dialects; for some discussion see Klemola (1997) and Allen (1998). Since this chapter is concerned with the status of -es in those texts where it occurs, I shall make no attempt to discuss this development.

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case (or perhaps absence of case) in all contexts? Or do we want to call it ‘nominative’ when it is in the subject role and ‘accusative’ when it plays the role of direct object? Even if we are careful to base our case categories strictly upon formal distinctions which are evident in some parts of the grammar, the answer to such questions will depend on such things as whether we take the continued distinctions in pronouns (such as the I/me distinction) as evidence for ‘covert’ case for nouns, that is, whether a noun in the function of direct object is to be regarded as being in the accusative (or perhaps simply ‘oblique’) case. The most important thing here is to make it clear what our basis for using a particular term such as ‘accusative’ or ‘dative’ is. I will assume that a dialect of ME has an accusative/dative category distinction only when this distinction is systematically marked in the texts of that dialect on some modifiers of nouns. By ‘systematically’ I do not mean that such marking is obligatory, but only that when such agreement morphology is found, it follows a regular system which indicates that the author or scribe was making such a category distinction. In nearly all ME texts, this agreement morphology is at best optional, a fact which raises some questions about appropriate glossing in examples. In OE examples, syncretic forms could be glossed with some confidence because the context usually made it clear what case was being used. In ME, however, we face a variety of problems caused by the differing case systems and the optionality of case morphology. For example, how should an uninflected determiner modifying a noun which is clearly marked for some case be glossed? No hard and fast rule can be given for all examples in which there is no overt marking; even in OE some forms without overt marking must be considered to represent genitive case (with kinship nouns, for example) and they should arguably continue to be treated as case-marked forms in ME, for example. I have therefore not attempted to indicate a lack of overt marking in the glosses, but have attempted to make such a lack clear in my discussion of examples where it is relevant. It would be counterproductive to attempt to give a single rule to cover glossing in the ME period, as the most appropriate glossing will depend on the case system of the text and the point of the discussion. The most important thing is that the rationale behind the categories used in the glosses should be justifiable, and I have attempted to make the rationale for the glossing clear in the text. I have glossed forms as genitive only when I believe there is good reason to assume the continued existence of the genitive as a case in the text from which an example comes, substituting poss when the gen gloss appropriate for OE might be seen as imposing a morphological category which did not exist in the dialect in question. As for OE, I have used w to indicate that an adjective is in its weak form.

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Table 4.1 PPCME2 periods for manuscript dates Period m1 m2 m3 m4

Dates 1150–1250 1250–1350 1350–1420 1420–1500

The status of -es in a given period can only be determined by examining its behaviour in texts which can be shown to have essentially the same morphological system. ME cannot be treated as a monolith because the period which it spans (roughly 1100–1500; different beginning and end dates are given by different scholars) was a period which saw great changes in case marking morphology. The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (PPCME2), following the Helsinki Corpus, divides the ME period into four subperiods, listed in Table 4.1. The dates are for the manuscripts, rather than for the assumed date of composition (PPCME2 provides extremely useful information about both, however). When the date of composition is unknown, PPCME2 uses labels such as mx4, meaning a manuscript of the m4 period containing a text with an unknown date of composition. I have excluded such texts except where noted, for the reasons discussed in section 1.9. It will often be convenient to use these labels for the periods in the ensuing discussion, and my statistics-gathering has largely been done according to these divisions. However, all such divisions are necessarily arbitrary to some extent and no temporal grouping will group together texts which are similar in their case morphology, because in the earliest two periods in particular there is a great deal of variation which is more diatopic than temporal; the Final Continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle, written c1155, shows less case morphology than the AZenbite of Inwit (AZenbite) of 1340. Because of this variation in a matter so crucial to this investigation, I will discuss the texts of these two periods in some detail, although a discussion of all of them is not possible here. It is often useful to group the texts into two broader periods: EME and LME. As with all temporal groupings, any dividing date will be somewhat arbitrary. The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME, MacIntosh et al. 1986) uses the date 1350, the end of PPCME2’s m2 period, as the beginning date for LME. For our purposes, however, an earlier date of 1300 seems more appropriate. Only one text included in PPCME2, the exceptional AZenbite,

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shows evidence for a dative/accusative distinction after this date. I will therefore include only the two earlier texts of the m2 period in my discussion of EME, and statements made about LME will not generally include AZenbite. 4.2.1 The EME period Table 4.2 lists the texts on which the factual claims for the EME period in this book are based. Most of these texts are included in PPCME2. The short labels which I have used for these texts are explained in the Appendix. Dates such as C12a and c1131 reflect different conventions used by different sources, as explained in the Appendix. When two dates are given, separated by a comma, the first date refers to the date of the manuscript and the second refers to Table 4.2 EME texts classed according to degree of case inflection Text name

Date

Word Count

A. Substantial inflection Kentho C12a2–b1 4,316 †Other Vesp. D. xiv EME C12a2–b1 3,235 †Vesp. A. xxii EME C12b2–C13a1 2,266 VV a1225, c1200 28,358 Type A Word count total 38,175 B. Dat/Acc distinction, but significantly reduced agreement PCCont1 c1131 †PCInterp c1131 Lambm1 C12b2 (c1200) †PM(L) C12b2, c1175? KS c1275 Type B Word count total C. Case-impoverished EME texts PCCont2 Orm (PPCME2) ARiwle KathGroup †Proclamationa Type C Word count total Total words all types

c1154 c1280–1200 C13a2, 1212–1222 c1220–25 1258

4,750 2,994 6,549 4,356 3,546 22,195 2,635 53,182 50,926 38,445 363 145,551 205,921

a Still some inflection of determiners that look like dative and accusative reflexes, but they contain what look like hypercorrect errors, so the retention of a dative/accusative category distinction is doubtful.

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the assumed date of composition of the text, while a date in parentheses indicates that a more specific date has been suggested within a broader period such as C12b2. The texts marked with a dagger (†) are ones not included in PPCME2. The short titles used for them are explained in the text below as well as in the Appendix, where the references to the editions used are also given. It should be noted that the twelfth century in particular was a period where few original manuscripts are available; most of the surviving manuscripts written in English contain copies of texts which were composed in OE. Furthermore, EME was a period in which literatim or letter-by-letter copying was very common (MacIntosh et al. 1986: 15l; see also Laing 2000 for a very helpful discussion of some of the important issues in dealing with the language in EME manuscripts). The scope for the retention of archaic syntax by this method, with the scribe paying attention to the individual letters rather than the words or sentences as a whole, is obvious. It is therefore important for all periods to exclude texts which are copies at a fairly distant remove, but the problem is particularly acute in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Since many of the manuscripts are composites of different types of texts, it is essential to separate out the EME originals (the texts first written in English in EME, although they may be translations) from the copies of earlier English compositions. My investigation is limited to EME originals, except where I explicitly make a comparison with copied manuscripts. So in Table 4.2, the short title Vesp. A. xxii EME refers to the two texts which are agreed to be of EME composition in Cotton Vespasian A. xxii, excluding the copies of OE texts found in the same manuscript. The texts of Table 4.2 are organized into three groups according to the state of the case system for which they give evidence. The ‘inflection-rich’ 4 texts of Category A show only a small degree of lessening of case inflection compared with OE texts. In these texts, agreement on determiners with the case of the noun which they modify is usual. The texts in this category differ in the frequency of such agreement; ‘inflection-rich’ is a matter of degree. In the twelfth-century texts of Vespasian D. xiv, for example, determiners regularly agreed with the noun they modified, just as in OE. However, syncretism of forms had caused these inflections to become less informative than they had been in OE; for example, dative/genitive feminine singular and the genitive plural for all genders had distinct forms (þære and þara, respectively) in OE but are both sometimes represented as þære in this manuscript. By the end of 4 I am using ‘inflection’ as a shorthand for ‘case inflection’ here. It should be realized, however, that reduction of inflection in the nominal system and reduction in the verbal system did not necessarily go hand in hand, as noted by d’Ardenne (1961) in her discussion of the grammar of Seinte Iuliene and related texts.

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the century, we have evidence that agreement inflection had become optional. In the EME pieces of Vespasian A. xxii, inflection of the determiner is usual but uninflected forms are used occasionally. In the Vices and Virtues (VV) found in British Library Manuscript Stowe 34 of the very beginning of the thirteenth century uninflected forms are fairly common, although agreement is also quite common. The placement of VV in category A rather than B is somewhat arbitrary but based on such considerations as the fact that the singular definite determiner is always inflected when it accompanies a genitive noun which is not the object of a preposition (see section 4.3.2.1), and also the frequency of forms such as ures in which a possessive agrees in case with the noun it modifies. In these inflection-rich texts a clear distinction between the accusative case and the nominative case at the category level is reflected in the use of distinct forms. That is, there are still forms which are exclusively accusative, although the old dative forms may be used in historically accusative positions with some frequency. So for some of these texts, a historically dative form such as him is used for indirect objects and the objects of prepositions, as in OE, but is also sometimes used for direct objects, while the accusative hine is restricted to direct objects. In this situation, there is clearly a category distinction, and we can treat hine as a form which marks accusative case and him as a form which marks both dative and accusative case. The variation found in a given text and, in particular, the apparent optionality of case agreement morphology, raises questions of the sort mentioned in section 1.9.1 about the relationship between spoken and written language. It is likely enough that the changes which were taking place during the EME period were more advanced in the spoken language than in the written varieties, but for the reasons discussed in section 1.9.1 I believe that the EME period is one where the original texts were highly likely to be a good reflection of the systems which were used in the spoken language, although the frequency of more conservative versus more advanced grammatical options was probably different. It is possible to distinguish texts with a systematic variation between dative and accusative forms of the type just discussed, for example, from texts such as the Hand 1 additions to PC, discussed below, in which the nearly (but not quite) chaotic use of case forms points to an attempt by a scribe to use an old system which he does not command. For the texts where a system can be found, our grammatical description should accommodate that systematicity. The question of whether the apparent optionality of case morphology is simply an artefact of the texts is one where typology can help us. Given that the variation in the use or omission of case suffixes found in the EME texts is highly reminiscent of the sort of variation found in Low Saxon (see

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section 2.4.2.2), there seems to be no reason to assume that this variation was anything other than normal for a language in the process of losing its case morphology. The texts of Category B could be characterized as ‘case-rich but inflectionpoor’. That is, there is still good evidence for a dative/accusative category distinction in the form of distinctively accusative forms, but agreement, while still found, is no longer regular and the encroachment of dative forms into the old accusative domain has increased. The frequency of agreement is not the same in all the texts of this category, with the Lambeth Homilies and the Poema Morale ((PM(L)) of the same manuscript (Lambeth Palace Library 487) showing quite a few agreeing forms of determiners and adjectives, compared with the very reduced agreement found in the Kentish Sermons (KS) of Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 108. The placement of the EME pieces from the Lambeth manuscript into category B instead of category A is based on the relative infrequency of case agreement with definite determiners, etc., although agreeing forms are not really rare, either with definite determiners or possessives. Although I have not made a systematic comparison of all agreement inflection in the Lambeth pieces of (probable) EME composition (homilies and PM(L) combined) and VV, I have compared inflected and uninflected definite determiners with direct objects in the two texts. Only 33 per cent of the total of forty-two examples in Lambeth have a case-inflected form (as opposed to uninflected þe), while 49 per cent of the forms in VV are inflected for accusative case. While the statistical significance of these results is not very impressive (p = .107), they give some justification for the placement of the Lambeth pieces in the B category and VV in the A category. However, the difference between the A and B categories is essentially a matter of degree. In Lambeth and KS, the use of case forms, when they are found, is quite clearly systematic, but the situation is rather different with the Interpolations (referred to as ‘PCInterp’ in Table 4.2) and the First Continuation found in the Peterborough Chronicle (PC Cont1) which Clark (1970: n. 1 p. xlvi ) argues were written by the scribe. I will use ‘Hand 1 additions’ to refer to the First Continuation and the Interpolations together, since they may be treated as one text. In these additions, the inflection of definite determiners is fairly chaotic, but there is some system; in particular the reflex of the genitive form is restricted to syntactic contexts where it is historically appropriate. The use of the other forms is far from random, but not completely systematic. I agree with Clark (1970: lix–lxi) that the forms appear to be an attempt to use the OE system by a scribe who normally used an uninflected determiner in his own language but had some familiarity with the uses of the inflected forms from having copied the earlier parts of the chronicle. For more discussion of the

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determiner forms of the Hand 1 additions see Allen (1995: 176; 2007), as well as Jones (1988) and Millar (1997, 2000). On the basis of the forms of the definite article, there is little evidence for the maintenance of a dative/accusative distinction (as opposed to a general oblique case). However, I have put the Hand 1 additions in Category B because there is still some evidence of the old category distinction in the use of pronominal forms. The old accusative form hine is used correctly much more often than we would expect if the scribe did not retain some idea of two types of objects. However, there are a few uses of old accusative forms in dative contexts which suggests that although the scribe was aware of an accusative/dative distinction, it was not part of his own everyday language and so he sometimes hypercorrectly substituted hine where him would have been historically correct, rather in the manner that some speakers of PDE have some awareness of the who/whom distinction but sometimes hypercorrectly use whom for a subject. Regardless of whether we put the Hand 1 additions in Category B or C, they certainly count as having significantly reduced agreement. It should be noted that although PPCME2 treats both Continuations of PC as one text, contained in one document, the inflectional situation is very different in the two Continuations (as they note in their text information). I have accordingly placed the First Continuation in Category B and the Final Continuation in Category C. The texts in this category may be called ‘caseimpoverished’, since they have so little in the way of case inflection and agreeing forms that there is no clear evidence for a category distinction between dative and accusative case. An -e which is a reflex of the dative case is still found on many nouns in the case-impoverished texts, and even in LME texts, but it is no longer a marker of dative case. It did represent a case at least in the texts of the EME period, but this was a prepositional case (i.e. used on the objects of prepositions) and not a dative case; for a discussion see d’Ardenne (1961: §60) and Allen (1995: §5.4). It can be treated as a structural case. The designation of a group of texts as ‘case-impoverished’ does not necessarily mean that the texts have a reduction of category distinctions exactly the same as that of the LME period. In the Ormulum, for example, there is no evidence for an accusative/dative distinction, but there is some evidence for an oblique case category separate from nominative case, similar to the system found in Low Saxon, discussed in section 2.4.2.2. The evidence for an oblique case comes from the occasional use of forms such as of ænne and nænne for both direct and indirect objects, as well as the objects of prepositions. While the -ne of these forms is presumably a reflex of the masculine accusative suffix, it has become a general oblique suffix. The fact that case morphology remains fossilized in fixed expressions makes it difficult in some instances to decide whether a dative/accusative category

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distinction remains in some of these texts. In addition, matters are obscured by the fact that the important texts we have from the West Midlands written in the dialect known as AB (the Katherine Group, and the associated Ancrene Wisse) are copies of earlier compositions. 5 See d’Ardenne’s (1961) discussion of determiner and pronominal forms in these texts. I have assigned them to category C as it appears that the scribes who wrote them did not systematically distinguish the accusative and dative cases. 4.2.2 The later m2 period 4.2.2.1 Copied poetic texts in m2 manuscripts Before discussing the m2 texts included in PPCME2 which are not included in the preceding section, I will discuss three poetic texts which are not contained in that corpus, which is nearly completely restricted to prose texts. In general, I have avoided using poetic texts and also data from texts for which we only have copies made a long time after the original composition. However, sometimes such texts must be used when they provide important information. In this subsection, I discuss three texts which span the m1 and m2 periods. Because of the considerations just mentioned, I have not included them in the majority of the systematic investigations which I made. They do play significant roles in various sections of this book, however. The first two texts are different versions of LaZamon’s Brut, manuscripts Cotton Caligula A. ix (Brut(C), sometimes referred to as LaZamon A) and Cotton Otho C xiii (Brut(O), also known as LaZamon B). Both manuscripts of the Brut were edited in 1847. Unless otherwise noted, the examples presented here are taken from Brook and Leslie’s more recent (1963, 1978) edition, henceforth abbreviated as BL. The Caligula and Otho manuscripts can both be dated to the second half of the thirteenth century, although the original text of this poetic Brut was probably composed between 1189 and 1216. Both manuscripts come from the Southwestern area. LALME (vol. 3, 446) puts the language of the Otho MS in Somerset (i.e. Southwestern). Laing (1993: 70, 79) puts the language of the first part of the Caligula text in northwestern Worcester, and agrees with LALME that the Otho manuscript is from Somerset. The Otho manuscript presents a version of the Brut which is substantially different from that found in the Caligula manuscript, and the language demonstrates 5 Ancrene Wisse (A) is the name usually given to the version found in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 402, which is written in the same dialect as the Katherine Group found in Bodleian Library MS Bodley 34 (hence B) and Ancrene Riwle is the name given to the version found in other manuscripts. The Ancrene Riwle of PPCME2 is from British Museum Cotton MS Cleopatra C vi. The information in PPCME2 comments ‘[a]lthough there are spelling differences between Corpus and Cleopatra, syntactic differences are minor and insignificant’. Because it cannot be assumed that the case forms and categories are the same in both versions, however, I have favoured examples from the Katherine Group to illustrate AB morphology.

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considerably less inflection on nominal modifiers, particularly determiners. It was formerly assumed that this was because the Caligula manuscript was older (early thirteenth century), but since Ker (1963), it has been accepted that the Caligula manuscript is not older than Otho; in fact Laing (1993: 79) gives the date C13b1 (although others have given a date as late as 1275) to the Otho manuscript and C13b2 to Caligula. Stanley (1968) argues that LaZamon was sometimes archaistic, rather than truly archaic in his language, but that many of the old-fashioned forms he used really do go back to OE forms, and the scribes who copied the Caligula manuscript faithfully transcribed those forms, although they ‘could not have thought that they were copying a poem written in the idiom of their own time’ (p. 29), while the Otho scribe was impatient with the antique flavour of his exemplar. It seems likely that the Otho scribe modernized the language of his exemplar and that this manuscript better mirrors the language of the late thirteenth century in this area than the language of Caligula. On the other hand, the language of Caligula is probably not a bad reflection of the morphology and syntax found in the period when case agreement was on the wane but still fairly widespread, although we can expect the language of poetry to be rather archaic. It is important to note that even the more modern language of Otho shows a systematic distinction between accusative and dative case, although syncretism of forms is much more advanced than in Caligula. Discussions of the language of Otho tend to focus on the replacement of the forms found in Caligula by newer forms, without distinguishing between case forms and case categories. However, a systematic study of the case categories of the Otho manuscripts shows that although the Otho scribe frequently uses him where the accusative form hine is used in Caligula, we still do find numerous instances of hine in Otho, where it is used ‘correctly’, as is the occasional -ne suffix on masculine singular accusative adjectives. Uninflected determiners are also more frequent in Otho, but the accusative/dative distinction is still apparent in the determiners, and, of particular interest here, determiners inflected for genitive case are still found, although the uninflected þe is more common. Given the Otho scribe’s modernizing tendencies, it seems reasonable to assume that his command of this case morphology is not a bad reflection of the linguistic situation in his community, and not simply the result of the retention of conservative forms from his exemplar. 6 Because of the paucity of prose manuscripts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in which there is substantial case agreement, I have chosen to use the 6 For a wealth of examples contrasting the case morphology of the two manuscripts, see Funke (1907).

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Caligula text (Brut (C)) in this investigation, as likely to give us a reasonably accurate picture of the grammar at a period when there was considerable syncretism but the old case marking system was clearly maintained. I will be using the Otho text (Brut(O)) for comparison in places, and particularly in the discussion of the separated genitives in section 6.2. I have furthermore only systematically examined the first 3,000 lines of Brut(C), and the statements made in this book concerning Brut(C) only refer to this portion, although I will occasionally use examples from later portions. The third text is Gen&Ex. It is unfortunate for us that although this text is assumed to have been written c1250, the manuscript containing it (Corpus Christi College Cambridge 444) is from much later, c1325. It is similarly unfortunate that the manuscript is not ‘pure’ as to dialect, typical of a manuscript which has been copied (possibly repeatedly), where it is difficult to disentangle the original language of composition from the natural language of the scribe; however, Laing (1993: 25) places the language of the manuscript in West Norfolk. This text completely lacks case inflection in the determiner or adjective systems. 4.2.2.2 Original texts of the later m2 period Apart from KS, PPCME2 contains only two texts which are classified as m2, that is, texts composed between 1250 and 1350 in manuscripts from the same period. They are both unfortunately rather clumsy translations which contain many doubtful readings and show foreign influence in their syntax. The first, AZenbite, in British Library manuscript Arundel 57, was written by Dan Michel in the Kentish dialect in 1340. Kentish was remarkably conservative in nominal inflection, and the accusative/dative distinction is still very much in evidence in this text in the inflection of determiners (although uninflected ðe is also used) and in pronominal forms. Nevertheless, agreement morphology was considerably reduced. Of particular interest to us here is the fact that the uninflected determiner is the only form found with genitive nouns, and there was no longer a distinctively genitive form for strong adjectives; although the suffix -e is used on adjectives modifying genitive nouns, it is also used for other oblique cases as well as being the usual weak and plural form. The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter (Early Prose Psalter) found in British Library Additional Manuscript 17376 is from the first half of the fourteenth century according to Bülbring’s (1891) introduction to his edition. LALME (p. 100) places it in Essex. It completely lacks any inflection on the determiners or any evidence of a dative/accusative distinction. Because of the small size of the m2 corpus, I have also included the texts designated m23 (one text) and m24 (two texts) by PPCME2 in my investigations.

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These are texts which were composed in the m2 period but are only found in manuscripts of the m3 or m4 period. We would want to keep these texts separate from the m2 texts in any statistical study of the frequency of a construction because of the possibility that a usage of the m2 period had been replaced by an innovative construction at some later date, and we cannot use these texts to date the introduction of a change to the m2 period. However, these texts may legitimately be used to enlarge the corpus when we are looking for evidence of whether genitive types which are found in m1 texts were still grammatical possibilities in the m2 period. Since objective genitives are found in OE and m1 texts, for example, we are not dealing with dating an innovation when we check to see whether they are still found in m2 texts, and if we find examples in m24 texts they are presumably original with the author, although they may be an archaic retention if we are looking at m4 syntax. The additional examples gleaned from these texts may be helpful in fleshing out the sketchy picture sometimes provided by a small corpus in the case of an infrequently used construction. Only the indeclinable definite determiner is used in the Early Prose Psalter and the m24 texts, and no dative/accusative distinction is in evidence. 4.2.3 Later Middle English (LME) The texts of the m3 and m4 periods are too numerous to be discussed individually, and they all lack a dative/accusative distinction or any productive case agreement. This does not mean that deflexion has reached the PDE stage. For one thing, a weak/strong distinction in adjective inflection was maintained well into LME. The suffix -e was used both for plural adjectives and for weak adjectives in Chaucer’s writings, for example, although its use had become optional. Nouns also sometimes occur with a final -e which looks as though it could be dative case, but such forms cannot be analysed as being in opposition with an accusative case and mostly mark the objects of prepositions (see Lass 1992: 79 on the purely metrical nature of final -e in Chaucer’s writings).

4.3 Nature of the adnominal -es genitive: the ‘pre-group’ period In this section, we look at the nature of the -es genitive in the period from the beginning of the ME period up to the time of the first examples of the group genitive in the late fourteenth century. The aim here is to scrutinize the evidence for and against treating the possessive marker differently in this period from in OE. There can be little doubt that once group genitives became possible in the language (a development which will be documented in section 4.4), the possessive marker had a significantly different morphosyntactic

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status from the OE genitive inflections, but the situation in the pre-group period is much more open to debate. It should be mentioned here that one factor which makes it more difficult to study the genitive case in ME is the fact that in EME, scribes began using abbreviations much more extensively than in OE. In OE, the use of abbreviations was pretty much limited to Latin words such as sanctus ‘saint, holy’. In EME, however, English scribes began using more abbreviations for English words and, in particular, the same abbreviation was frequently used for the inflection -es, whether this represented a plural or genitive inflection. These abbreviations are often silently expanded by the editors of ME texts, although some editors follow the practice of writing all expanded abbreviations in italics. It can be crucial to know when we are dealing with an abbreviation, because when an editor expands an abbreviation, he or she normally expands it as the majority form which is found when no abbreviation is used (which may not be the only form used). Arguments which hinge for example on the genitive ending being spelled with ys rather than es will obviously have no force in such a situation. In the following discussion, I have attempted to ensure that any arguments based on spelling do not involve abbreviated forms. Arguments against treating possessive marker as case morphology in the pre-group period can be divided into two broad types. A commonly-held position is that the possessive marker was already a clitic at this stage, because it now appears only at the end of the possessor phrase. A less common and diametrically opposed position is expressed by Weerman and de Wit (1999), who suggest (p. 1174) that in the pre-group period, the possessive marker should not be treated as a case marker because -es had become restricted essentially to proper nouns and kinship terms, as it is with Modern Dutch -s. 4.3.1 Complexity of the possessor phrase Before we can look at the evidence for and against the clitic-like nature of -es in this period, we must dismiss the notion that this marker was similar at any period in English to Modern Dutch -s. Rosenbach’s (2002: 180) comment that ‘the s- genitive becomes increasingly restricted to proper-name and personal-noun possessors’ may give the impression that there was a syntactic restriction at some point against -es genitives which were more complex than a single noun or possessive, similar to the situation described in section 2.4.2.1 for modern Dutch and German (although Rosenbach does not actually say this). It is important to realize, however, that while there may have been a decline in use of complex -es

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genitives, at no period of ME were -es genitives grammatically restricted to such simple possessor phrases. In all periods, we find examples in which the possessor N may be modified by a determiner, occasionally with an adjective, and recursive prenominal genitives, albeit of rather limited complexity, are also found: (4-1) þt seli meidenes heaued that blessed maiden:poss head ‘that blessed maiden’s head’ (CMMARGA,86.502) (4-2)

Þiss ilke manness lare This same man:poss teaching ‘this same man’s teaching’ (Orm 11013)

(4-3) for lefflul soules ned for believing soul:poss need ‘for the need of the faithful soul’

(Gen&Ex 2542)

(4-4) and god vndede ðis asses muð and God undid this ass:poss mouth ‘and God loosened this ass’s mouth’ (Gen&Ex 3971) (4-5) Ethiopienes kinges dowter Ethiopian:poss king:poss daughter ‘the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians’

(Gen&Ex 2689)

house (4-6) into a gode manus into a good man:poss house ‘into a good man’s house’ (CMBRUT3,103.3114) Example (4-1) comes from a Category C EME text in which determiners are only sporadically inflected, and (4-2) is from a text which (despite its early date) lacks agreement marking on determiners but shows some agreement, including agreement with the genitive, on other modifiers. Examples (4-3)– (4-5) are from a case-impoverished EME text which lacks any sort of agreement for case as well as any evidence for an accusative/dative distinction, while (4-6) is from an LME text of c1400 which entirely lacks any genitive agreement marking on the modifiers of possessors. It must be admitted that examples with both a determiner and an adjective are not to be found in all texts (although they are found in most), and recursive genitives are rare. However, examples with a determiner, quantifier, or possessive pronoun modifying the genitive noun are easy to find, proving that the situation is not the same as in modern Dutch or German. Genitives of some complexity continue to be found all through the ME period, including

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the period which might be considered the low ebb of the -es genitive according to the figures presented by Rosenbach (2002: 186), based on the study of Rosenbach et al. (2000). According to these figures, -es genitives accounted for only 8 per cent of genitives, compared with of genitives, in the first half of the fifteenth century, after which the frequency of the -es genitive increases. Even in the early fifteenth century, however, it is not difficult to find examples such as þe leded pottus mouþe ‘the lead pot’s mouth/the mouth of the lead pot’ (CMHORSES,107.239) and for al his antecers soulus ‘for all his ancestors’ souls’ (CMHORSES,99.149) in a text of a1450. There was no period when the possessor in an -es genitive was structurally incapable of being phrasal. It should furthermore be observed that the frequency of complex -es genitives in specific texts does not appear to correlate with the richness of case morphology in the texts but seems rather to be explained by factors such as the brevity of some texts and the existence of alternative constructions such as the of genitive. We saw that even in OE there was a tendency to avoid prenominal genitives of an internal complexity of greater than a determiner and the possessor noun. In OE, the usual strategy for avoiding such prenominal possessor phrases was to place the possessor phrase in post-head position. By EME, this possibility had largely disappeared, even in texts with rich case morphology (see section 4.5.1), with the frequency of prenominal genitives increasing in the late OE period as post-head genitives became disfavoured. However, once the alternative strategy for postposing the possessor phrase, namely the of genitive, became widely available, there was a strong tendency to use this strategy to avoid complex prenominal genitives. This does not mean, however, that such prenominal genitives had become a grammatical impossibility, and our grammar must allow for phrasal possessors. However, the possessive marker was always on the possessor; group genitives, in which the possessive marker comes at the end of NomPs which do not end with the possessor, are not found until the late fourteenth century, later than any of the examples just presented (see section 4.4). This does not mean that possessive phrases which involve both a preposition and possessive -es are not found; examples like (4-7), where the two types of ‘genitives’ are combined, are very common in ME texts: (4-7)

þurh þæs arcebiscopes gearnunge of through the:m.gen.sg archbishop:(m)gen.sg request of Cantwerbyrig Canterbury ‘through the request of the archbishop of Canterbury’ (PC 1114.34, Irvine 2004 ed.)

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Examples of ‘combined genitives’ 7 of this sort are first found as early as 1085 in PC and are common in that text and later ones; for details and some statistics, see Allen (2003). In sum, there does not seem to be any reason to believe that any decline in the frequency of complex possessor phrases in the ME period was due to the loss of the genitive as a case inflection. Let us turn now to a discussion of the morphological facts bearing on the question of whether genitive case should be treated as a morphological category in the various ME periods. It should be kept in mind that the question of whether the generalized -es of ME merits the title ‘case marker’ is a separate question from that of whether it should be treated as an affix of some sort rather than a clitic, although much of the discussion in the literature has not made this distinction. In this section, I will not be concerned so much with the question of whether the genitive should be called a ‘case’ in EME as with the evidence for morphological interaction between -es (and other possessive suffixes) and the host. We will first consider the behaviour of genitives and their modifiers in the inflection-rich texts, and then proceed to a consideration of the inflection-poor texts. 4.3.2 Genitives and agreement morphology: inflection-rich texts In the inflection-rich texts, there cannot be any doubt that the genitive is still a morphological category. This is the only explanation for examples in which elements agree in case with a genitive head, as in (4-8): (4-8)

a. ðes forZeltes Adames anlicnesse the:m.gen.sg guilty:m.gen.sg Adam:(m)gen.sg likeness ‘the guilty Adam’s likeness’ (CMVICES1,95.1140) Zeapnesse is, ðat . . . b. Ðare næddre the:f.gen.sg adder:(f)gen.sg prudence is, that ‘The prudence of the adder is that . . . ’ (CMVICES1,101.1219)

In these examples, the definite determiners are inflected for gender and for genitive case (a dative interpretation of the feminine forms in (b) not being possible). In the (a) example, the adjective is also inflected for agreement with the genitive head noun, and in fact this marking is clearer than it would have been in OE. This is because -es was a strong adjective inflection, but a weak adjective such as forZelte (where -e ———————– > ——————————————————– > —————————————————————– > ———— > ————————– ——– > ———————————————————————– > ———————————————– > —————————————————— ——– > ——— > —————– >

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different constructions to show that the same trigger cannot have been directly responsible for the loss of all the now-obsolete genitive constructions. Since agreement morphology within the NomP and the postnominal genitives both disappeared within the ME period, it is natural enough to suppose that the loss of this morphology is connected with the loss of the postnominal genitives in some way. But the historical record shows that the connection cannot be that the loss of the postnominal genitives was triggered by the loss of the genitive case as a morphological category, as I have demonstrated. The change in status of the old genitive marker as a ‘once-only’ inflection in some EME texts has often been adduced as evidence that the inflection has been reanalysed as a clitic. However, there is good reason to treat the -s inflection of PDE as well as Modern Swedish as a phrasal affix rather than a clitic. Regardless of whether we treat the modern -s genitive as a type of inflection or a clitic, the ME evidence indicates that we need to recognize something intermediate between the OE inflection and the modern possessive marker. Once-only marking in conjoined possessors and appositives makes its appearance long before the first examples of group genitives involving prepositional phrases, and there is no correlation between the degree of deflexion in a given text and the use of once-only marking in appositives once case agreement has become optional. I have also argued that even the case-impoverished texts provide some evidence that the genitive was retained as a morphological category. It is certainly possible that two types of inflectional ‘genitives’ co-existed for a long period in ME: an older type which had the same degree of attachment to the head as in OE and a newer, indeclinable edge inflection. It is quite clear, however, that neither the loss of agreement morphology nor the loss of the dative/accusative distinction made language learners incapable of learning the older type. They only stopped learning it when the irregular forms came to be used so infrequently that there was no longer enough evidence that the language learner must construct a grammar which accommodated them. The loss of genitive objects appears to have occurred at the same time as the loss of postnominal genitives, and it is reasonable to look for a causal link between the two, although it must always be kept in mind that temporal proximity of two changes does not prove a causal connection. Given that both postnominal genitives and genitive objects were on the decline in late OE, the loss of these constructions is best seen as the culmination of a change which began before the case system was seriously threatened. It is quite clear that the loss of the genitive as a case did not trigger the loss of genitive objects any more than it triggered the loss of postnominal genitives. A better candidate for a trigger is the new optional status of agreement morphology. This change

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reflects the lesser role that case marking now plays in a given dialect in comparison with the greater importance of word order and prepositions in signalling grammatical relationships. Partitive genitives, albeit not very common, were still possible in post-head position because they were lexically selected and therefore predictable even though in a position where other genitives were no longer allowed. I have suggested that the change to the grammar which was involved here was the loss of structural case marking postnominally, while lexical case marking was still possible. The facts support the view of Thomas (1931) that the decay of inflection played a contributory, rather than central, role in the loss of the postnominal genitive. Agreement morphology did not drop off all at once, nor was it simply a matter of suffixes getting lost for phonological reasons. Rather, it first became optional to use, for example, an uninflected determiner instead of one inflected for the genitive case. This optionality probably reflected a reduction in the centrality of case marking in English grammar: speakers and hearers were now relying mainly on word order as signals of grammatical relations. It is interesting to note that the texts in which neither non-partitive posthead genitives nor genitive objects are present are ones in which agreement has become optional. Given the small number of texts involved, however, the correlations could be coincidental, and so although the facts are suggestive of a link between optional case marking and the loss of two non-central genitive types, no very definite pronouncements can be made. Finally, the retention of pronominal (as well as single N, and, much less frequently, phrasal) objective genitives in the prenominal position all through the ME period means that the eventual loss of this type of genitive altogether demands an entirely different explanation from any of the other disappearances. More investigation is needed here, using a larger number of head nouns and incorporating EModE texts. More systematic investigation is also needed into the loss of genitives with adjective heads. 4.7.3 Middle English genitives and typology An assessment of the status of the possessive marker in ME must be made on the basis of the evidence from the texts rather than on beliefs concerning the typology of case marking systems. If we find strong evidence in the ME texts for a situation which has not been attested in other languages, we cannot simply say that the situation is humanly impossible because we have not encountered it before. Our knowledge of possible linguistic systems is not complete and typologically unusual systems may be expected to arise, at least for short periods, due to historical accidents. It is a fact, however, that evidence

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coming solely from written texts has its limitations and that our confidence in the evidence from texts will be bolstered by finding that the situation indicated by that evidence is similar to a situation found in a spoken language where native speakers are available to provide judgements, etc. It is therefore encouraging to find that although the evidence from the ME texts points to some things which are typologically unusual, no truly unique features need to be posited. Putting ME genitive constructions in a Germanic perspective, we see similarities with its sister languages but also no identity with any of those languages. ME was different from modern Dutch, German, and Low Saxon in that the -s possessive marker was never restricted to kinship terms and proper nouns; in this respect it is similar to Modern Swedish. A similar distinction between lexical and structural assignment of genitive case within the NomP which was made by Delsing (1991) seems to be necessary to explain the timing of the loss of different types of genitives. Another similarity with (formal) Modern Swedish is the use of phrase-internal marking (combined genitives). On the other hand, ME was similar to some Low Saxon varieties in the restriction of once-only marking to conjoined possessor phrases and appositives and in the optionality found in case agreement. These similarities to Low Saxon are of particular importance in confirming that the evidence coming from our texts is not likely to be an artefact of the texts. The next chapter will be devoted entirely to a specific family of constructions in the other Germanic languages, preparatory to an examination of the so-called ‘his genitive’ of earlier English.

5 The possessor doubling constructions in the Germanic languages 5.1 Introduction 5.1.1 The construction In many Germanic languages, we find constructions involving what is often referred to as a ‘pleonastic possessive pronoun’. In this construction, the possessor phrase is followed by a possessive pronoun which effectively serves as the marker of possession. For example, in Dutch, Jan z’n boek ‘Jan’s book’, lit. ‘Jan his book’ is commonly used in speech as an alternative to Jans boek or het boek van Jan. 1 Many terms have been employed for such possessive constructions employing a possessive marker which looks like a possessive pronoun. Delsing (1998) uses the term prenominal periphrastic construction. Norde (1997, 1998) refers to the resumptive possessive pronoun construction. Strunk (2004b: 57) objects to the latter terminology on the basis that ‘resumptive’ is not really appropriate, as the ‘pronoun’ does not have the characteristics of the resumptive pronouns found for example in left dislocation constructions, and by his analysis it is devoid of semantic content and therefore not a true pronoun, but merely a grammatical marker. Haegeman (2000, 2003, 2004b, and elsewhere) also objects to the use of ‘resumptive pronoun’ in these constructions and prefers possessor doubling, which is the term also adopted by Julien (2005). I shall also adopt this terminology as being as theoretically neutral as possible, although I will generally adopt Strunk’s term ‘linker’ to refer to the pronoun which does the ‘doubling’. 1 Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2001: section 4.2), notes that ‘linking pronouns’ in possessive constructions in Europe are found mainly, but not exclusively, in the Germanic languages. In section 4.3, she comments that possessive constructions with linking constructions are ‘very frequent’ crosslinguistically.

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In the history of English, we find what looks like a parallel construction: (5-1)

and come into Ethelstan his tente and came into Æthelstan poss tent ‘and came to Æthelstan’s tent’ (CMPOLYCH,VI,437.3201)

To name only a few works by linguists and Germanic scholars, Stahl (1927), Ramat (1986a), de Wit (1997), Delsing (1998), Weerman and de Wit (1999), Strunk (2004b), and Haegeman (2004b), have assumed the unity of the English ‘his genitive’ with possessor doubling constructions in other Germanic languages. However, I have glossed his as poss here precisely because I will be arguing that at the time when the Polychronicon was written (1387), this possessive marker should not be treated as an ordinary possessive pronoun, and so examples such as (5-1) are not examples of the sort of doubling construction found, for example, in Dutch. For that reason, I will use the neutral term separated genitive for any construction in English in which the possessive marker is written detached from the possessor N. In Chapter 6, I examine the properties of these separated genitives in earlier English, and argue that more than one period and type of construction must be discerned. The primary aim of this chapter is to provide the necessary background for the comparison in that chapter of the English construction(s) and the doubling constructions found in other Germanic languages. Many assumptions have been made about the origin and development of the construction in English based on beliefs about the development of what is assumed to be the same construction in other Germanic languages which turn out to be unjustified. It is therefore necessary to look at some other Germanic languages in some detail. The doubling constructions have also played a prominent role in recent literature on Germanic syntax, and a secondary aim is to improve the empirical base available to linguists concerning particular aspects of the doubling constructions in the Germanic languages generally. In the next two subsections, I briefly outline some issues of particular interest to historical linguists surrounding these constructions, before beginning my discussion of specific languages. 5.1.2 Theories about origins In most Germanic languages which have doubling constructions, the possessor phrase is in the dative or oblique case, if the language distinguishes such a case from others. In German, for example, we have dem Vater sein Haus, ‘the father’s house’, lit. ‘to the father, his house’, where dem is clearly marked for dative case.

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Given the obvious connection in German between dative case and the doubling construction, it is natural that previous researchers have normally sought the origins of the doubling construction as crucially involving the dative case somehow. Most scholars today share Behaghel’s (1932: 638) belief that the German construction developed from a reanalysis when a dative NomP and another NomP, which began with a possessive pronoun, were brought together; a similar view is expressed by Paul (1951: §156). For example, in the tenth century we find example (5-2): (5-2) du uuart demo Balderes uuolon sin uuoz then was/became the:dat Balder’s colt his foot birenkit wrenched ‘then Baldur’s colt wrenched his hoof ’ (2. Merseburger Zauberspruch, as cited in Ramat 1986b: ex. 11) In this example, the string Balderes uuolon sin uuoz does not necessarily have to be analysed as a single constituent. The dative NomP Balderes uuolon is not unexpected given the adversative meaning of the sentence, and the freedom of word order in (especially earlier) German would allow for the fronting of such a dative NomP. But it is easy to see how the string might be analysed as a single constituent, in which the affected NomP is now analysed as a possessor. This reanalysis would give rise to the doubling construction, where there is no longer any sense that the possessor is affected. Scholars differ in what sort of datives they see as crucial—indirect objects, ethic datives, etc.—but there is a widespread assumption that some sort of reanalysis along these lines has taken place. However, Hendriks (forthcoming) points to various problems surrounding the reanalysis theory, such as the paucity of examples in the texts which had the necessary ambiguity to serve as a model for reanalysis. Another problem is the fact, mentioned by Duinhoven (1977), Ramat (1986b), Norde (1997: 58), and others, that in older (and dialectal) German (and earlier Dutch, see section 5.4.3) texts, the possessor is sometimes in the genitive, not dative, case in the doubling construction, as in (5-3): (5-3) Des Kaufmanns seine Waren sind schlecht The.m.gen.sg merchant’s his.nom.pl wares are bad (Stoett 1923: 84) The equivalent construction in earlier Dutch will be discussed in section 5.4.3. Of particular interest here is the fact that it has normally been assumed that those languages, such as Modern Dutch, which no longer have overt case marking on any part of the NomP, formerly were parallel to German in having


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a possessor in the dative case in the doubling construction. However, I will argue in section 5.4.3 that the evidence which has been presented so far for this view where Dutch is concerned is unconvincing, and that in fact the available evidence points to the possessor taking either the case of the larger possessive phrase or the genitive case. 5.1.3 Linkers and grammaticalization Whatever the origins of the doubling constructions, their further development once they have entered a language has played a prominent role in the grammaticalization literature, for example Norde (1997, 1998, 2001a), Lehmann (1995: 18–19), Burridge (1990, 1996), Weerman and de Wit (1999), Ramat (1986b), Janda (1980, 1981, 2001). As we shall see below, in many Germanic languages the linker pronoun shows variation in its form, agreeing in gender and number with the possessor. This is the case in Modern Dutch, for example, where we have Jan z’n boek but Marie d’r boek, literally ‘Marie her book’. I will refer to these as ‘possessor-agreeing linkers’. 2 In some languages, however, the linker is invariant, as in Afrikaans (see section 5.6). It is frequently assumed that these invariant linkers represent an extreme degree of grammaticalization of what was originally a normal possessive pronoun. The idea is that in such languages the linker was first inflected for features such as gender and number, as normal pronouns are, but as it became more and more a purely grammatical marker of possession, a single form (originally the masculine singular) was used for all possessors. On the other hand, however, it has also sometimes been claimed, for example by de Wit (1997) for Dutch, that agreement with the possessor represents a later stage, and that the first use of the doubling construction was with a masculine singular form which did not agree with the possessor. This is particularly important for us because English appears, at least at first, to have developed in a similar way. But if we assume that a possessive marker has become more grammaticalized when it loses the ability to agree with an antecedent and also assume that grammaticalization is unidirectional and irreversible, the (putative) development of agreement features on the linker pronoun in some languages is puzzling. 3 I will therefore pay particular attention to the evidence which has been presented for claims concerning agreement patterns and grammaticalization. 2 In languages in which modifiers are normally inflected to agree with their heads, e.g. German, there will furthermore be inflection of the possessive pronoun to agree with the possessum, therefore ‘agreeing linker’ would be a confusing term, since it does not specify what the agreement is with. 3 As has frequently been noted, it is not at all obvious what is ‘more grammatical’ and ‘less grammatical’ when the forms in question are in some sense grammatical to start with, such as a linker whose primary function is to serve as a marker of possession.

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5.1.4 The survey In discussing the syntax of the possessor doubling constructions, I will be focusing on the following questions in particular: 1. Is the construction used for ‘group genitives’, i.e. does the linker come at the end of a nominal group which may not have the possessor N at the end? 2. Is the construction used to express ‘independent’ possession, i.e. with no possessum expressed? 3. Does the linker agree with the possessor in number and/or gender? How does this relate to normal possessive pronouns in the language? 4. Is the possessor in a special case (e.g. dative) or simply in the case which would be required by the syntax for the larger NomP? 5. Is the construction used in constructions involving ‘extraction’ such as relative clauses or questions? It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss all the Germanic languages and dialects or details of such things as the form that the linker takes to agree with the possessum noun. However, I will attempt to cover the different types of systems which are found in the Germanic languages, and where relevant in the discussion of a given language, I will outline how the inflection, if any, of the possessive linker relates to the morphology of that language in general. I will also make comments on the sociolinguistic status and history of the construction in the language where possible. I must necessarily focus on languages where a reasonable amount of information is available concerning the possessor linking constructions, and I begin my survey with Low Saxon, since Strunk (2004b) provides us with an admirably detailed discussion of both facts and theoretical issues.

5.2 Low Saxon Strunk’s (2004b) corpus study reveals that the possessor doubling construction is used in all the dialects which he included (p. 163), although there is variation in the relative frequency of this construction versus other possibilities among the varieties. While the doubling constructions exhibit some differences in detail in the various dialects, such as whether or not a special form is used when the construction is used independently, they are fundamentally the same, e.g. in allowing the construction to be used independently. I will first discuss the characteristics of the doubling construction in Low Saxon generally, and then make some comments on the variation in frequency of


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use in the varieties and its possible relationship to loss of case inflection and categories, as well as the relationship of the possessor doubling construction to the -s genitive. 5.2.1 Characteristics of the possessor doubling construction A simple example of the possessor doubling construction is given in (5-4): (5-4)

De’n Herrn sien Naam is hillig The Lord:m.sg.obl his:m.sg.nom name:m.sg.nom is holy (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.113, p. 58)

The possessor is always in an oblique case, no matter what the syntactic function of the larger possessive phrase; thus the possessor has a special case demanded by its position in the NomP rather than the case the syntax requires for the whole possessive phrase. If there is a dative/accusative distinction, the dative case will be used, and when a nominative/oblique distinction is the only one which can be made, the general oblique case will be used. In contrast, the case of the linker is determined by the case of the larger possessive phrase as a whole, since the linker’s case must agree with the case of the possessum, in dialects in which possessive pronouns inflect for such agreement. The linker shows agreement in gender and number both with the possessor and the possessum; the agreement with the possessor is indicated in the gloss in the preceding example by using the English pronoun ‘his’ while the agreement with the possessum is indicated by the feature combination m.sg.nom (agreeing with Naam). In some varieties, the possessive pronouns show some variation in form according to whether they are being used on their own or in a possessor doubling construction; for details, see Strunk (2004b: §2.3). Strunk provides ample evidence that the position of the linker possessive is at the end of the NomP containing the possessor, rather than adjacent to the possessor itself. The construction is also recursive, as illustrated in (5-5): 4 (5-5)

Jehaun dee uk Markus jenant woat siene John:m.obl.sg who also Mark called was his:f.obl.sg Mutta Marie aea Hus mother Mary her:n.sg house:(n)sg ‘John who was also called Mark’s mother Mary’s house’ = ‘The house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.150, p. 68)

4 In these examples, I have modified Strunk’s glosses somewhat to reflect the earlier discussion of grammatical categories in Low Saxon.

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In this complex example, the agreement with the possessum is indicated by the feature combinations f.obl.sg (agreeing with Mutta Marie) and n.sg (agreeing with Hus). The doubling construction is freely used with relative and question pronouns: (5-6) Dit is de Mann, den sien This is the:m.nom.sg man:(m)nom.sg who:rel prn.m.sg.obl Huus wi sehn hebbt house.n.obl.sg we seen have ‘This is the man whose house we have seen.’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.130, p. 63) Such examples show that the possessor, the linker, and the possessum form a syntactic unit. The internal structure of the unit is of course debatable. In particular, does the linker pronoun form a constituent with the preceding possessor or with the following possessum? 5 Strunk argues (2004b: 71 ff.) for the latter structure, following Weerman and de Wit (1999: 1171) and Norde (1997). That is, the structure is assumed to be as in (5-7), where the possessor DP is the Spec of the entire possessive phrase and the head of the possessive phrase is the linker pronoun, followed by its complement the possessum NomP: (5-7)

dp [DP d [ D NP]]

To give a more concrete example, the last possessive phrase of (5-5) would have the structure of (5-8): (5-8) dp [Marie d [aea np [Hus] ] ] What makes Strunk’s analysis different from many other analyses which assume a similar phrase structure is that within the LFG framework that he adopts, it is possible to treat the same form as sometimes having a pred, that is, having a lexical meaning, and sometimes as having no pred, but only specifying the agreement features that it shares with the possessor and possessum (cf. the discussion in section 1.4 of the use of pred ‘pro’ in analysing ‘independent’ genitives in English). An advantage of this approach is that it captures the fact that the same form may sometimes be an ‘ordinary’ possessive pronoun but at other times may be a purely grammatical marker (in this case, in the doubling construction). Furthermore, it correctly predicts that the two types of forms may not always be exactly identical; in some dialects we find one form used as 5

See for example Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2001: section 4.3) on the difficulties in determining whether the linker pronoun is more closely associated with the possessor or the possessum in Dutch and Norwegian.


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a possessive pronoun and a clearly related but rather different form used as a linker. A final fact of significance is that the doubling construction is found in ‘elliptical’ or independent uses, that is, a possessor plus possessive linker can be used when there is no expressed possessum, as in (5-9): (5-9)

drückt he denn ok ganz sachten seine Lippen up pressed he then also very softly his:obl.pl lip:obl.pl on Eva ehr Eva her:obl.pl ‘ . . . then he also very softly pressed his lips on Eva’s’ (Strunk 2004b: ex. 2.175, p. 78)

Dialects vary as to whether the possessive linker agrees with the understood possessum or has a special form in this construction (Strunk 2004b: 78). These ‘elliptical’ constructions are easily dealt with in Strunk’s LFG framework, since the lexical entry of the possessive linker can introduce information about the understood possessum, while other grammatical theories would assume either an empty category or ellipsis of the possessum. Whatever the details of the analysis, such constructions can be accommodated in an analysis of the linker as a determiner which can be used without an overt complement, similarly to demonstrative pronouns, but they could also be accommodated in an analysis which treats the linkers as phrasal affixes. 5.2.2 Relationship with other possessive constructions The doubling construction is a minority possessive construction in nearly all the Low Saxon dialects according to Strunk’s (2004b) findings. Not surprisingly, he found that the most common possessive construction was the one which used a simple possessive pronoun (e.g. seine Lippen ‘his lips’). Such possessives are obviously not in competition with the doubling constructions as a way of expressing possession when the possessor must be expressed by a noun, and so will not be considered further here. There are two constructions which can be said to be in competition with the doubling construction, however, and it is of some interest to look at the relative frequencies of these three constructions in Strunk’s corpus. Low Saxon, like German and Dutch, makes heavy use of prepositional possessives (roughly equivalent to of possessives in English), and Strunk (p. 163) found that in all varieties of Low Saxon except Plautdietsch, the prepositional construction was the second most frequently used construction in his corpus (after simple possessive pronouns). In the Plautdietsch corpus, the doubling construction represented 24 per cent of all possessives, greater than the

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13.5 per cent figure for the prepositional construction, while the doubling construction never exceeds 5 per cent in the other dialects. Strunk shows that various factors such as semantic type of the possessive construction, animacy of the possessor, text type, etc. affected the choice of the possessive construction, but it is clear that there is a certain amount of choice in some situations. It is of considerable interest that the doubling construction is considered suitable for the very highest sort of literature in Plautdietsch, where Strunk’s material is mainly Biblical and where he found an unusually high frequency of the doubling construction, making it quite different from standard German and Dutch, where the doubling construction is colloquial. The prepositional possessive and the doubling construction are alternatives which place the possessor on opposite sides of the possessum, and so in an important sense it is the -s possessive, discussed in section 2.4.2.2, which is more directly in competition with the doubling construction, since both of these constructions place the possessor before the possessum. Judging from Strunk’s findings, the -s possessive is losing the competition; Strunk reports that the -s construction is virtually non-existent in his Plautdietsch material and does not exceed the frequency of 1 per cent in any dialect (Strunk 2004b: 163). Strunk argues that the -s possessive and the doubling construction should be given identical analyses. His proposed analysis for the doubling construction was exemplified in (5-8). As we saw in section 2.4.2.2, Strunk also analyses the -s possessive marker as being in D. In that section, I argued against this analysis, and in what follows I will demonstrate that the arguments which Strunk offers for the parallelism of the two constructions are not very convincing. The problem is that the two constructions seem to have different syntactic properties, despite Strunk’s arguments for their similarity. As discussed in section 5.2.1, it is quite clear that the position of the possessive form in the doubling construction is at the end of the whole possessor phrase, rather than directly adjacent to the possessor. As we saw in section 2.4.2.2, Strunk’s argument that the -s possessive with group genitives is possible is not very convincing. There is a clear difference in this respect between the doubling construction and the -s possessive. Another clear difference having to do with the potential complexity of the possessor phrase is that the -s possessive is not recursive, while the doubling construction is. As well as differing in the complexity allowed for the possessor, the two constructions appear to behave differently when two possessors are coordinated. Strunk’s analysis predicts that both the linker pronoun and -s should always come at the end of the last conjunct in such circumstances, and that the preceding conjuncts should not be followed by possessive markers. This prediction is essentially borne out by his corpus for the doubling construction.


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Matters are quite different with the -s possessive, however. Strunk frankly admits that examples like (2-11), where both conjuncts are marked with -s, pose problems for his analysis, as discussed in section 2.4.2.2. It appears, then, that the doubling construction and the -s possessive are not really parallel as far as coordination is concerned. To sum up, the -s possessive does not appear to be exactly parallel structurally with the doubling construction. However, Strunk’s arguments that the -s possessive is significantly different from the old inflection are convincing. The wealth of information concerning Low Saxon provided by Strunk’s thorough and insightful study points to the difficulty of trying to make a sharp division into inflections and clitics; however we formalize things, we want to be able to capture the fact that the degree of attachment of the possessive marker in the -s possessive is less than that of the old genitive inflection, but greater than that of the linker possessive. For the doubling construction, it is debatable whether the possessor phrase and the linker form a constituent, but it is clear enough that the linker has a syntactically specified position following the entire possessor phrase.

5.3 Standard German Paul (1951: 259) mentions examples such as dem Vater sein Haus ‘the father’s house’ as a substitution for the genitive that is frequently made in the ‘Volkssprache’. Although this possessor doubling construction is not used in writing in Standard German, it is well-established in the spoken language. Although the construction is a topic of comment by prescriptive grammarians, it is to be regarded as colloquial, rather than non-standard. Bhatt (1990: 145–51) comments that it is nicht als umgangssprachliche Variante zu sehen ‘not to be treated as a colloquial variant’, on the basis that it is found in ancient texts, and Lindauer (1995: 157) and Henn-Memmesheimer (1986: 130 ff.) similarly emphasize how widespread the construction is in German generally. Bhatt notes (p. 146) that it is possible to conjoin the possessor doubling construction with a simple possessive pronoun: (5-10)

dem Peter sein und mein Zimmer the:m.sg.dat Peter his and my room ‘Peter’s and my room’

Bhatt uses such examples to argue that the possessor and the possessive pronoun form a constituent. The entire doubling construction can be extracted in an interrogative, indicating that the possessive phrase forms a constituent: 6 6

Thanks to Rachel Hendery for finding examples on German websites.

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(5-11) Wem sein Kind ist vielleicht auch betroffen? Who:dat.sg his child is perhaps also affected? ‘Whose child has also had this experience?’ (From a guest book hosted by freecity.de, site accessed 4 November 2006) Examples with extraction only of the dative pronoun are also found on the Web, but less commonly: (5-12) wem ist das sein Problem Who:dat.sg is that his problem ‘Whose problem is that?’ (Peugeot-Scene forums, thread: ‘Manchmal’, message posted from Bern, Switzerland by user SP-206 (accessed 4 November 2006)) The context of example (5-12) is a complaint about how the speaker is always the one who has to deal with computer breakdowns, and it seems likely that the speaker has chosen to extract only the pronoun in order to focus on the affected experiencer. Examples parallel to (5-12) in having ‘extraction’ of the possessor alone are said to be ungrammatical in German (and other Germanic languages) in Corver (1990), and following Corver, Gavruseva (2000: 762). However, the construction with the possessor separated from the possessive pronoun and the possessum appears to be possible in some circumstances, at least for some speakers. 7 As noted in section 5.4.2, Haegeman (2004b) deals with a similar-looking construction in West Flemish by assuming that it involves the use of a resumptive pronoun, rather than extraction away from the possessum. If a similar analysis can be applied to examples such as (5-12), we are not dealing with a genuine possessor doubling construction in cases where the possessor is not adjacent to the possessive pronoun. In a framework such as LFG where there is no movement, the issue of whether the possessor is extracted or not does not arise, but important questions remain concerning the grammaticality and use of the doubling construction and the construction which arguably involves a resumptive pronoun. Further research is needed here, but the matter cannot be pursued in this book, where the main point of discussing ‘extraction’ of doubling constructions is to make a comparison with separated genitives in Middle and Early Modern English. 7

Examples from the Web must be viewed with some caution, since information about the dialect of the writer (or whether they are a native speaker) is not available. The construction illustrated in (5-12) may be limited to certain dialects; more investigation is needed.


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As in Low Saxon, it is possible, at least for some speakers, to use the doubling construction independently: (5-13) das ist meinem Bruder seine that is my:m.dat.sg brother his:f.nom.sg ‘that is my brother’s (feminine thing)’ (Anime Forum Germany website, message boards, thread number 2845, accessed 4 November 2006)

5.4 Dutch 5.4.1 Modern (Standard) Dutch In Modern Dutch, the construction which is often referred to as the Jan z’n boek ‘Jan his book’ construction in the literature is a robust feature of the colloquial but standard language. It is typically mentioned in grammars of Dutch for foreigners, but with the warning that it is a colloquial construction which is best avoided, at least in fairly formal circumstances. The doubling construction is strikingly different from the -s genitive in Modern Dutch, discussed in section 2.4.2.1, in a number of ways. In contrast to the -s genitive, the doubling construction is used at the end of nominal groups: (5-14)

de man met die gekke bril z’n caravan the man with those funny glasses his caravan ‘the man with those funny glasses’s caravan’ (Weerman and de Wit 1999: ex. 39c)

The possessive linker furthermore is a reduced form of the ordinary possessive pronoun. For example, zn is the reduced form of zijn ‘his’ and d’r is the reduced form corresponding to haar ‘her’ or hun ‘their’. The reduced forms are freely used in speech, as in d’r auto ‘her car’. The linker agrees in gender and number with the possessor N, as in (5-15): (5-15)

mijn zus/ de buren d’r auto my sister/ the neighbours her/their car ‘my sister’s/the neighbours’ car’

Unlike Low Saxon and many Germanic languages the possessor doubling construction is not used in independent (elliptical) genitives, like the equivalent of John’s in John’s is red (see e.g. Norde 1997: 80). This is probably linked to the inability of possessive pronouns to be used generally in independent genitives in Dutch, as in ∗ die pen is mijn ‘that pen is mine’. Depending on the style, Dutch requires instead either a preposition, as in die pen is van mij, lit. ‘that

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pen is of me’, or reinforcement of a possessive pronoun by a determiner, as in het is de mijne, lit. ‘it is the mine’ (Fehringer 1999: 75–76; Donaldson 1981: 68). 8 Finally, possessive linkers can be used in questions and relative clauses in colloquial Dutch, with extraction of the entire possessive phrase: (5-16) De man wie z’n boek ik geleend heb, is ziek. The man who his book I borrowed have is sick ‘The man whose book I borrowed is sick.’ (Donaldson 1997: 74) (5-17)

Wie z’n boek is dit? Who his book is this ‘Whose book is this?’ (Donaldson 1997: 85)

Note that the form wie is used both for subjects and objects in Dutch interrogatives and relatives, and therefore does not give any information concerning whether the possessor has dative case in the doubling construction. 5.4.2 Flemish dialects The Flemish dialects of Dutch offer some particularly interesting possessive systems. These dialects, along with Hollandic dialects, are particularly important in casting light on the development of the possessive in Afrikaans (see section 5.6), since Flemish and Hollandic dialects provided an important component of the Dutch from which Afrikaans developed. For general information on West Flemish, see Haegeman (1992). Taeldeman (1995) presents some valuable information concerning the forms used in various Flemish dialects. According to Taeldeman, the dialects of East Flanders have a possessor doubling construction in which the possessive pronoun indicates the gender and number of both the possessor and the possessum, giving, for example, Jan zijnen auto ‘Jan’s car’ vs. Jan zijn huis ‘Jan’s (neuter) house,’ and Anna (h)euren auto vs. Anna (h)eur huiz(en) ‘Anna’s house(es)’. There is considerable syncretism here, since the same forms are used to agree with a singular non-masculine possessum and a plural possessum of any gender. Unfortunately, Taeldeman gives very little information concerning the syntax of these constructions. Liliane Haegeman, who has examined West Flemish extensively in a Principles and Parameters framework, discusses some properties of two constructions with prenominal possessors in this dialect in Haegeman (2000). In the first construction, limited to singular possessors, the possessor is immediately 8 So far as I have been able to determine, this combination of determiner and possessive pronoun cannot be used in Dutch to make a doubling construction available for ‘independent’ use. However, a similar-looking construction is used in independent uses of the doubling construction in West Flemish; see section 5.4.2.


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followed by a bound morpheme se(n), which immediately follows the possessor DP: (5-18)

Marie se boek Marie se book ‘Marie’s book’ (Haegeman 2000: ex. 1a)

The alternation between se and sen is phonetically conditioned, but the same form is used regardless of the gender of the possessor. In the second construction, a possessive pronoun follows the possessor: (5-19)

Marie euren boek Marie her book ‘Marie’s book’ (Haegeman 2000: ex. 1b)

In this doubling construction, the possessive pronoun agrees in number and gender with the possessor and is also inflected to agree with the possessum; the form euren in (5-19) is a masculine singular form, while eur would be used with a singular feminine or neuter possessum. Haegeman (2004b) gives more examples of different types of possessors in her ‘doubling construction’ and makes it clear that quite complex possessors may precede the possessive pronoun: (5-20)

men zuster die in Gent weunt euren boek my sister who in Ghent lives her book ‘my sister who lives in Ghent’s book’ (Haegeman 2004b: ex. 10b)

The entire possessive phrase is subject to extraction in questions. Haegeman does not indicate that the question word is marked for case: (5-21)

Wien zenen boek ligt doa? who his book lies there ‘Whose book is lying there?’ (Haegeman 2004b: ex. 36c)

Examples such as (5-22) might suggest that extraction of the possessor away from the possessive linker is also possible: (5-22)

Wekken verpleegster zei-je gie dan-ze gisteren eur which nurse said you that-they yesterday her us verkocht een? house sold have ‘Who was the nurse whose house you said they sold yesterday?’ (lit. ‘Which nurse did you say that they sold her house yesterday?’) (Haegeman 2004b: ex. 6b)

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However, Haegeman (2004b; 2003) shows that the possessive pronoun in such examples is to be regarded as a resumptive pronoun which does not result from extraction of the possessor out of the possessive phrase. As in Standard Dutch, it is not possible for the usual possessive pronoun to be used in the doubling construction in independent or elliptical possessives. However, in West Flemish it is possible to use the doubling construction independently as long as a ‘strong’ form of the possessive pronoun is combined with a determiner: (5-23) Da zyn Valère de zyne. that are Valère the his ‘Those are Valère’s.’ (Haegeman 2004b: ex. 5b) (5-24) Valère de zyne liggen doar Valère the his lie there ‘Valère’s are there’ (Liliane Haegeman p.c.) Haegeman’s analysis assumes that these possessive forms are adjectives, followed by an empty head N; in contrast, the possessives found in the normal dependent doubling construction are assumed to be in D. She assumes that the possessive adjective is only used as a ‘last resort’ when the possessive is next to an ellipsis site, thus ruling out the co-occurrence of a determiner and a pronoun when the possessum is overtly expressed. An alternative analysis is available within a framework which severely restricts the use of empty categories, such as LFG. We can assume that the possessive form in the construction of (5-24) is an adjective which is entered in the lexicon with the obligatory information that it bears the possessor function to a function with pred ‘pro’. The inability of such forms to co-occur with an overt head N is thus explained, because the result would be that the upper-level function contained two predicates, which is not permitted. Turning to the intriguing se(n) construction mentioned earlier, we might assume at first that it is a possessor doubling construction in which the linker does not agree with the possessor, as it does in German, Standard Dutch, or the ‘doubling’ construction in Flemish. One important question here is whether the se(n) construction is syntactically parallel to the ‘doubling’ construction, particularly in the complexity of the possessors which can precede se(n). Haegeman (2003) does not give sufficient detail to determine how complex the possessor may be; she tells us only that the possessor must be singular in this construction, only giving examples of proper nouns. However, it appears that the se(n) construction cannot be treated on a par with other possessor doubling constructions in Germanic, at least not for all speakers. Haegeman


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reports (p.c.) that some speakers accept some complex possessors in this construction: (5-25)

# men zuster ut Gent se boek my sister from Ghent se book ‘my sister from Ghent’s book’

Such constructions, and indeed any construction with a possessor more complex than a single N, are rejected by many speakers. This is in striking contrast to the doubling construction, in which speakers universally accept complex possessors. More information on the history of the se(n) construction would be valuable, but it cannot be taken as a convincing example of a type of grammaticalization which has sometimes been suggested to have occurred (particularly for Afrikaans; see section 5.6). By this grammaticalization scenario, what was historically an agreeing possessive pronoun has lost its ability to indicate the gender or number of the possessor, and has become a mere marker of possession. This scenario seems attractive at first because it seems clear enough that se(n) derives historically from zijn. However, it is important to note that although zijn is specifically masculine singular in Standard Dutch, this pronoun was originally a reflexive possessive pronoun which was not specified for gender or number, as discussed in section 5.4.2. 9 It is not surprising, therefore, to find that numerous sources make reference to the fact that sijn (zijn) occurs in various Middle Dutch dialects as the ordinary possessive pronoun for the plural and the feminine singular as well as for the masculine singular; see van Kerckvoorde (1993: 79), van Bree (1987: 256), Stoett (1923: 47), etc. Weijnen (1967: 294) describes a similar situation in some modern West Flemish and Hollandic dialects. 10 Given the use by some dialects of an invariant third person form for the ordinary possessive pronoun, it seems quite likely that the West Flemish se(n) is not a development from a specifically masculine third person form to an invariant form, but rather from a form which was never specified for gender or number, but only for person. We can explain the existence of the two prenominal possessive constructions which Haegeman describes as the result of the development of competing possessive pronouns from both the old reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns. That is, the se(n) construction may 9 I am grateful to Jennifer Hendriks for pointing out the possible connection with the reflexive possessive to me, and supplying references concerning these forms in Dutch varieties. 10 Henn-Memmesheimer (1986: 137) also reports the use of sein as a general third person possessive form in some dialects of German, giving the examples die Schwester hielt seinen Bruder and die Kinder lieben seine Eltern. Henn-Memmesheimer indicates that this information comes from Weinhold (1867: §362).

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well be a doubling construction which developed when the zijn form was not specified for gender. Then, the new series of (agreeing) third person possessive pronouns was adopted, ousting the old non-agreeing form everywhere except in the original doubling construction, which became restricted in its use and may indeed, for some speakers at least, have changed its status from a true possessive pronoun to some sort of marker of possession. With the advent of the new possessive pronouns, a new doubling construction developed. 5.4.3 Earlier Dutch Although no attempt will be made here to trace the development of the possessor doubling constructions generally in languages other than English, it is in order to say something here about the history of this construction in Dutch because of some claims about earlier Dutch which have figured in discussions of grammaticalization such as Burridge (1990) and Norde (1997) as well as in the generative syntax literature (de Wit 1997, Weerman and de Wit 1999, etc.). There are two matters which need to be discussed here. The first is the claim that in earlier Dutch, there was a period when the linker pronoun did not necessarily agree in gender and number with the possessor, as it must in Modern Dutch. This claim is made, for example, by de Wit (1997: 100) and repeated by Weerman and de Wit (1998: 34–35; 1999: 1173). But as Hendriks (2003) conclusively demonstrates, the evidence for this claim evaporates when the examples which have been used to support it are scrutinized. According to Hendriks, only three such examples are ever used to back up this claim. One of them is repeated here as (5-26): (5-26) die keiserinne zijn moeder the empress his mother ‘the empress’ mother’ (de Wit 1997: 99, ex. 92b) Hendriks examines the context of these NomPs and finds that in fact they are all appositive constructions, e.g. the context of (5-26) shows that it clearly means ‘the empress, his mother’, rather than ‘the empress’ mother’, and the other examples are similarly misanalysed. Hendriks’ systematic examination of studies into the possessor doubling construction in Dutch revealed no examples in which there was nonagreement of the linker pronoun with the possessor, nor did her own examination of early Dutch texts. 11 Importantly, she found an early example with unambiguous agreement of the pronoun with a feminine possessor, as in 11 This statement holds only for dialects in which ordinary possessive pronouns consistently showed a difference between masculine and feminine gender. However, there were some dialects in


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example (5-27), taken from a thirteenth-century text edited by Niemeyer (1970): (5-27)

Ende al hebbe ic hem ghegeven die And already have I them given that/the.nom/acc.f.sg oude dilf hare port old canal her port ‘And I have already given them the old canal’s port’ (NNO: 4, OHZ:537–43, Hendriks’ translation12 )

The early date of this example (1268) is important, because it means that it is among the earliest examples of the possessor doubling constructions. If Hendriks is correct that such agreement was possible at this early period, Weerman and de Wit’s (1999: 1175) claim that the linker pronoun was ‘initially restricted to only one form’ (viz. the masculine form zijn or a variant thereof) is certainly not correct. It may be that some genuine unambiguously non-agreeing examples will eventually turn up, but if so, they would indicate only that there was variation in agreement, not that the agreeing variant developed after a non-agreeing variant (unless, of course, the non-agreeing examples were even earlier than (5-27), which seems highly unlikely). This example is also of interest because the possessor is inanimate. Burridge (1996: 704–5) notes that possessor doubling is not acceptable in modern German or Dutch with an inanimate possessor, such as ∗ dat huis z’n dak ‘the house’s roof ’. Burridge takes this restriction to stem historically from the fact that possessor doubling originated out of the personal dative, typically involving animate entities. Burridge takes the fact that the apparently similar construction in Afrikaans to inanimate ‘possessors’ (see section 5.6) represents grammaticalization of the possessive pronoun. But no explanation in terms of an earlier dative is necessary to explain the preference to use a prepositional phrase instead of a preposed possessive with inanimates, since the house’s roof is also considerably less natural in English than the roof of the house. Any restriction in presentday Dutch to animate possessors in the doubling construction seems to be a modern development, rather than a continuation of an older restriction. 13 which zijn (or a variant thereof) was used for both the masculine and feminine possessive pronoun generally; see section 5.4.2. Since there was no gender marking in the possessive pronouns, apparent non-agreement of the linker pronoun with the possessor is irrelevant to the point being made here. 12 In Hendriks (2003: 5), a different translation ‘the City of Old Delft’ is found. Hendriks later realized that the editors of this text had supplied a capital letter at the beginning of dilf, which is not in the manuscript, and which misleadingly seems to refer to the city. 13 The significance of the examples with inanimate possessors for Burridge’s account is discussed in Hendriks (2003), where more examples are given.

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Example (5-27) also brings us to the second matter which needs to be discussed here because the case of the possessor phrase is clearly not dative. The form die is ambiguously accusative or nominative at this time, but not dative. It is important to realize that earlier Dutch is different from modern German in that the possessor in the doubling construction was found in cases other than the dative, as noted by Stoett (1923: 49–50), Koelmans (1975: 437), and Norde (1997: 58). These works note that the possessor phrase could be in the dative, the genitive, or the casus rectus. As Norde comments, the ‘dative hypothesis’ outlined in section 5.1.2 is the most widely held one about the origins of the possessor doubling construction in Dutch. The usual theory, as expressed by Koelmans (1975: 437), is that an indirect object followed by a noun phrase beginning with a possessive pronoun was reanalysed as a single constituent. Van der Sijs (2004: 525) goes so far as to express this theory as though it were established fact. Burridge (1996: 702) also assumes that the possessor was dative in the possessor doubling construction in earlier Dutch, but is no longer because of the breakdown of cases, although her explanation is interestingly different because of its focus on the possible role of external possessors in dative case in constructions involving body parts. I will therefore start by examining the evidence that the doubling construction at least sometimes had dative case marking on the possessor phrase as a construction-specific case marking (which might be a legacy of its origins as two separate NomPs). Unfortunately, the usual examples given of the different case possibilities are typically only possessor phrases given without any indication of where they fit into the syntax of the sentence from which they were extracted; for example, Hendriks (forthcoming) found that sometimes examples with a dative possessor are presented without the preceding preposition which could account for the dative case. When a NomP is considered in isolation in this way, it is impossible to tell whether the case marking of the possessor is a special case demanded by the doubling construction or a case we could expect on the basis of sentence syntax. Consider example (5-28), for instance, from Wouter’s sixteenth-century journal: (5-28) van den kinderen haer doopsel of the:dat.pl children:dat.pl their baptism ‘having to do with the children’s baptism’ (Wouter, p. 752 (1572–1578)) Here, the possessor phrase is clearly in the dative plural. This case marking might be a result of a rule that specifically assigns dative case to the possessor in the doubling construction, but this is not certain because the preposition van


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governed dative case and thus the case of the whole possessive phrase would be dative. It is entirely possible therefore that the possessor has dative case by inheritance of the case of the larger NomP, assigned on the basis purely of sentence syntax. To judge between the ‘special case’ hypothesis and the ‘sentence syntax case’ hypothesis, we need to examine all early examples of the possessor doubling construction in Dutch to see whether the case marking of the possessor phrase is what might be expected from the sentence syntax, or a case which can only be explained as a special case for the doubling construction. Some examples have in fact been adduced as being explicable only by a special case marking for this construction. For instance, Norde (1997: 58) presents (5-29) of a putatively dative possessor in the doubling construction: (5-29)

Grote Kaerle sijn soon Great-dat Charles-dat his son ‘Charlemagne’s son’

Norde, who is careful to supply references for the Swedish examples she uses, does not supply one for this example, presumably because she is reproducing it from one of the references on early Dutch which she has consulted, such as Stoett (1923). Frustratingly, these references frequently do not indicate where a particular example came from, which makes it very difficult to determine how the NomP in question fits into the sentence from which it is taken. However, Hendriks (forthcoming) has found this NomP (albeit with a slightly different spelling from the one which Norde presents) in an example in the entry for the verb opvoeden in the Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, as presented in the CD-Rom Middelnederlands, edited by the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (1998): 14 (5-30)

Grote Kaerle zijn zoon . . . was opghevoet daer er stede Great Charles his son was raised there that city ‘Charlemagne’s son was raised there in that city’ (Cron. v. Brab. 791 (1565))

Crucially, Hendriks found that the spelling Grote Kaerle was not restricted to dative functions in texts of the sixteenth century. It is found in contexts where nominative or accusative case is required, for example. Hendriks gives an example of Kaerle in subject position, also taken from the CD-Rom Middelnederlands and reproduced here as (5-31): 14 The editors of the Woordenboek did not consult this text (Die Nieuwe Chronijke van Branbandt oft Tvervolch van de Oude) themselves, but have taken the example from Huydecoper (1782–1791).

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(5-31) Doe seyde Kaerle huge is me willekome . . . Then said Charlemagne, Hugo is me welcome . . . ‘Then Charlemagne said, “Hugo is welcome to me”’ (Historie van Hughe van Bordeus, 1530–1550) That means this example with a putatively dative possessor cannot be used to support what Norde terms the ‘dative hypothesis’ for the origin of the doubling construction. I am aware of only a very few other examples which have been presented in the literature of a dative possessor in the linking construction in Dutch. Jennifer Hendriks (p.c.) reports that of the examples which she has been able to track down, unambiguous dative case marking on the possessor in the doubling construction is only found in such sentences where the sentence syntax accounts for the dative case. A couple more examples have resisted discovery because they have been presented without adequate citations, but given that all examples so far have failed to survive scrutiny, it does not seem very likely that these elusive examples will turn out to be different. It is to be hoped that the examples can be brought to the light of day, but what is clear enough at this point is that there needs to be a re-evaluation of the assumption that the Dutch possessor doubling construction must have developed from a construction in which the possessor was in the dative case, prescribed by the construction. While this assumption seems so plausible, especially if the doubling construction is assumed to have originated from the reanalysis of a juxtaposed dative NomP and one beginning with a possessor pronoun, such datives as are found in the early Dutch examples are apparently to be explained in terms of the sentence syntax, rather than a special case for the doubling construction. This all raises the question of how the casus rectus examples such as (5-27) and (5-32) are to be explained: (5-32) maer werden die heyligen haer reliquen in but were the:nom.pl holy_ones their relics in houte vercierde casten omgedragen wooden decorated cases carried-around ‘but the saints’ relics were carried around in decorated wooden cases’ (Wouter, p. 741 (1578)) Ramat (1986b: 580) assumes that in Modern Dutch and generally in languages with impoverished case marking the possessor is a sort of ‘nominativus pendens’, a nominative having no syntactic connection with the possessee, and suggests that this type may be very old, belonging originally to spoken rather than written language. The forms in the two examples just mentioned could


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certainly be analysed as nominative, but die was ambiguously nominative or accusative for feminine nouns in Wouter’s language. It is quite possible that die is to be interpreted as accusative in example (5-27) but nominative in (532). That is, the case of the possessor phrase is identical to the case of the head of the whole possessive phrase, assigned by normal sentence syntax. We are dealing with a passive verb in (5-32), so it is impossible to tell whether the apparently nominative case is due to the fact that this case is prescribed for this position in the possessor doubling construction or the fact that the larger possessive phrase is the subject of the sentence. If the latter explanation is correct, we have agreement between the Spec and the head of the possessive phrase instead of the genitive case which is expected for the Spec when there is not also a determiner, that is, the case demanded of the entire possessor phrase by the syntax of the sentence. Example (5-27) involves a ditransitive verb and the recipient hem has the expected dative case. The non-human object would be assigned accusative case by normal sentence syntax, and the form die can be treated as accusative, the case assigned to the larger possessive phrase by this syntax. By this analysis, the possessor phrase gets its case from ordinary sentence syntax, rather than a special case determined by the doubling construction. This interpretation is made the more plausible by the fact that when dative case does appear on the possessor phrase, it can always be explained as being assigned to the possessive phrase by sentence syntax. So far as I know, no one has demonstrated that the casus rectus examples are ever unambiguously nominative in situations where the whole possessive phrase would be expected to be in the accusative (or dative) case. The similar lack of examples with clearly dative case except where the sentence would require dative case for the larger NomP would remain a substantial stumbling block for the ‘dative hypothesis’. All the examples we have looked at so far are consistent with the ‘sentence syntax’ hypothesis. Now what about the examples in which the possessor is in the genitive case in the doubling construction, as in (5-33)? (5-33) alle des conincks sijn landen all the-gen king-gen his lands ‘all the king’s lands’ (Norde 1997: 58, example 11a) Duinhoven (1977: 211; 1998: 193) suggests that the use of the genitive case for the possessor actually antedated the use of the dative case, and that the switch to dative case was facilitated by the frequent identity of form of dative and genitive case markers. Norde (1997: 58) comments that it has not yet been established whether the genitive or the dative construction was the basis for what she (along with many

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other scholars) assumes to have been a reanalysis of two constituents as a single one, and takes a neutral position on the issue. However, this question appears in fact to be a non-issue, because unless some examples with unambiguous dative marking which is not demanded by the syntax of the sentence can be adduced, it seems that the doubling construction in Dutch never assigned dative case to the possessor. 15 This does not mean, however, that the ‘genitive hypothesis’ is correct. Examples such as (5-33), with unambiguous genitive marking on the possessor, certainly exist. However, they are greatly outnumbered in the texts by examples in which the possessor is in neither the dative nor the genitive case, such as (5-27) and (5-32) above. Example (5-32) is in fact found in the same text as (5-33), a late sixteenth-century journal rich in examples of possessor doubling constructions. The most usual situation in Wouter’s journal seems to be that the possessor gets the case marking assigned by the sentence syntax to the larger possessive phrase. However, Wouter had another option at his disposal in the doubling construction. It is first of all important to realize that this text comes from a period when case marking and agreement were still regularly used (although overt marking had apparently become optional in some situations at least). Therefore, in addition to the doubling constructions, we also find plenty of examples in which the old genitive was employed, without any linker pronoun. In fact, we find such an example in the same sentence which contains (5-33): (5-34) des conincks capiteynen the:m.gen king:(m)gen captains ‘the king’s captains’ (Wouter, p. 3 (1572)) What seems to be happening in examples such as (5-33) is a sort of doublemarking of the genitive. That is, a preposed possessor was normally expressed either by genitive case on the possessor or by a linker pronoun. In the construction of (5-33), it is expressed by both. No special construction-specific case marking is needed to account for genitive case on these possessors. By the usual assumptions, the possessor is in the normal position of a possessor (i.e. in the Spec of the possessive phrase) in the doubling construction, and so since genitive case was normally assigned to this position at this period 15 It should be noted that de Wit (1997: 88) indicates that in some dialects of Dutch, it is possible for the third person pronoun to be used as a possessor in the doubling construction, where it must be in the dative case, as in hem zijn moeder ‘his mother’. Unfortunately, she does not indicate which dialects permit this; it could be that such examples are only possible in what Strunk (2004a,b) refers to as Low Saxon, where there is indeed no doubt about the dative case of the possessor in the doubling construction generally. At any rate, it is entirely possible that in Modern Dutch, the possessor in the doubling construction should be treated as having a default dative (or oblique) case, as de Wit proposes. That does not mean, however, that this was the situation in early Dutch, when the possessor was apparently in the case required of the entire possessive NP by the syntax of the sentence.


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of Dutch, it could be marked genitive. However, because it is followed by a pronoun which marks the possessive relationship, the normal genitive case can be overridden by the case assigned to the larger possessor phrase by the rules of sentence syntax, as in (5-27) and (5-32). This overriding was usual in Wouter’s journal; examples in which the possessor was marked genitive in the doubling construction are not very common although example (5-33) is by no means unique. Whatever the analysis of the construction of (5-33), it is clear that it did not antedate the other possessor doubling constructions in Dutch. At least one single text, Wouter’s journal, contains all the types of doubling constructions which have been attested for any period, and also the genitive inflection inherited from CG. The co-occurrence of these different possessive constructions (along with yet other types, notably the periphrastic possessive with van) in the same text, written by a single author in a single register, is highly significant. It is frequently assumed that possessor doubling constructions arise only because the deterioration of case marking, specifically the loss of the genitive as a case, has necessitated the use of alternative constructions. However, it is clear that Wouter still had a genitive case at his disposal, even though he often chose to use a possessor doubling construction instead. Wouter’s use of both constructions (as well as a prepositional genitive) does not give any support to the idea that the loss of the prenominal genitive was more advanced in speech than in writing in this period of Dutch. Wouter’s frequent use of the prenominal genitive cannot be due to any feeling on his part that this older construction was more suitable for writing than the newer periphrastic alternatives, since he was also happy to use the latter in his journal. As Kroch (2001) suggests, syntactic variation is not only a fact at the level of the speech community, but also at the level of the individual. It is finally worth noting that as with the modern Germanic languages which use possessor doubling, the construction is found in ‘extractions’. Due to the nature of texts, however, we cannot get the same information about the behaviour of the doubling construction in relative clauses and questions as we can when we have informants, and the examples of which I am aware in early Dutch all involve relative clauses; no examples of the use of the doubling construction in interrogatives have come to my attention. The examples with relative clauses are sufficient to show that the possessor, the linker, and the possessum form a constituent, as in the other Germanic doubling constructions. Unfortunately, there is insufficient evidence to make a determination concerning the case marking of the possessor. However, it can be stated that in none of the examples do we get dative case marking which is not to be explained by sentence syntax, nor is the relative pronoun simply unmarked

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for case. In most relative clauses, the pronoun used was usually the demonstrative pronoun, as in Modern Dutch, and as we have seen above, syncretism often made it hard to be certain of the case of these pronouns. However, the originally interrogative pronoun wie could also be used, especially in the oblique cases (van Kerckvoorde 1993: 176). In Een man wies sijn viande waren gram ‘A man whose enemies were angry’ (Hild. 5, 56, cited by Duinhoven 1998: 192) the relative pronoun wies is clearly in the genitive case, the case expected for a possessor. Stoett (1923) gives other examples. The use of the doubling construction in such examples when it did not in any way clarify case marking shows that whatever the impetus for its introduction, in use at least the doubling construction was not simply motivated by any lack of overt morphological case. To sum up, the doubling construction in earlier Dutch was similar to the constructions found in all the languages discussed so far in that the linker pronoun agreed with the possessor in gender. However, the fact that dative case is clearly demanded by the doubling construction in German does not necessarily indicate that the same situation held in earlier Dutch. The lack of examples in the latter language with dative case which is not explained by ordinary sentence syntax is not due to any lack of examples of texts before the period when the dative disappeared as a case in Dutch, or a lack of the doubling construction in those texts. While the construction is rarely found in most texts, it is quite frequent in Wouter. This is a fact of considerable importance, because it serves as a warning that we cannot assume that similarlooking constructions in fairly closely related languages necessarily developed in the same way. It is also important to note that the doubling construction arose in Dutch at a period when the genitive case was still undoubtedly a morphological case. As we shall see in Chapter 6, this fact undermines a widely accepted explanation for the rise of the so-called ‘his genitive’ in English.

5.5 Frisian Frisian is quite similar to Modern Standard Dutch in its possessor doubling construction, as examples employing a ‘pleonastic’ pronoun such as ús dochter har skoech ‘our daughter’s (lit. ‘daughter her’) shoe’ (Tiersma 1999: §4.1.3.1) indicate. 16 As in the other languages which we have looked at so far, the linker pronoun agrees with the possessor in gender. As with Dutch, there is no possibility of agreement in case because of the minimal amount of case marking morphology in the language. 16

Thanks to Peter Tiersma for kindly answering my questions concerning Frisian.


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Also parallel to the Dutch examples which show that the interrogative pronoun, the linker pronoun, and the possessed noun form a unit are expressions such as wa syn hûn is dit ‘whose dog is this’ (Tiersma 1999: 87). Frisian differs from Dutch in an interesting way, however, in that in Frisian, it is possible to use the linker pronoun independently, that is, when no head noun is expressed, as in dat is ús dochter harres ‘that is our daughter’s’ (lit. ‘our daughter hers’). The difference between Frisian and Dutch here is undoubtedly related to the fact that Dutch does not allow possessive pronouns to be used independently (see section 5.4.1), but such use is possible in Frisian, as in dat is harres ‘that is hers’.

5.6 Afrikaans Afrikaans offers an interesting contrast with the other Germanic languages in that the standard possessive construction is a periphrastic construction which uses a single form se (Donaldson 1993: 98): (5-35)

Dit was die vrou wat so pas hier was se kind It was the lady that just here was poss child ‘It was the lady who was just here’s child’ (Donaldson 1993: ex. 146, p. 98)

As this example illustrates, this indeclinable se comes at the end of the possessor phrase, which may be internally quite complex. The entire possessive phrase is extracted in questions and relative clauses: (5-36)

Wie se handsak is dit? Who poss handbag is this? ‘Whose handbag is this?’ (Donaldson 1993: ex. 152, p. 99)

The Afrikaans construction is of particular interest because it looks similar to the possessor doubling construction found in Dutch, but with an important difference: the linker se does not agree in gender or number with the possessor, but is indeclinable (unlike the Afrikaans possessive pronouns). As Donaldson notes, se is generally thought to come historically from an unemphatic form of sy[n] ‘his’; see Ponelis (1992) for a discussion of the forms found in early Afrikaans. Because zijn is specifically masculine (or neuter) in Standard Dutch, it is often assumed that the Afrikaans construction developed from the Dutch possessor doubling construction, with the linker pronoun losing its agreement features and becoming a purely grammatical marker of possession. Furthermore, it is true that examples with clear possessor agreement are found in

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some of the earliest Afrikaans writings, such as (5-37), from a journal of 1797, edited by Francken (1938). (5-37)

in die ouwers haar droufhijt in the parents their sorrow ‘in the parents’ sorrow’ (Duminy-Dagboeke, p. 109, 1797)

Norde (1997: 59) and Strunk (2004b: 98) treat the Afrikaans construction as involving advanced grammaticalization, in which an originally masculine singular form has generalized to feminines and plurals. This sort of change is not implausible, especially since there is some anecdotal evidence that children acquiring this sort of construction have a tendency to use the masculine singular possessive pronoun with all genders. 17 However, it is by no means clear that se developed from a form which was specified for gender at an earlier stage. In fact, not everyone agrees that the Afrikaans possessive marker se developed from zijn. Contact with African languages is thought by some specialists to have played an important role in the development of Afrikaans. Den Besten (2006) suggests that se developed from an adjectivalizer -s found in Cape Dutch, hypercorrectly applied to possessors by speakers of the pidgins which arose in the Cape. Since this suffix was reminiscent of their own reduced form z’n found in the doubling construction, den Besten suggests it was adopted by the local Dutch community. Given the existence of the strikingly similar se(n) construction in West Flemish (discussed in section 5.4.2) and the historical existence of non-genderspecific zijn forms in Flemish and Hollandic varieties, it seems unnecessary to give a special explanation for Afrikaans se as a form, particularly because these varieties are assumed to have been important ingredients of the Cape Dutch from which Afrikaans developed (Ponelis 1993, den Besten 2006)— although the particular language contact situation in the Cape probably played an important role in the extension of se to environments in which it is not found in other Dutch varieties. 17

Thanks to Rachel Hendery for finding this discussion on a website:

Oder aber folgender Dialog von meinem Freund gehört: Kind zu anderem Kind: ‘Das ist der Mama sein Trinken!’ Mutter:‘Das heißt nicht “der Mama sein Trinken” sondern “Der Mama IHR Trinken”!’ (‘The following dialogue was heard by my friend: Child to another child: ‘That is mama’s drink’ [lit. ‘the Mama-dat his drink’) Mother: ‘It’s not “Mama his drink”, it’s “Mama her drink”.’) (http://www.blog.de/main/index.php/notabene/2005/07/01/nonsens_namen) Of course, anecdotal evidence such as this, especially reported second-hand, cannot be more than suggestive of avenues of investigation. The example is of sociolinguistic interest also, since the mother accepts the doubling construction as appropriate for her child to learn. Systematic research into the acquisition of the doubling construction is needed.


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It is notoriously difficult to reconstruct many important early developments in Afrikaans, but for our purposes it is sufficient to note that there is no good evidence for the development of a doubling construction with agreement to one which lacks it. It seems entirely possible that at an earlier stage, there were two doubling constructions, one with a non-agreeing possessive pronoun descended from the Germanic reflexive, and another with possessoragreeing pronouns. This would make early Afrikaans similar to modern West Flemish. Subsequently, the sociolinguistic situation in the Cape facilitated the replacement of the possessor-agreeing doubling construction with the simpler non-agreeing one, with se eventually losing its pronominal status entirely.

5.7 Scandinavian languages and dialects In the Scandinavian literature, the possessor doubling construction is frequently referred to as the garpegenitiv ‘Garp-genitive’, Garp being an abusive term for Germans. The name stems from the widely held belief that this type of genitive arose from contact with Low-German-speaking traders from the Hanseatic League (Torp 1992: 151). However, this origin has been disputed, and Norde (1997: 62–3) considers it most likely that the construction is at least in part of native origin. According to Delsing (1998: 88, 2003b: 41), this construction is found in most Norwegian dialects 18 and in West Jutlandic (West Denmark). Torp (1992: 157) gives examples from a Bible of 1551 to illustrate that this use of a doubling construction with a non-reflexive pronoun was also found in earlier Danish. The doubling construction is not reported for Icelandic, Faroese, or Standard Swedish in the sources I have read. Norde (1997: 91) states that she found no conclusive evidence in her texts for the existence of an ‘RPP’ construction (=possessor doubling construction) in any earlier Swedish period and Delsing (2003b: 41) states that he has found examples only in a single text in a ‘Norwegian-coloured’ Swedish dialect. The absence of a doubling construction in Faroese is particularly interesting because this language lacks genitive case, and the loss of genitive case has often been assumed to be the cause of the rise of a doubling construction in various Germanic languages, as we have discussed. The absence of such a construction in Faroese does not of course show that the loss of genitive case did not give rise to the doubling construction in languages which

18 The construction was apparently first limited to Western and Northern Norwegian, but has now become quite widespread throughout the country.

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have it. However, the fact that Faroese has not developed a doubling construction shows that the similar lack of a doubling construction in Icelandic cannot be explained simply as a result of the rich case marking system of Icelandic. The doubling construction found in Norwegian differs from similar constructions in the other Germanic languages in at least two interesting ways. First, the standard Scandinavian languages, unlike the West Germanic languages, retain a specifically reflexive possessive pronoun sin/sitt, and it is this reflexive form which is used in the doubling construction in Norwegian, rather than the non-reflexive possessive forms. As in CG, the reflexive possessive pronoun is a general third person form which does not indicate number or gender. This means that the linker pronoun agrees only with the person of the possessor, although it further inflects to agree with the gender and number of the possessum. It is of considerable interest to look at what happens in Scandinavian dialects which lack the reflexive genitive pronoun and use an ordinary possessive pronoun in a possessor doubling construction. This situation has been reported for some West Jutlandic dialects by Jul Nielsen (1986) and is discussed in Delsing (1998: 94–5, 2003b: 41) and Julien (2005). As in all the other Germanic languages which use a personal possessive pronoun which is not descended from the old reflexive, this linker pronoun agrees in gender with the possessor (han ‘his’, hend ‘her’, deras ‘their’), so we get for example æ konde hendes kyse ‘the woman’s bonnet’ (Jul Nielsen 1986: 65, example 6.46; Julien 2005: 222). 19 This difference concerning agreement in West Jutlandic and the other Scandinavian varieties with a doubling construction is consistent with the hypothesis that in Germanic languages which lack possessor agreement, the lack of agreement is not the result of grammaticalization but rather of the descent of the linker pronoun from the old reflexive form, which did not indicate the gender or number of the possessor. A second interesting fact about the doubling construction in Norwegian is that it has a different sociolinguistic status from the construction found in colloquial German and Dutch. It is frequently assumed that possessor doubling constructions are always colloquial, and this assumption has been extended to ME and EModE; see Chapter 6. In Norwegian, however, prescriptive grammarians have lost the battle against the doubling construction, 19

For a more detailed description of possessive pronouns in West Jutlandic see Jul Nielsen (1986). There is a certain amount of variation according to whether the reflexive or the general possessive is used.


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which is widely used in writing and today even found in the most conservative Bokmål newspapers. 20 As in the other languages with a doubling construction, the linker pronoun comes at the end of an entire phrase, which may be internally quite complex. Torp (1992: 160–162) supplies several examples from written and spoken language. It is interesting to note Torp’s comments about examples such as (5-37), in which the possessor phrase ends with a verb: (5-38)

og det ken også vaere den som mikser sin feil and that can also be that as mixes 3.poss fault ‘and that can also be the fault of the one who mixes (the music)’ (Tvedesstrandsposten 13.4.89, cited Torp 1992: 161)

Torp (1992) regards the doubling construction as more acceptable than the -s genitive in such examples. This is reminiscent of Börjars’ (2003) observation discussed in section 2.4.1 concerning the disinclination to use the -s genitive in Swedish when the possessor phrase does not end in a noun to which an inflection could normally be attached. The difference, of course, is that Swedish does not have a doubling construction which speakers can use to avoid such awkward -s genitives. The syntax of the doubling construction in Norwegian is studied extensively by Fiva (1987), who notes that there are two possibilities for extraction in interrogatives with a possessor doubling construction. The more common type of interrogative involves extraction of the entire possessive phrase: 21 (5-39)

Hvem sin bil er det? Who 3.poss car is that ‘Whose car is that?’ (Fiva 1987: p. 43)

However, it is also possible to extract only the question word referring to the possessor: 22 20 Thanks to Lars-Olaf Delsing for kindly consulting with colleagues and answering my questions about the sociolinguistic status of the doubling construction in Norwegian and also for supplying examples (5-42a, b). 21 Note that the form hvem is used both for subjects and objects, and therefore cannot be said to be dative in case. Fiva’s analysis actually treats the possessor in this construction as having abstract genitive case, as part of a chain containing the clearly genitive sin. 22 As with the similar example in German, this fact indicates that Corver (1990) and Gavruseva (2000) were incorrect in treating such examples as ungrammatical, at least for some speakers. This fact does not mean, however, that Corver and Gavruseva were mistaken in assuming that extraction of the possessor phrase is not possible generally in the Germanic languages, since a resumptive pronoun analysis along the lines suggested by Haegeman (2004b) for West Flemish is possible.

216 (5-40)

Genitives in Early English Hvem er det sin bil? Who is that 3.poss car ‘Whose car is that?’ (Fiva 1987: 43)

This variation seems to be similar to that noted in section 5.3 for German. Note that the question pronoun is not capable of indicating nominative versus oblique case. However, Julien (2005: 222) gives an example of colloquial Norwegian heard on the radio in which the possessor is a pronoun, apparently in nominative case: (5-41) de syn bydel they their borough ‘their borough’ (Julien 2005: ex. 6.45, p. 222) The glossing is Julien’s, and the normal oblique case of the third person pronoun in Norwegian is dem, suggesting that nominative case has been used here. Unfortunately, Julien does not comment on the case marking in this example or indicate what grammatical relation this NomP was playing in the sentence in question. It looks, however, as though the possessor in the Norwegian doubling construction cannot be assumed to be always (abstractly) in the oblique case. Julien (2005: 216–217) makes an interesting argument that the sin found in possessor doubling is different from the ordinary reflexive pronoun. According to her, sin can be used in some dialects in a doubling construction after a conjoined first person pronoun and a third person N, as in meg og lærar-en si-tt forslad ‘me and the teacher’s proposal’. This is suggestive that the reflexive pronoun, which has always lacked number and gender agreement with the possessor, may have gone a step further in the doubling construction and lost its feature for person, which would be an instance of grammaticalization. More research is needed here. It may finally be noted that as in many other Germanic languages, it is possible to use the doubling construction independently: (5-42)

a. Bilen er Per sin Car.def is Per 3.poss ‘The car is Per’s.’ b. Per sin er fin Per 3.poss is nice ‘Per’s (car, etc.) is nice.’

It should be noted here that some Scandinavian dialects also have other types of periphrastic possessive construction using a pronoun. A particularly interesting type of construction which has been studied extensively by Lars-Olaf


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Delsing (1998, 2003a) is often called the h-genitive. In this construction, limited to proper nouns in most dialects, a postnominal personal pronoun (which begins with h-) is used instead of a possessive pronoun, for example huset hans Per ‘Per’s house’ (lit: ‘house.def his Per’). Although the proper analysis of such constructions is of considerable interest, it is generally peripheral to our topic, since there is nothing like them in the history of English. However, a variant of this construction mentioned by Delsing (2003a: 76) is of particular interest in relation to the origin of the doubling constructions in languages in which the possessor phrase in the doubling construction is clearly in the dative case, such as German. In some dialects which retain more case marking than ordinary Swedish, the postposed possessor of the h-genitive may appear in the dative case. 23 Example (5-43) is from the Skellefteå dialect: (5-43)

saitjen hansj farfaråm sack his trader.dat ‘the trader’s sack’ (Delsing 2003a: ex. 20, taken from Marklund 1986: 23; my translation)

One reason why this construction is particularly interesting is that it suggests that it is not necessary to assume that the dative of the more usual doubling constructions must derive from a ditransitive construction, a theory outlined in section 5.1.2. The plausibility of the ditransitive source for the doubling construction derives mainly from the fact that in it the human recipient (or deprivee) is most likely to precede the inanimate NomP. Thus a reanalysis of what was originally an IO followed by a DO beginning with a possessive pronoun as a single NomP in which the possessive pronoun played the role of a linker is not implausible in principle (although I have argued that it is not likely to be correct). But with these h-genitives, it is difficult to explain the dative possessor as a result of a similar reanalysis—always assuming that these dialects are similar to other Scandinavian languages (and also were in the past) in a strong preference for IO DO order. A reanalysis resulting in this construction would have had to begin with a sequence like IO [saitjen hansj] DO [farfaråm], which does not seem very probable as a frequently occurring pattern. More likely, the construction simply reflects the fact that dative is a frequent alternative way of expressing possession to the genitive. This is recognized by Julien (2005: 158), who assumes that in the dialects in question, nouns assign dative, rather than genitive, case to possessors. It is also possible 23

In Icelandic, which has the healthiest case marking system of any Scandinavian language, the possessor is in the genitive case in the h-genitive, however, as in húsi hans Jóns ‘Jon’s house’ (lit. ‘house his Jon’s’).

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that the dative case is simply the unmarked oblique case, as suggested by van Riemsdijk (1983: 337).

5.8 Conclusion: possessor doubling constructions in Germanic languages other than English The possessor doubling constructions in the Germanic languages other than English generally share the following characteristics (where evidence is available): 1. They follow a nominal group, which does not necessarily end with the possessor. 2. When a pronoun is used which is capable of showing features such as number and gender of the possessor, it usually also shows these features in the doubling construction. 3. Where agreement morphology is available, the linker pronoun furthermore agrees in grammatical features with the possessum. 4. The doubling construction participates in ‘extractions’ such as questions and relative clauses (however, we have not seen any examples in earlier Dutch). It seems always possible to extract the entire possessive phrase. 5. In languages which have both a doubling construction and the -s genitive inherited from Germanic, they typically exhibit syntactic differences, with the -s genitive having the more restricted distribution. The -s genitive seems to be always attached to the possessor, which is normally a proper noun or a kinship term. It furthermore does not agree with the possessor phrase in gender or number. Although the doubling constructions share characteristics 1–5, there is variation in other matters. For example, the languages differ as to whether the doubling construction can be used independently, that is without a following head noun. Most languages allow this use, but Standard Dutch does not, and West Flemish uses a doubling construction only if a definite article is also used. In all the languages except earlier Dutch, where examples of extraction are lacking, ‘extraction’ provides clear evidence that the doubling construction is to be treated as a constituent; that is, the entire possessive phrase forms a unit. However, some languages also seem to allow ‘extraction’ of the possessive pronoun alone in interrogatives. This second type of extraction has been argued to involve a resumptive pronoun. One difference of considerable interest has to do with point 2 in the above list. The linker does not agree with the possessor in gender and number in all dialects. This has sometimes been attributed to grammaticalization of


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the linker pronoun as a simple marker of possession. However, the evidence supporting the loss of grammatical features associated with the linker pronoun is scanty. When a linker pronoun fails to agree with the possessor in gender and number in a given variety, there is usually an explanation in terms of descent from the original reflexive possessor pronoun, which never indicated gender or number. However, there is some indication of a subsequent loss of person marking in some Scandinavian varieties. In contrast, the evidence for an apparent grammaticalization in the opposite direction, namely the development of a possessor-agreeing linker from a linker which formerly did not agree with the possessor, as has been proposed for Dutch, evaporates under examination of the examples which have been adduced to illustrate such nonagreement. This is of great importance to our study of the separated genitives in English, because this is precisely the sort of development which has been proposed for English. Another difference of interest has to do with the case marking of the possessor phrase. When any case is distinguishable on the possessor, it is usually an oblique case in the modern languages. This is perhaps a default case for this position. Hungarian, for example, has a possessive construction in which a dative possessor precedes the determiner: 24 (5-44)

Marí-nak a vendég-e-ø Mary.dat the guest-poss-3sg ‘Mary’s guest’ (Szabolsci 1984: ex. 10, p. 91)

However, in earlier Dutch and German it was also possible for the possessor to be genitive in case. This genitive case does not have to be analysed as a case particular to this construction, since genitive case is the normal case for a NomP in the Spec of a larger NomP. There is furthermore some evidence that in earlier Dutch the possessor could have the case which was assigned to the larger possessive phrase as a whole by ordinary sentence syntax. If this analysis is correct, the possessor, as Spec of the larger phrase, is agreeing in case with the head N rather than taking the genitive case normally required in this position. Presumably this was possible because the linker pronoun already supplied genitive case. If this analysis turns out to be untenable (as it would be if we found unambiguously nominative case in this position when the larger phrase was a direct object, for example), then the nominative case 24 A difference with German is that the possessum also agrees with the possessor. It must also be noted that Haegeman (2004b) argues that in Hungarian, the possessor with the dative marker is not in Spec, DP, but in the Spec of a higher projection, a focus position, making it different from the Germanic languages with possessor doubling. Furthermore, Hungarian has another possessive construction in which the possessor is in the nominative case. When the possessor is in the nominative case, it follows the determiner rather than preceding it (Szabolsci 1984, 1994).

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found must be treated as a special case assigned by the construction. There is also a bit of evidence that oblique case is not prescribed for this position in modern Norwegian, coming from examples in which the possessor is a pronoun capable of showing a difference between nominative and oblique case. What is of particular importance is the lack of evidence that the doubling construction of Modern Dutch derived from one in which the possessor was originally dative in its marking. The dative marking found in German is one piece of evidence often used to support the hypothesis of a reanalysis of two phrases as one, but no such reanalysis is necessary to explain this case marking when we consider that the dative is an alternative to the genitive in many languages as a way of expressing possession. As far as I know, it is not generally assumed that the dative possessor construction in Hungarian comes from such a reanalysis, for example. Closer to home, we have seen that the postnominal dative possessors found in some Scandinavian dialects cannot be explained as the result of reanalysis, and the dative simply seems to be an alternative to genitive case as a case for possessors. The ‘dative hypothesis’ also sits uncomfortably with the fact that genitive marking of the possessor was also possible. All the possible types of case marking were found at the same period, at least in Dutch, and it is not possible to say that one type antedated any other. Furthermore, it is clearly possible for languages to develop a possessor doubling construction without this sort of reanalysis. Mufwene (1993), for example, points out that in creoles, it is common to use what looks like a doubling construction to express possession: (5-45)

Pedro su amigu Pedro his friend ‘Pedro’s friend’ (Papiamentu (Curaçao); example from Mufwene 1993:138)

Such examples show that a doubling construction is simply one of the resources available to human languages to express possession without using inflectional morphology. I am not supporting the commonly held idea that the doubling construction in the Germanic languages was made necessary because of the loss of case marking. I have stressed that the loss of the genitive as a case is not a satisfactory explanation for the appearance of doubling constructions in the various Germanic languages. The doubling constructions in Dutch and German appeared before the genitive case was in serious peril in those languages. Julien (2005: 223) reaches the same conclusion for German, commenting that the use of the doubling construction in that language, and


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especially this use in conjunction with genitive morphology on the possessor in earlier German, as in example (5-3), shows that ‘the use of the possessor doubling construction is not necessarily a consequence of losing the genitive case on possessors. 25 It is a consequence of losing the capacity to license a nonpronominal possessor inside nP.’ 26 Julien assumes that possessors have a feature poss, which must be licensed somehow, and appears to be assuming further that the reason why the doubling construction entered the language was that at some point the ability of nouns to license poss was lost, although they still licensed case. Thus the possessor doubling construction became necessary, because poss could be licensed by a possessive pronoun. We have seen that it is not true, however, that a simple prenominal genitive had become impossible, or even uncommon, in Dutch at the time when the doubling construction arose. Therefore, assuming that the loss of the ability to license prenominal possessors was the trigger for the rise of the doubling construction seems dubious. It is nevertheless a fact that possessor doubling constructions appear to have arisen at times when case marking was becoming a less central feature of a language. The trend in the Germanic languages has been generally away from a reliance on case marking as the primary method of marking grammatical and semantic relations. The rise of periphrastic constructions in general and the doubling construction in particular can be seen as part of this general trend of relegating case marking to a less central position within the grammar. It is furthermore sensible to suppose that a doubling construction which already existed in a language might become the only option for a prenominal possessive in a language when genitive case was no longer available in the prenominal position. Thus, I do not assume that deflexion had no connection at all with the rise of the doubling construction, but the assumption that case marking had actually become incapable of marking the relationships that the new periphrastic constructions were marking must be rejected. Instead of assuming that the loss of genitive case led to the rise of the doubling construction, it seems more plausible to suggest that it was the use of doubling constructions which hastened the demise of prenominal genitive 25 Julien’s wording (2005: 222) ‘At an earlier stage it [the possessor/CLA] could appear in the genitive case . . . but in Modern German it has dative case’ may give the incorrect impression that genitive marking in the doubling construction preceded dative case marking in German (although she does not actually say this). It should be emphasized that it has not been established that either case preceded the other in this construction, and they certainly overlapped. Furthermore, genitive case is still a possibility in some Modern German dialects, as discussed. It therefore does not seem plausible to assume that the use of dative case in most Modern German dialects in this construction is the result of some fundamental shift in the syntax of the NomP, as might be imagined. 26 In Julien’s Minimalist treatment, nP is a larger phrase which contains NP.

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case in those languages which had both; with an alternative to genitive case in the prenominal position, this case could be confined to the postnominal position, as in German, or done away with completely, as in Dutch. A final area of variation is the sociolinguistic status of the doubling construction. In some languages it is a colloquial construction not found in writing. However, in Low Saxon it is used in the most solemn writing (the Bible) and in Norwegian the doubling construction has overcome prescriptivist opposition to achieve the status of an accepted part of the standard language. As we shall see in the next chapter, the separated genitive found in the earliest period of Middle English presents a very different profile from the five characteristics of the typical Germanic doubling construction. The later separated genitives are more like the more typical doubling construction of the other Germanic languages, although there are several notable differences, particularly in apparent sociolinguistic status and the near restriction to proper nouns in the later period. It is to the English separated genitive that we now turn.

6 The separated genitive in English In Chapter 5 we surveyed possessor doubling constructions in the Germanic languages. In earlier English, there are many examples in which a form which looks like a possessive pronoun follows a possessor N, as in (6-1 a,b): (6-1)

a. Of seth, ðe was adam is sune1 Of Seth, who was Adam poss son ‘Of Seth, who was Adam’s son’ (Gen&Ex (A) 493) b. þo was in Norwei his erþ a king then was in Norway poss land a king ‘Then there was a king in Norway’s land (=land of Norway)’ (Brut(O) 5635)

To name only a few works by linguists and Germanic scholars, Stahl (1927: 19), Ramat (1986a), de Wit (1997), Delsing (1998), Weerman and de Wit (1999), Strunk (2004b), and Haegeman (2004a) have assumed the unity of the construction illustrated in (6-1) with possessor doubling constructions in other Germanic languages (although of course this particular term for the construction is not used in all of these works). The term ‘his genitive’ is often used for this possessive in which the marker of possession was written separately. This terminology is hardly surprising, given the similarity of this possessive marker to the third person possessive pronoun, a similarity which was intensified in some dialects by ‘h dropping’, a phenomenon which will be discussed further below, along with hypercorrect addition of initial [h]. I will argue in this chapter, however, that the English ‘his genitive’ of the earlier stages of ME was entirely parallel to the ‘attached’ genitive inflection -es which is also found at the same period. The ‘detached’ possessive marker, to use the terminology of LALME, has affix-like characteristics in EME, and may be simply an orthographical variant 1 Wyld (1953 [1936]: 315) comments of this example, ‘ . . . the suffix is already separated, although joined to the Noun by a hyphen’. However, manuscripts of this time did not use hyphens in this way; the hyphens in the edition used by Wyld are purely editorial. This particular hyphen does not appear in Arngart’s (1968) edition.

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of -es, as will be discussed; on the evidence provided by the spellings, see also section 6.4.4. Any analysis of this possessive marker must furthermore be based on a systematic investigation of the evidence, rather than on assumptions about typology. I will therefore use the term ‘separated genitive’ in my discussion of English, as this has the advantage of not prejudging the analysis of any stage of English. It is important to realize that none of the scholars mentioned above has carried out a systematic investigation into the separated genitives in English in which certain questions which contemporary linguists would consider important are addressed satisfactorily. Many sources mix together texts from manuscripts of different periods to illustrate a point without considering whether changes to other parts of the grammar during the intervening period may mean that similar-looking examples require a different analysis in different periods. This is similar to writing a grammar of, say, Modern Spanish which uses examples from Portuguese to illustrate points of Spanish grammar, and which does not differentiate examples from different dialects of Spanish. One particularly common problem is that many earlier studies have not made the crucial distinction between the time of composition of a text and the date of the manuscript in which a version of that text is found. Another common problem is one which was mentioned in the preceding chapter, namely that a string is sometimes presented as a single NomP, but a wider context reveals that it is not a constituent at all, or at least is amenable to another analysis. Some of the early studies are very valuable, particularly as a source of examples to be checked out more carefully. However, standards of scholarship change over time, as do the questions which are considered to be important as theories about language evolve. The advent of electronic corpora has further made it possible to collect more data in a few hours than previously would have been possible in months. For this reason, yet another investigation into the separated genitive is warranted. One question in particular which needs more investigation is the relationship between examples in which the possessive marker agrees with the possessor, for example Lucilla hir company ‘Lucilla’s company’, and ones in which there is no such agreement, such as Margere ys dowghter ‘Margery’s daughter’. This question is of particular importance to the idea that one type or another represents grammaticalization. While it is generally recognized that the possessor-agreeing examples are not found until long after the first nonagreeing examples, previous works have tended to be unclear on the question of whether possessor-agreement and non-agreement coexisted in any period, and a more precise date needs to be given to the first appearance of the possessor-agreeing examples. The unsystematic nature of the treatment of the

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examples from different periods has led to the idea that possessor-agreeing and non-agreeing examples coexisted in the same period. To some extent, this sort of confusion is caused by misanalysis of some examples. In this chapter, I present the results of my own investigation, in which all the examples of separated genitives were systematically collected from a large number of texts from EME to EModE. We shall see that although the first separated genitives appear in the thirteenth century, we must actually discern three periods in which separated genitives are found in the texts. It is only in the third period (EModE) that we find some examples which demand an analysis completely parallel to whatever analysis is given to the doubling constructions in the languages mentioned above. Some of these results were presented in Allen (2003), but here I present a more thorough discussion as well as an explicit comparison of English with the other Germanic languages. One major aim of this chapter is to examine how the separated genitive construction in earlier English fits into the typology of Germanic languages, and to provide better data than has previously been available to typologists and workers within grammaticalization theory, who are dependent on the quality of the data available to draw the best possible conclusions. The primary aim, however, is to give a coherent picture of the separated genitive in the history of English and to examine its possible role in the development of the -s genitive. I will begin by discussing the question of whether separated genitives already existed in OE, moving on to an examination of the evidence for the nature of the separated genitive in the three stages just alluded to.

6.1 Apparent separated genitives in OE It is sometimes assumed that OE already made use of a construction in which a possessive pronoun was used instead of a possessive inflection. The OED gives a handful of examples (his poss. pron., 3rd sing. masc. and neut, signification 4) from OE in which his is supposedly ‘used instead of the genitive inflection’, but comments that the primary use of this construction was between 1400 and 1750. However, we must agree with Janda (1981: 83) in dismissing the idea that the separated genitive of EME can be traced back to OE. When only a handful of apparent examples of a construction have been found in a particular period, they must be scrutinized closely. This is particularly the case when there is a large gap between the earliest putative examples and later examples. It furthermore turns out that all the OED’s early examples are amenable to another analysis. The same is true of the additional examples offered by Mustanoja (1960: 160).

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These early putative examples of separated genitives can be divided into three broad types. First, there are examples in which the noun preceding the possessive pronoun (the presumed possessor N) is in the case called for by its grammatical relation in the sentence. An example is given in (6-2): (6-2) Nilus seo ea hire æwielme is neh Nile the:f.nom.sg river:(f)nom.sg her source is near þæm clife þære Readan Sæs the:n.dat.sg shore:(n)dat.sg the:f.gen.sg Red Sea:f.gen.sg ‘The source of the river Nile is near the shore of the Red Sea’ (Orosius, Bately, ed. 1980: 11.3) The problem with this example is that there is an alternative analysis, viz. that this is simply an instance of ‘left dislocation’, that is that Nilus seo ea is mentioned first to introduce the topic and then the possessive pronoun picks up the topic. This is particularly plausible given that the text where most of such examples are found, Orosius, has frequent examples of undoubted left dislocation such as Europe hio onginð . . . of Danai þære ie ‘Europe, it begins at the river Danube’ (lit. ‘Danube the river’) (Orosius 8.23). The second type has the presumed possessor N in the dative case. I only know of one such example, which is given in the OED his entry mentioned above: (6-3) þa Gode his naman neode cigdan who God:(m)dat.sg his name fitly called.pl (Paris Psalter (Krapp 1932) 98.6) The OED has apparently interpreted this example as meaning ‘when they fitly called God’s name’. But two other interpretations seem to me to be possible. In both of them, God is not assumed to be a possessor N, but an argument at the sentence level, not forming a constituent with his naman. The first possible interpretation is that the sentence should be translated ‘when they needs called on God by name’, with the oblique naman to be seen as in the (archaic and mostly poetic) instrumental case. The second possibility is that this is a (rare) ditransitive construction, meaning ‘called out his name to God’. However this example is to be analysed, two things should be noted. First, the example does not exactly follow the Latin text of this line qui invocant nomen ejus, lit. ‘who invoke name his’, adding an extra reference to God (and changing the tense). Second, if the example is accepted as an example of a separated genitive, it would be the only example in OE or ME in which the possessor N was in a dative case not demanded by the syntax, but rather by


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the construction (as in e.g. Modern German). In such isolation, and with alternative analyses possible, the example cannot be accepted as convincing. The third and final type of example which has been given involves a possessive pronoun other than his, e.g. hiera in (6-4): (6-4)

Affrica & Asia hiera landgemircu onginnað of Alexandria Africa and Asia their boundary begins in Alexandria ‘The boundary of Africa and Asia begins in Alexandria’ (coorosiu,Or_1:1.8.18)

This example is subject to the same ‘left dislocation’ analysis suggested for (6-2). There are a few other examples which have been offered in the literature; I have discussed and dismissed all of them (as well as some instances of simple mistranslation) in Allen (1997). Since all the examples which have been suggested as being of an earlier date than those discussed in the next section are either simple mistranslations or at best amenable to another analysis, I take it as established that there is no evidence for a possessor doubling construction in either OE or very early ME. The first convincing examples in which the possessive marker is written detached from the noun come from manuscripts of the mid-to-late thirteenth century and early fourteenth century. There is thus a long gap between these OE examples and the earliest ME ones; the latest OE example, namely (6-3), comes from a manuscript of the first quarter or middle of the eleventh century (Ker 1957: item 367), while the ME examples are not found until the middle of the thirteenth century. The ME separated genitives are an entirely new phenomenon, with no chain linking them to the OE examples which have been adduced. There is furthermore no evidence from OE that the separated genitives which are found in ME, which are generally incapable of showing any case marking on the possessor, come from an earlier construction in which the possessor was in the dative case, as it is in modern German. 6.1.1 Separated genitives and left dislocation The lack of such a chain back to OE also militates against another hypothesis which is quite reasonable on the face of it. Since most of the OE examples are capable of an interpretation as left dislocation, it is reasonable to suggest that such left-dislocated examples were the origin of the separated genitive of the EME period, since such examples have just the sort of ambiguity which is necessary for reanalysis. We might hypothesize that the OE examples were simply left dislocation, but this ambiguity caused a reanalysis whereby what was originally two noun phrases became one. Now if we found a continuous record of examples like (6-4) from OE to ME and then found examples in

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which a left dislocation analysis was not possible (e.g. the possessive phrase was in the position of an object, and not fronted), it would be reasonable to conclude that the left dislocation structure had been the basis for a reanalysis which created a new possessor doubling construction. But the gap just mentioned leaves us without evidence for the idea that the separated genitives developed from a reanalysis of left dislocation. 6.1.2 Separated genitives and external possessors While a development from left dislocation is not a widely assumed hypothesis, the remaining possible link with OE is one which has played a prominent role in the literature. As discussed in Chapter 5, a widely held explanation for the possessor doubling construction in the Germanic languages generally is that it arose from a reanalysis in situations where a NomP (in the dative case) preceded one consisting of a possessive pronoun followed by a possessum. Whatever the merits of this explanation for the other Germanic languages, it is not plausible for English. The following example and a few similar ones have frequently been repeated to illustrate that the requisite ambiguity necessary for the proposed reanalysis existed: (6-5) Her Romane Leone þæm papan his Here Romans Leo:(m)dat.sg. the:m.dat.sg pope:(m)dat.sg his tungon forcurfon & his eagan astungon tongue cut-out and his eyes stabbed ‘In this year the Romans cut out Pope Leo’s tongue and put out his eyes’ (cochronA-1,ChronA_[Plummer]:797.1.596) (ASC(A) 791.1) In such a string, the string Leone þæm papan his tungon presumably consists of two separate NomPs, in which the dative phrase is a ‘sympathetic dative’ and his tungon is the direct object of the verb, so that a translation ‘cut out his tongue on Pope Leo’ would represent the syntax better than the translation given for the example, although it is not idiomatic PDE. Constructions of this sort (including the more idiomatic ‘hit him on the head’) are most commonly referred to as ‘external possessor’ constructions in current linguistic literature. Such a string would be liable to reanalysis as a single NomP in which the original ethic dative was interpreted as a possessor. But as Jespersen (1894: §250) comments concerning the few oft-quoted examples of this sort, ‘the instances of this particular construction are not numerous enough to account for the frequency of the his genitive’. It is true that a few examples of this sort exist, but they are rare in the texts; this is the reason why the same few examples are repeatedly used to illustrate the point. Examples in which a NomP in the dative case is juxtaposed to a phrase beginning with a possessive


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pronoun do not appear to be very common in earlier Dutch or German texts either (see Hendriks, forthcoming). It furthermore appears that English has always been different from other Germanic languages in making very little use of external possessor constructions. I made an investigation into external possessors in a large sample (pp. 16–116 of Bald’s Leechbook of c950, edited in Cockayne 1961[1864–66]). If examples like him/NomP-DAT his N, where a dative pronoun or noun immediately precedes a possessive pronoun, served as a model for the separated genitive, we would expect them to be common in this work, where body parts and their possessors are frequently mentioned. However, I found no such examples. I did find a small number of examples in which an external possessor was used but a determiner, rather than a possessive pronoun, was employed. In only one of these examples, scearpa him þa scancan (46.26) ‘scarify his legs’ (lit. ‘scarify him the legs’) did the two NomPs in question have the necessary juxtaposition which might cause the necessary structural ambiguity to make a reanalysis as a single NomP possible. But clearly, even if such examples were robust enough to bring on a reanalysis, the resulting reanalysis would have a determiner, rather than a possessive pronoun. 2 Examples are not common, however; overwhelmingly, the most common way to refer to the possessor of a body part was to use a possessive pronoun, as it is in PDE. Whatever the merits for Dutch of a reanalysis based on datives with body parts of the sort suggested by Burridge (1996), the reanalysis explanation is simply not plausible for English. Examples in which a similar reanalysis of indirect and direct object could lead to ambiguity are similarly rare, and so a reanalysis on the basis of such a model does not seem likely either. Having considered and dismissed the possible OE origins of the separated genitive, I now turn to a discussion of separated genitives in the three later periods mentioned above. I will first discuss the nature of the separated genitives in these periods and then possible explanations for their appearance.

6.2 The early period: c1250–c1380 As far as I have been able to determine, clear examples of separated genitives before the late fourteenth century are limited to two poetic texts: Genesis and Exodus (Gen&Ex) and Brut(O). Before discussing the nature of the separated 2 A similar example is found in ASC(A) 792: Her Offa Miercna cyning het Eþelbryhte rex þæt heafod ofaslean ‘In this year, Offa, king of the Mercians, ordered king Ethelbert’s head struck off ’. The use of the determiner þæt (accusative neuter singular, in agreement with heafod) contrasts with the use of the possessive pronoun in (6-5) a little bit later in the same text. Thus, the use of the determiner in this construction was not limited to the Leechbook.

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genitives in these texts, it is necessary to look at a couple of possible examples from another text, namely Brut(C). In his grammatical introduction to his edition of both manuscripts of the Brut Madden (1970 [1847]: xlvi fn. 2) comments that the use of his instead of a genitive inflection is fairly frequent in the Otho MS, but infrequent in the Caligula MS. However, the examples which Madden adduces from the Caligula text are not entirely convincing. The example Madden alludes to as occurring on p. 279 of volume 1 of his edition is presumably Argal his broðer (line 3264 in BL), but the context makes it clear that the meaning is ‘Argal, his brother’ (which is in fact the translation that Madden gives). The genitive inflection in Otho is simply a mistake on the scribe’s part, indicating a lack of attention to the sense of the text. This example can be safely dismissed. The only other example Madden mentions from Caligula is on p. 175 of the same volume, presumably Cornwale his eærde (BL 2048). But in the context of the example, an appositive reading ‘Cornwall, his country’ makes good sense. I know of one more possible example, and smæt of Modred is hafd (line 13999 in BL). The analysis of this as a separated genitive is certainly possible, with a reading ‘and smote Modred’s head off ’. But since external possessors, in which the possessor was a dative adjunct rather than part of a possessive phrase, were occasionally found in OE and EME (see section 6.1.2), a translation such as ‘he smote his head off Modred’ is possible, although it is strange for PDE, where external possessors are not normal. These are all the possible examples in the Caligula MS that I know of, and none of them must definitely be treated as separated genitives. In Allen (1997) I dismiss some other apparently early examples which have been adduced in the literature. Let us now turn our attention to the texts which contain indisputable examples. Example (6-1a) above is one of six instances found in one of these texts, the poem Gen&Ex. It is unfortunate for us that although this text is assumed to have been written c1250, the manuscript containing it is from much later, c1325. It is similarly unfortunate that the manuscript is not ‘pure’ as to dialect; see the discussion of this text in section 4.2.2.1. The other early examples of the separated genitive come from the Otho manuscript of the Brut, a southwestern manuscript described in section 4.2.2.1. The earliest examples thus do not come from the same dialect area. It is difficult to know what to make of the separated genitive marker in these earliest texts, because the construction is so textually limited and we do not find more examples until the late fourteenth century, from texts in which the group genitive was also found (see section 4.4). The difficulty in analysing the separated genitive in EME is compounded by the fact that


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the two texts with examples of it come from different dialect areas and also use different spellings—the form used is regularly his in Brut(O), but is in Gen&Ex. The presence of the separated genitive in Brut(O) fits the profile given for the ‘detached’ genitive given by Dot Map 1188 in LALME, but the Gen&Ex manuscript is written in a West Norfolk dialect (LALME Vol. 1: 25), making the separated genitives in this manuscript surprising. There are also only six examples which everyone agrees on of separated genitives in this latter manuscript, making any generalizations very tenuous. However, certain observations can be made. First, as has frequently been noted, the great majority of examples of the separated possessive in this period (as well as later) are found with proper nouns, particularly ones ending in s. In Gen&Ex,there are only six indisputable examples of separated genitives, and one is an exception to this generalization, namely biforn ðat louerd is fot ‘before the lord’s foot’ at line 2272. 3 We have many more examples to work with in Brut(O); Furnivall (1865: 89) gives a figure of 112. As noted by Madden (1970 [1847]: xlvi fn. 2), nearly all of these are proper nouns, although there are some exceptions. Second, the separated genitive is never as common as the attached genitive in these texts. We have seen that it is quite unusual in Gen&Ex,but although it is common in Brut(O),the possessive marker is written attached in more than two-thirds of the examples in that text, according to Furnivall (1865). Third, there is no convincing evidence that the writing of the possessive marker as a separate word demonstrates that the old inflection has been reanalysed as a clitic, as is assumed by Janda (1980, 1981) and many others (e.g. Kroch 1997, Lightfoot 1999, and Weerman and de Wit 1999). This hypothesis will be discussed in greater detail in section 6.3.1. For now, what is of most importance is the fact that the distribution of the separated possessive marker is identical with that of the attached -es. The only difference is that the separated possessive marker is almost (but not quite) completely restricted to (masculine) proper nouns, especially (but not exclusively) ones ending in s. It is unfortunately not possible to say with certainty whether the separated genitive was used with feminine nouns in this early period. An example from Brut(O) at line 11101 in BL for Gwenyfer his loue woman heom leofust is often adduced as showing that the separated genitive does occur with feminine 3 There is also a disputed example ðat dune is siðen at line 1295. In his glossary, Arngart (1968) translates siðen as ‘side’, which gives a translation ‘the down’s side’ (=the side of the hill) for the phrase. But Buehler (1974) has a note on this passage suggesting that siðen means ‘later’ and that is is simply a mistake (not unusual in this manuscript). The fact that Arngart’s interpretation makes the syntax of this phrase unusual, combined with the fact that all non-disputed examples of the separated genitive involve human nouns, supports Buehler’s interpretation. At any rate, a disputed example such as this cannot be used as evidence for the distribution of the separated genitive.

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nouns in this early period, is uncertain because it may mean ‘for Guinevere, his love, woman dearest to him’, rather than ‘for Guinevere’s love, woman dearest to him’. 4 I have found another example in which it looks as though the possessor is a feminine noun: (6-6) at þare dich his grunde at the.f.gen/dat.sg ditch poss bottom (Brut(O) 7929) This particular example is interesting for a variety of reasons, apart from the gender of the possessor. First, it is an unusual (but not unique) example of the separated genitive in which the possessor is not a proper noun. Second, it illustrates the use of an inanimate possessor in this construction. This example and others, such as (6–1a), show that the separated genitive was used with inanimate possessors in the earliest texts where this type of sentence is found. If animate possessors are a characteristic of possessor doubling, then the separated genitive of EME was not a typical Germanic possessor doubling construction. 5 Third, the form þare, historically genitive or dative, appears to be contributing genitive case marking in addition to his, although it is just possible that this form should be interpreted as dative, governed by the preposition, since we do find clear examples of case agreement with the head of the possessive phrase rather than with the possessor in this period; see section 4.3.2.1. Returning to the question of the gender of the possessor in this example, we note that this example appears to be an instance in which the possessor in a separated genitive has a feminine possessor but his as the possessive marker. In OE, dic ‘ditch’ could be either feminine or masculine, and it looks feminine here, because the form þare is historically exclusively feminine. However, the example is not completely straightforward because alternative explanations could be given. It is possible that the Otho scribe retained þare from his exemplar but used his (the neuter possessive form at this time as well as the masculine) because of his own tendency towards using natural gender, hence treating inanimate objects as neuter. Finally, as demonstrated by Jones (1988), EME was a period when the old gender/case markers were being redeployed as markers of case alone, to some extent at least, and so it is possible that þare is not really signalling gender here (although my impression is that this form is not used with clearly masculine nouns in Brut(O)). 4 For further discussion, see Allen (2003: fn. 25), and for details of the separated genitive found in Gen&Ex see footnote 16 of the same paper. 5 As we have seen in section 5.4.3, however, it is not in fact true that possessor doubling was restricted to animate possessors in earlier Dutch.


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I take it as uncertain, then, whether scribes would have used the separated genitive with feminine nouns in this period. The lack of certain examples in Gen&Ex cannot be taken as significant because the nature of the text ensures that the majority of proper nouns in the texts refer to men. But what is clear is that the form of the possessive marker at this period is never one which shows agreement with a feminine or plural head. Although the lack of indisputable examples with feminine possessors in the EME texts could be due to a data gap, the large number of examples in Brut(O) makes it certain that the preference for using his with proper nouns cannot be explained in these terms. This preference does not sit terribly well with the clitic theory; if the separated genitive represented a clitic, why was it so infrequently used when the possessor involved more than a single noun? There are no examples in these early texts of the separated genitive used with a plural noun as a possessor, although there are examples in which the possessor is conjoined: (6-7)

Þo was al þis kine-lond in Morgan & Cuna[de]ges then was al this land in Morgan and Cunedagius his hond poss hand ‘Then was all this kingdom in Morgan and Cunedagius’ hands’ (Brut(O) 1887)

Since attached genitives are found at the end of conjuncts such as this at this time, the separated genitive is not behaving in a more clitic-like manner than the attached genitive, and the use of the separated genitive here is highly predictable given that the last possessor mentioned is a proper noun ending in -s. Now that we have looked at the characteristics of the separated genitives in this period, let us consider possible explanations for why they first appear in texts at this time. I will first consider the possibility that confusion between the possessive determiner and pronoun his and the genitive suffix -es is the source of the separated genitive, an idea which has been around for a long time, and then the newer idea that the separated genitive was not only assisted, but made essential, by deflexion.

6.3 Possible explanations: EME phonology It has long been assumed that the phonological similarity between the unstressed pronunciation of the third person singular pronoun his, in which the initial aspirate was either weak or entirely absent, and the pronunciation of the genitive marker -es, which would have had a schwa in EME, played some

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sort of role in the development of the his genitive. Jespersen (1894: §248–255) assumed that this phonological similarity led to a conflation of the separated genitive with the -es genitive in some speakers’ minds, but did not assume that it was the origin of the his genitive. He believed that the his genitive derived from multiple sources and that possessor doubling similar to that found in other Germanic languages existed already in OE, a position which we have seen to be untenable. In contrast, Wyld (1953 [1936]: 315) assumes that the identity of the unstressed possessive his and the -es suffix was the origin of the ‘detachment’ of the suffix, and Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2003: 667), accepting Wyld’s view, comments ‘Although there is no general consensus of its origin, the most widely accepted view attributes it to the reanalysis of the genitive suffix -(y)s and not to German influence.’ As Wyld pointed out, this theory has the advantage of explaining why the separated genitive is found in Gen&Ex,where h dropping is quite noticeable, and it is also noteworthy that the other text in which separated genitives are found in the EME period, namely Brut(O), also shows considerable confusion of forms with and without initial h, although in this text it is the addition of initial h, rather than its omission, which is apparent. However, there are problems with the idea that the separated genitives of EME correlate with confusion of an h-less pronunciation of the possessive pronoun with the -es suffix. For one thing, there are (rather later) texts in which the evidence for h dropping is quite extreme, but which do not have the separated genitive, for example Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle. Second, we will see in section 6.4.2 that there is evidence that at least some writers who used a separated genitive kept it clearly separate from the possessive his. Finally, the idea that the separated genitive arose from a confusion with his does not, by itself, give any explanation for why the separated genitive should have been associated with proper nouns. On the other hand, this sort of specialization is what we might expect of orthographical variants. Scribes had always shown uncertainty about how to decline names, particularly foreign ones, and the use of the separated genitive, whatever its origins, with these names may have been a reflection of this uncertainty. 6.3.1 Possible explanations: deflexion as a trigger The possibility of his∼-es confusion also plays a key role in an explanation involving deflexion which has many adherents. Janda (1980, 1981) proposed that when the dative–accusative distinction was lost in English, genitive case became an impossibility because of the case marking hierarchy discussed in section 1.8.1, and other means of expressing possession had to be developed,


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such as the of genitive. Prenominal possessives were saved, albeit in a new form, however, because the phonological similarity of the third person masculine pronoun with the dominant genitive marker -es made possible the reanalysis of -es as a possessive pronoun, giving rise to a possessor doubling construction essentially parallel to those found in the other Germanic languages. Eventually the his became reduced to the -s found in PDE. Since the pronoun his must be in the determiner position within the possessive phrase, it would naturally come at the end of a complex possessor, giving rise to the group genitive. This explanation has been adopted by Weerman and de Wit (1999) and Lightfoot (1999), among others. For arguments against the idea that the group genitive was modelled on the separated genitive, see section 6.4.3. Kroch (1997: 134) considers that Allen’s (1997) arguments against PDE clitic -s having developed from his are convincing, but suggests that the his genitive may well represent a clitic at an early stage, a development which could indeed have been caused by deflexion. But as argued in section 1.8.1, the fundamental assumption upon which this typological explanation is based— that it is impossible for a language to have a genitive case when it does not have a dative-accusative distinction—is simply false. In addition, any analysis which assumes that the separated genitives of EME indicate that genitive case was no longer a possibility at that time must crash against the clear evidence that genitive case was still a morphological category in Brut(O) at least (along with dative and accusative case). At best, anyone wanting to maintain that the scribe of this manuscript had a grammar which lacked genitive case would have to assume that he had a second competing grammar in which genitive case was retained. Finally, this account fails to explain why -s possessives are much more frequent than separated genitives in all periods. However, the fact that the separated genitive is first found in a period when inflection was deteriorating makes it worthwhile to examine the question of the relationship between the degree of inflection in a given text in which the separated genitive is found and the presence or absence of separated genitives in that dialect. Of particular importance is the question of whether genitive inflection is still available in a given dialect. We have already seen in section 5.4.3 that the idea of the obsolescence of the genitive case as an explanation for the rise of possessor doubling does not work well for Dutch. In the case of English, there is also no reason to believe that the genitive case was in peril in EME, as I argued in section 4.3; see also Allen (2005). It is also worth emphasizing that there is no correlation between the use of separated genitives in EME and the state of case marking in a given dialect, judging by the evidence of the texts. We find the separated genitive in Brut(O), where, as we have seen, the genitive case, as well as the accusative/dative distinction,

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was maintained, but we do not find the separated genitive in the texts with the most drastic reduction, such as the Ormulum, the second continuation of PC, the Ancrene Riwle, and the texts of the Katherine Group. In those texts, the -s genitive is widely used, as described in section 4.3. Noting that Brut(O) is from a southwestern manuscript, as are all the later examples from LALME, it is of interest to check the state of case marking in this text against texts of the same period in which no separated genitives are found. The situation found in the (West Midlands) Lambeth m1 homilies is similar as far as case system is concerned. That is, in both Brut(O) and Lambeth m1, determiners are rarely inflected and him is encroaching on the territory of hine, but the occasional use of a specifically genitive form for the determiner (as well as occasional genitive agreement with quantifiers) shows the retention of genitive as a morphological case, and occasional use of hine, restricted to old accusative functions, shows the retention of the accusative/dative distinction at a category level. The two manuscripts may differ in the amount of syncretism of forms, but at the category level they seem to be similar. But while the separated genitive is common in Brut(O),it is not to be found in the Lambeth texts. 6.3.2 Analysis Does the separated genitive, in those few texts where it is found in EME, represent a new construction? It is entirely possible that we are dealing at this stage merely with a new orthographical tradition, as first suggested by Furnivall (1865) and more recently by Carstairs (1987). 6 The possibility that bissop his is simply another way of writing bissopis is also suggested by Jespersen (1894: §252). Laing (2000: 115) notes ‘at this stage in the history of the language[EME—CLA], scribal output displays a series of revolutionary changes in the orthographic tradition’. Laing’s comment refers to experimentation with different ways of transcribing local pronunciations, but it is also worth noting that the abbreviations used by scribes expanded greatly in the EME period. A development in EME orthography which is of particular interest here is the use of an elongated e as an abbreviation for es at the end of a 6 Note that the separated genitive is regularly written is in Gen&Ex, a spelling which is also used sometimes for the ordinary third person masculine possessive (although his predominates for the pronoun). This form is also a possible spelling for the attached genitive, making orthographical variation quite plausible. In Brut(O), however, the separated genitive is regularly spelled his. Furnivall’s explanation for this fact was (1865: 90) that since the Otho scribe ‘prefixes h’s to his words in a most astonishing way’, it was natural for him to prefix this h to genitive is (a dialectal variant of es) when it was written separately. Furnivall assumes that the Otho scribe must having been working from a (now lost) exemplar in which the genitive was frequently written as separate is (unlike Caligula), and the scribe automatically changed is to his. This explanation does not necessarily require us to assume that the scribe thought of the possessive marker as a separate word, since a simple rule ‘substitute his where you see (unbound) is’ would not be strange compared with some other scribal habits.


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word, whether plural or genitive. This is not used in ASC(A), as far as I have been able to determine from looking at the facsimile published by Flower and Smith (1941), but it is used in PC, which Whitelock’s (1954) facsimile makes clear. 7 It is important to realize that modern editors tend to follow the practice of silently expanding such abbreviations, as in Irvine’s (2004) edition of PC, for example. 8 I have not carried out the careful examination of facsimiles or the manuscripts themselves which would be necessary to establish a connection between the rise of this abbreviation and the appearance of his genitives in EME texts, but it seems possible that the use of the abbreviation may have inclined the scribes towards treating -es as a separate unit which could be written separately. It should be noted, however, that so far as I know, plural -es was not normally written separately from its stem, which is likely to be a reflection of some difference in degree of attachment of the plural inflection and the genitive marker. It is also important to be aware that breaks between sequences of letters did not have the same significance in OE and ME manuscripts as they do today. As readers and writers of PDE, we find it difficult to imagine not writing a single word as one unit. In OE and ME, however, (as Furnivall notes) it was not unusual for scribes to put a space between a morpheme and the stem to which it was attached: (6-8) þat i sah Vortiger þe king that pre saw Vortiger the king ‘Vortiger the king saw that’ (Brut(O) 7977) The i here is the ME reflex of the prefix ge- which was optionally attached to some verbs (as well as past participles generally) in OE. Editions of the Brut normally hyphenate this prefix; the edition from which (6-8) is taken has isah, but of course the hyphen is added by the editors. This example may be compared with isah at line 7970 of the same manuscript; isah and i sah were simply spelling variants, and the space between the prefix and the stem cannot be taken as evidence that the prefix was a clitic rather than an inflection. It has to be admitted that this practice was more commonly found with prefixes than with suffixes, but in the introduction to her edition of ASC(A) Bately (1986: clxv ) gives the example ge fliem don at folio 18r22, where both the prefix and the suffix are written separately, to illustrate the fact that spaces do not always represent word breaks in this manuscript. Since editions of OE texts 7

In some manuscripts, the same abbreviation is used for the us in names such as Venus. Some editors (especially earlier ones) use italics to indicate the expansion of an abbreviation, as does Clark (1970) in her edition of PC, and a few, such as Madden (1970 [1847]), use special typography to represent the abbreviation for es. 8

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(including this edition by Bately) normally follow a practice of regularizing word divisions and expanding abbreviations silently, it is not possible to get a picture of scribal practices in these matters from reading edited texts. So it would be a mistake to take the appearance of separated genitives in EME manuscripts as proof of a new construction at this time. On the other hand, we saw in Chapter 4 that while the lack of group genitives in EME and the continuation of some agreement with genitive case in this period means that there is no reason to assume that the -es marker of the attached genitive was a clitic at that stage, the new use of a single possessive marker at the end of appositives and conjoined possessors does suggest that this marker had undergone a lessening of the degree of attachment. It is entirely possible that the new spelling reflected the new status of the genitive case. Naturally, the exact analysis will depend on the theoretical framework which we adopt, as well as on assumptions we might make about whether the absence of particular types of examples is the result of data gaps or is significant. If we assume, contrary to the arguments I have made against this position, that the attached genitive of EME was in D, then we will certainly assume that the separated genitive of this period was also in D. We would furthermore assume that only the masculine form of the possessive pronoun could be in this position, and that it did not carry agreement features which would cause it to have the gender of the possessor N. 9 The difficulties facing such an approach for the attached genitive were discussed in section 4.3.4. If the separated genitive is to be analysed as being in D, why do we not find group genitives at this period? I have argued in section 4.4 against the assumption that group genitives of the king of Frances type were used in speech at this time but not in writing as a satisfactory explanation for the long period when, by the ‘early clitic’ approach, group genitives should have been structurally possible but no examples are to be found. Far from being favoured with complex possessors, the separated genitive is favoured with (although not restricted to) single proper nouns in this period. The problem becomes even greater when we add the separated genitives to this analysis. Let us assume for the moment, contrary to the arguments made in sections 1.9.1 and 4.4 against assuming that the texts did not reflect speech very well, that the paucity of separated genitives in some texts is due to a low sociolinguistic status of the construction. I think that under such an assumption, we would expect to find that a scribe who was willing to use the separated genitive in writing would 9 As has been discussed, none of the apparent examples of non-agreement with the possessor are really convincing in this period; however, since non-agreement is certainly found in the LME period (see section 6.4.2), it would be natural to assume, given this clitic analysis, that this lack of agreement in LME was just a continuation of the EME situation.


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also be willing to use group genitives. But there is simply no correlation to be found between the two usages, either in this period or later. In fact, the correlation is between separated genitives and single nouns (names), rather than between separated genitives and phrasal possessors, although separated genitives with possessors consisting of more than a single noun are also found. The problems associated with the approach just discussed are fundamentally due to the fact that the approach allows for no middle ground between a clitic and an inflection, as discussed for Swedish in section 2.4.1 and the attached genitive of EME in section 4.3.4. When we turn to approaches which do not make a single clitic–affix distinction, however, the facts can be dealt with more satisfactorily. We saw in section 4.3.4 that one approach to capturing the different status of the genitive in EME compared to OE is to assume that a new analysis had arisen in which -es was a non-projecting particle, adopting Toivonen’s (2001) distinction between projecting and non-projecting particles. We could assume that the new way of writing the possessive marker was a result of its particle status, although we would have to assume also that the old analysis of the attached genitive as an affix coexisted for a period with the new analysis, since we still find agreement with genitive nouns, as well as irregular genitive inflection. Coexistence of this sort is unproblematic, since it is highly typical of syntactic change. However, example (6-6) suggests that agreement could combine with a separated genitive in the same possessive phrase, and if more completely convincing examples are found, this analysis seems less attractive. If the possessive marker is a particle, we do not expect a morphological interaction with parts of the possessor phrase. A final possibility is to follow the general approach suggested for Swedish by Börjars (2003) in our treatment of the appearance of the separated genitive in EME as a result of the lessened degree of attachment already discussed. As discussed in section 4.3.4, we assume by this approach that the genitive marker did not have a syntactic position, but was attached to a possessor N by morphological rules which placed the genitive marking on the last N with a genitive feature and optionally allowed for agreement. The EME separated genitive is easily incorporated into this approach; we simply assume that it was a variant of the attached genitive. It is unproblematic by this approach to treat example (6-6) as combining agreement on a modifier combined with a separated genitive, since morphological interaction is assumed, but the paucity of such examples is also not surprising, given that the separated genitive is most often found with nouns with no modifier. If we treat the separated genitive as an affix in this way, what can we say about the fact that the form found is regularly his in Brut(O)? We have already seen that one possibility is that his is simply an orthographical variant used

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when the possessive marker is written separately. However, it is a fact that the two texts in which we find separated genitives in this period are also ones in which there is a good deal of confusion about h at the beginning of words, and it is possible that the separated genitive was associated with the masculine (and neuter) pronoun in the mind of the scribes who copied these texts—especially given the fact that we only find this way of writing the possessive marker when the preceding possessor (or possibly as the second part of a possessor in a conjunct) is masculine and singular—except in a couple of somewhat dubious examples. This restriction may simply be a data gap. However, it is also possible under the general type of approach just outlined to treat his as a different form from -es at this period if we assume that this is an allomorph of the genitive marker which is used only when the host to which it attaches is masculine and singular, if we decide that none of the apparent examples of other types of possessors with a separated genitive is convincing. This allomorph, because of its association with the pronoun, would always be written separately. By this analysis, the separated genitive really would be different morphologically, not just orthographically, from the attached genitive, although it would be syntactically identical. To sum up, what can be said with some certainty from the available evidence is that the separated and attached possessive markers should both be given the same syntactic analysis (whatever that might be). In particular, both the attached and the separated marker are always directly adjacent to the possessor N (although this may be the second part of a conjoined possessor or appositive, just as with -es). There is no reason to treat the separated possessive as having a position at the end of the possessor phrase, rather than at the end of the possessor noun. To use the terminology of Börjars (2003), we have evidence only for ‘head marking’ rather than ‘edge marking’. There is also no clear evidence that the separated genitive agreed with the possessor N, or that it failed to agree with it.

6.4 The middle period: non-agreement c1380–1545 It is not until the late fourteenth century that separated genitives become more widespread and we are able to make a more systematic study of their characteristics. 10 Such a systematic study is made possible by the availability 10 There is a slightly earlier possible (c1350) example in Early Prose Psalter, a text described in section 4.2.2.2:

(6-i) oZayn Pharaon his seruauntes against Pharaoh poss servants ‘Against the servants of Pharaoh’ (?) (CMEARLPS,164.7263)


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of electronic corpora such as PPCME2 and The Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC; see Appendix for bibliographical information). I have supplemented my findings from these corpora for the later ME and early EModE periods with investigations of some texts not covered by the corpora, as described where relevant. 11 The lack of separated genitives in the fourteenth-century texts is not due to a lack of manuscripts, since we have, for example, Robert of Gloucester’s lengthy Metrical Chronicle (ed. Wright 1965 [1887]), a text which was composed c1300 and preserved in a manuscript of c1325. It is therefore necessary to say something here about the dialectal distribution of the separated genitive in this period. 6.4.1 The separated genitive and dialects In assessing the dialect profile of the separated genitive in this period, the first thing which needs to be done is to exclude some spurious or questionable examples which have been adduced in the literature. The biggest problem here concerns the status of certain putative ‘Chaucerian’ examples. For example, phrases such as the Man of Lawe his Tale are used to illustrate the doubling construction in Chaucerian texts, for example by Haegeman (2004b), who cites Stahl (1927: 22) as the source of the example. Stahl himself presents the whole sentence Here beginneth the Man of Lawe his Tale, giving us enough context to see that there is an alternative to his assumption that the example is to be treated as a ‘possessive dative’ (Stahl’s term), namely that we are dealing with two separate noun phrases here. Only a thorough investigation of the Chaucerian examples (and also their wider context) will tell us whether the example is best translated as ‘here the man of law’s tale begins’ (i.e. a doubling construction) or ‘Here the man of law begins his tale’, where the NomP beginning with the possessive pronoun only accidentally follows another NomP because of subject–verb inversion. It turns out that in the earlier manuscripts (specifically, Hengwrt and Ellesmere) of the Canterbury Tales at least, every one of the examples which could be instances of a doubling construction are in fact subject to another possible analysis of this sort, and in some instances As the sole potential example of a separated genitive in this reasonably lengthy (45,035-word) text, the status of this example is uncertain to begin with, and there are reasons to consider this simply to be an error. The King James version has upon Pharaoh and all his servants for this verse (Psalm 135.9) and the Vulgate has in Pharaonem et in omnes servos ejus. Furthermore, in his readings from another manuscript containing this text, Trinity College, Dublin, MS A.4.4, Bülbring indicates that the other manuscript has added an ampersand here. It appears, then, that an ampersand has simply been left out. 11 I prefix the citation references from PCEEC with ‘PCEEC’ to identify them as coming from this corpus.

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the context makes the ‘2 NomP’ analysis superior. Thus we cannot take examples like Here begynneth the wyf of bathe hir tale as unambiguously meaning ‘Here the wife of Bath’s tale begins’, as Stahl (1927: 22) apparently did. This is especially so because we find at least one example in the early Ellesmere manuscript in which a conjoined structure makes an analysis involving two NomPs the only plausible one: 12 (6-9) Heere endeth the Wyf of Bathe hir Prolge/ And bigynneth her tale ‘Here the wife of Bath ends her prologue and begins her tale’ (Wife of Bath’s Prologue l. 857, Ellesmere MS) The only analysis that seems possible here is that ‘wife of Bath’ has been deleted from the second conjunct by Coordinate Subject Deletion. Thus the fact that we have strings such as the wyf of Bath her tale does not show that possessor doubling constructions with possessor-agreeing linkers were used in Chaucer’s time in the London area. There are indeed some genuine examples of separated genitives in some of the surviving Chaucerian manuscripts, but as far as I have been able to determine, they are all found in manuscripts from much later than Chaucer’s own time. I am aware of one example in the Legend of Good Women, which is mentioned by Jespersen (1894: §254). (6-10) Mars is venim is adoun Mars poss venom is down ‘Mars’ venom is reduced’ (Ch. LGW 2593) Although this example looks genuine, the problem is that none of the manuscripts of LGW which contain this reading with his or is (in one manuscript) is temporally very close to Chaucer in both time and dialect. The his is omitted in the earliest manuscript, Cambridge University Library, MS Gg 4.27, from the first quarter of the fifteenth century (Cowen and Kane 1995: 8). Cowen and Kane (pp. 105, 129) indicate that this omission is a mistake, and the reading in this manuscript (that what with Venus & othir oppression of howses that mars venym is a doun) is universally rejected by editors (and at any rate the language of Gg is not from the London area). The reading his (or is) is found in the other manuscripts, but they are all from later, and we simply do not know 12 Ruggiers’ (1979) facsimile of the early Hengwrt manuscript presents all variant readings from Ellesmere. I have checked out all possible doubling constructions in this facsimile and have come to the conclusion that all of them are amenable to an analysis as two separate NomPs. It is interesting to note that the facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript shows that there are running headers for some of the tales, and although the Man of Lawes Tale is used in such headers, we never find ∗ the Man of Lawe his Tale, as we might expect if the Man of Lawe in the examples in question is to be analysed as an instance of possessor doubling.


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whether Chaucer himself or one of the earliest scribes would have written the possessive marker in this way. 13 It is certainly possible that the separated genitive is original, although the lack of certain examples in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales makes this doubtful. It is also possible that later scribes were working with an exemplar which separated a genitive which was originally written attached. Stahl (1927) notes that his Chaucerian examples are from late manuscripts, but more recent researchers have generally presented his examples without any information about which manuscript they are from. One example which should be discussed is And next folwith the shipman his prolog, found in only one manuscript, (Bodleian Library) Arch. Seld, B, 14, of the Canterbury Tales. Jespersen (1894: §251) points out that this example cannot be explained away as two separated noun phrases, as some others can be. But although Jespersen at least supplies us with the name of the manuscript that this example comes from he did not think it necessary to note that this particular manuscript is far removed temporally from Chaucer’s time. Cowen and Kane (1995: 146) describe this manuscript as ‘very late’ (c1500). Manly and Rickert (1970: Vol. 1, 495) say that it is from 1450–70, and they repeatedly describe it as very late and unreliable. So while Jespersen’s point, that some scribes who copied manuscripts must have interpreted some of the ambiguous examples as involving one noun phrase rather than two, is quite valid, such examples do not give evidence of usage in the London area in Chaucer’s time or a bit later. LALME, in its appendix of southern forms in volume four, lists one manuscript of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale (Naples, Royal Library XIII.B.29) as one of the texts having a detached genitive, but the manuscript is very late (Manly and Rickert: vol. 1, 376 give a date of 1457) and at any rate the language is not that of London, so it gives no evidence of London usage in Chaucer’s period either. I take it as established then, that no evidence has been produced that the separated genitive was used in the London area in the late fourteenth century or the early fifteenth century. What then, can be said of the dialect distribution of the separated genitive at this time? Waldron (1991: 64–5) comments that the ‘detached’ genitive is found in the late fourteenth century ‘only in South Western profiles’, and refers the reader to LALME’s dot map 1188. This dot map 13 There is a reading herte is in Gg. 4. 27 at line 507 (in the second prologue), where Cowen and Kane indicate that all the other manuscripts have an attached genitive; their printed edition has ‘and myn owene hert[is] reste’. Cowen and Kane (1995: 135) classify this as an instance of ‘misdivision, possibly auditory error’. Examples of this sort illustrate the difficulties involved in interpreting individual examples, and the need to look at the usage of a text as a whole; on its own, this example might be taken as evidence that this scribe used separated genitives.

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is based on the Linguistic Profiles (LPs) detailed on p. 322 of volume four in the appendix on southern forms. The ten LPs with this construction listed there are all in the Southwestern region. However, I have found a small number of separated genitives from texts emanating from other regions, including some texts covered by LALME. I have found two examples from Capgrave’s Lives (British Library MS Add.36704, Norfolk, LALME LP 4057): Valerie is desir was fulfillid ‘Valerie’s desire was fulfilled’ (p. 62.10) and fro Adam his synne ‘from Adam’s sin’ (p. 62.10). Examples are also not infrequent in the Paston letters (spanning 1425–1519?) and the Cely letters (1474–1488, so outside LALME’s period of 1350–1450); see examples (6-13)–(6-18). 14 All of these examples are from the northeast midlands. A search of PPCME2 also reveals two apparently genuine examples from Mandeville’s Travels (Cotton Titus C 16, British Library, London). LALME (vol. 1, p. 108) places this manuscript in Hertfordshire, which puts it in the (South) East Midlands dialect area (LP 6570). 15 One of these examples is presented below as (6-28), and the other is presented here: (6-11) & he was ARE of GOSRA is sone ‘and he was Are of Gosra’s son’ (CMMANDEV,101.2441) There are also six examples in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (B.L. Add. MS 37790, edited by Beer 1978). This last text, which LALME (vol. 1, p. 102) has as SW Lincolnshire mixed with NE Lincolnshire (i.e. Northeast Midlands), would not be included on the dot map in question because the questionnaire for detached genitives was restricted to the area south of the Wash. It is generally agreed that the separated genitive was never a feature of truly northern English texts, and I am not aware of any examples further north than the ones from the text just mentioned. To sum up, it does not appear to be true that the separated genitives were at any period found only in Southwestern texts; we have seen that they are found in EME in Gen&Ex, and examples from the Northeast Midlands are reasonably common in the LME period. It could be true that before c1450, the separated genitive appears much more regularly in Southwestern manuscripts than in ones from other areas, but it is difficult even to say this with confidence, since most of the (Southwestern) manuscripts identified by LALME as having this feature are also from the later end of the period covered 14 Some letters from both collections are included in PCEEC. Examples not included in those corpora are taken from Hanham (1975) and Davis (1971), referenced by letter number and line number within the letter. 15 The LALME does not include this manuscript on its list (vol. 4, p. 322) of ‘detached’ genitives.


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by this work. There is no real evidence to support the theory that the separated genitive spread from the Southwest to other areas. 16 If we assume that the separated genitive represented different syntax from the attached genitive, we would have to assume that a new construction developed independently in non-contiguous dialects, and while this is not impossible, this sort of distribution suggests to me different orthographical treatments in different areas rather than true syntactic differences. The long gap between the use of the separated genitive in Gen&Ex and the later use in the East Midlands area similarly seems more plausibly explained as a result of shifting orthographical traditions than in any other way (see also comments on the spread of the separated genitive in section 6.4.4). 6.4.2 Characteristics of the separated genitive We saw in the preceding section that although the separated and attached genitives were not identical in their use in EME, they had identical distributional privileges: they both occurred directly adjacent to the possessor N. Given the limited textual distribution of the separated genitive in EME and the fact that most possessors in the texts are males, as well as the fact that at this time the use of the old genitive case inflections other than -es was by no means uncommon, it is impossible to say for certain whether a separated genitive could be used with a feminine possessor. The examples all fall into the category which I will refer to as ‘non-diagnostic’; that is, the possessor is always a masculine or neuter noun, so the use of what looks like a form of his does not tells us whether an agreeing or indeclinable form is being used. By the late fourteenth century, however, we have clear evidence that the separated genitive did not inflect to agree with the possessor. Examples with feminine possessors are still not very common, but they occur: 17 (6-12) Europa his douZter18 Europa poss daughter ‘Europa’s daughter’ (Poly I.149.11) 16 If the separated genitive was a response to deflexion, it would at any rate be puzzling that it should appear earliest in Southwestern texts, given that the Southwestern area was quite conservative as far as case marking went, nor can it be said that his and -es would have been more prone to confusion in this area than in other dialects where loss (and addition) of initial h was also present. 17 Rosenbach (2004: 89–90, n. 7) assumes that ys is a form of his and suggests that the reason why this form, normally masculine or neuter, appears with a feminine noun in example (6-13) could be that feminine names might be treated as neuter, as they apparently are in some dialects of German and Dutch. This is not a tenable explanation, since his was not used with feminine names as antecedents in English texts (outside this construction) in the Cely letters, and it would not explain (6-15), where the feminine noun is not a name. At any rate, this suggestion would not explain the plural examples with ys. 18 This example comes from a portion of the Polychronicon not covered by PPCME2. It is taken from Babington’s (1865, 1869) edition.

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(6-13) . . . to be enfformyd that Margere ys dowghter ys past to Godd ‘ . . . to be informed that Margery’s daughter has died’ (PCEEC CELY,173.129.2855) (William Cely, 1482) (6-14) and the quene ys modyr, the lady of Bedford, ‘and the queen’s mother, the lady of Bedford’ (CMGREGOR,232.2443) (c1475) (6-15) Item, the Erle of Arundell ys son hath weddyd the Quyne ys sustere. Item, the Earl of Arundel’s son has married the queen’s sister (PCEEC PASTON,II,375.444.11429) (letter written 1442) (6-16) of the lady kerdeston ys councell’ of the Lady Kerdeston poss counsell’19 ‘of Lady Kerdeston’s counsellors(?)’ (Letter of Sir John Fastolf, 1451, Preston and Yeandle 1992: Plate 7, line 14) Where there is a possible ambiguity between a single possessive nominal and two nominals in apposition, I have checked the context to verify that the translation I have given is correct, for example that we are dealing with ‘Europa’s daughter’ rather than ‘Europa, his daughter’ in (6-12). 20 Example (6-12) comes from the very beginning of our period, while (6-13) comes from approximately a century later. Examples of the separated genitive with plural possessors are harder to find, a fact which is easy to explain given that (a) plural possessors are much less common in the texts generally than singular ones and (b) such plural possessors as are found are more likely to be common nouns than proper names. I know of no examples of plural possessors with a separated genitive in the earlier part of our period, but in the mid-to-late fifteenth century, some examples are to be found: (6-17) into svre men ys handys into sure men poss hands ‘into reliable men’s hands’ (PCEEC CELY,11.009.127, letter 12.5 by Richard Cely the elder, 1477) 19 The editors of this letter explain (p. xii) that an apostrophe ‘or upward continuation of a letter’ usually indicates the omission of various combinations of vowels and r or an omitted ending of a word. The unexpanded apostrophe in their transcription indicates that the expansion of councell’ is uncertain. 20 It is generally not practical to present the relevant context in every example, particularly because sometimes only a knowledge of the relationships between the individuals referred to will make the meaning clear. It is important to emphasize that the punctuation of the text will not always disambiguate the possibilities.


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(6-18) . . . to your hurt and othyr men ys grete avaylle ‘to your great hurt and other men’s great benefit’ (J. Paston I 53.8 (1458)) (6-19) to fortefy hys bretheryn ys sayyngys to strengthen his brethren poss comments ‘to strengthen his brethren’s comments’ (PCEEC CMGREGOR,229.2351) (c1475) In what follows, I will use the term ‘agreeing’ to refer specifically to examples in which a feminine or plural possessor makes it clear that the possessive marker agrees with the possessor. I will restrict the term ‘non-agreeing’ to refer to examples where there is a clear lack of agreement, as in (6-12) through (6-19), distinguishing them from non-diagnostic examples like (6-1). As in the EME period, we find spellings both with initial h and without it. These variant spellings will be discussed in section 6.4.4. For the moment, however, the important point is that whether it was spelled with initial h or without, the separated genitive had exactly the same distributional properties as the attached genitive (albeit different frequencies) in both the EME and the period now under discussion, although those properties were different in the two periods. In EME, the attached genitive was always directly adjacent to the possessor N, and all the examples we have of the separated genitive similarly directly follow the possessor N. By the end of the fourteenth century, the distribution has changed, but the separated and attached genitives still have the same distributional possibilities: both of them are found at the end of possessor DPs, not necessarily adjacent to the possessor N. As in EME, both the attached and the separated marker are found in the combined genitive: (6-20)

a. Pipinus governed þe kynges hous of Fraunce Pippin governed the king:poss house of France under kyng Hildericus under king Childeric ‘Pippin governed the king’s palace under king Childeric’ (CMPOLYCH,VI,235.1700) b. Alfritha, þe duke his douZter of Devenschire Alfritha, the duke poss daughter of Devonshire ‘Alfritha, the duke of Devonshire’s daughter’ (CMPOLYCH,VI,473.3485)

In illustrating the use of the separated and attached genitive in the combined and group genitives, I have used examples from the same text in order to illustrate that the different patterns are all found with the same author, and

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so cannot be said to belong to different times or dialects. Naturally, because of data gaps and personal preferences, not all the texts have examples of all the patterns. 21 As pointed out in Allen (1997), the separated genitive is found in a few texts of this period in independent use: (6-21) that ye mad seche a bell of John Cely ys of xxx s. ‘ . . . that you made such a bill of John Cely’s of 30 shillings’ (PCEEC CELY,36.031.626) (1478) In that paper, I suggested that such examples might be taken as evidence against an analysis of the separated possessive marker ys as a pronoun, depending on what sort of analysis was adopted for entirely parallel independent genitives with an attached marker: (6-22) iii packys ffellys of Wylliam Daltons ‘three packs of fells [= wool-bearing sheepskins] of William Dalton’s’ (Cely 131.9, 1481)22 However, this turns out to be an instance where typology is helpful in weeding out bits of non-evidence. As we saw in Chapter 5, various Germanic languages allow possessor doubling in independent possessives, a fact which might be accommodated in the most widely accepted analysis of the doubling construction as having a structure DP [DP D [D]], with the doubling pronoun in D. If such an analysis is extended to LME, we could assume the structure DP [John Cely D [ys]] in example (6-21). So examples such as this one cannot be taken as evidence against treating the separated genitive in the Cely letters as a doubling construction similar to that found in Frisian, for example. On the other hand, there is no necessity to assume such a structure, and all that can be said with any certainty is that the independent genitives with the separated and attached genitives should be given the same analysis, whatever we decide that is. We saw in Chapter 5 that in the Modern Germanic languages which have possessor doubling constructions, possessor doubling is possible in ‘extraction’ constructions, that is, in relative clauses and questions. In earlier Dutch texts, possessor doubling is found in relative clauses. However, in my investigation of English, I have only found two examples in any period, both in letters contained in PCEEC,which might be taken to be parallel to this doubling in 21 I have found no examples in which a group genitive with a separated possessive marker has a feminine possessor N in this non-agreeing period (e.g. the quene of England ys), but this is likely to be due to a data gap, since group genitives were less common than combined genitives at this time, and feminine possessors were never common. 22 The letter containing this sentence is not included in PCEEC. I have taken the example from Hanham’s (1975) edition of the Cely letters.


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extractions. 23 Both examples are in relative clauses and come from this nonagreeing period: (6-23)

the brynger off thys letter, whoo is name ys James Jarfford ‘the bearer of this letter, whose name is James Jarfford’ (PCEEC CELY,208.138.3049) (Letter 213, 1484)

(6-24)

un who is soule God take mercy24 ‘on whose soul God take mercy’ (PCEEC STONOR,II,119.099.1743) (1481)

In example (6-23), the is after whoo is written in ‘half brackets’, which, as the editor of the text (Hanham 1975) explains, indicates that is has been inserted interlineally, suggesting to me that the writer simply made an error with the form whoo and added a possessive marker to correct it. Lack of information about editorial conventions makes it impossible to say, without looking at the original letter, what the situation is in example (6-24), but it seems likely that we are dealing with a mere spelling variant here. If these separated genitives had been parallel to the use of doubling constructions in extraction constructions in the other Germanic languages, we would expect that the relative pronoun would be in the oblique case, since this distinction between who and whom was regularly maintained at this time. 6.4.3 The separated genitive and the group genitive The rise of the ‘group genitive’ with the attached genitive was discussed in section 4.4. We saw there that the first examples in which -es is not directly adjacent to a possessor are found in the late fourteenth century. It is in the same period that we find the first examples of separated possessive markers used in group genitives: (6-25)

but þe kyng of Fraunces men weren i-slawe ‘But the king of France’s men were slain’ (POLYCH, VIII,349.380)

(6-26)

Iames þat was somtyme Paulinus þe archebisshop of Zork his preost ‘James, that was formerly Palinus the archbishop of York’s priest’ (CMPOLYCH,VI,99.696, Polychronicon translation completed 1387)

23 This is not including the example . . . ther whos a [Zeunge] genttyllwhoman hos father ys name ys Lemryke ‘there was a young gentlewoman whose father’s name is Limerick’ at CELY,151.116.2545, in which the separated genitive here is not replacing the usual relative (w)hos but is included in the larger possessive phrase of which the relative pronoun is a part. 24 This example is not parsed as a separated genitive in PCEEC,in contrast with example (6-23), although it looks to me as though the two examples should be parsed the same.

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The appearance of the group genitive with -es written attached at exactly the same time as the first examples of the group genitive with a separated genitive marker shows that a widely held assumption about the origins of the group genitive must be discarded. By this assumption that the separated genitive served as a model for the group genitive, speakers assumed that -es was a reduced form of his, and so the presence of his in sentences like (6-26) would lead to the introduction of -es in groups, as in (6-25). This cannot be right, however, since the two uses arose at the same time (although group genitives of either type are uncommon at this early stage). It is also worth noting that although the separated genitive became very widespread in the fifteenth century, we find some texts in which the group genitive with an attached -es is used but the separated genitive is not found (e.g. Margery Kempe). There are also some texts which use separated genitives and have group genitives with -es, but show no examples in which the group genitive has the possessive marker written separately (e.g. letters of John Paston II). Thus there is not a one-to-one correlation between using the group genitive and writing the possessive marker separately. 6.4.4 Analysis In considering possible analyses of the separated genitive in the LME period, we must address the question of how spelling might assist us in understanding how speakers/writers viewed the relationship between the attached genitive, the separated genitive, and the third person singular possessive pronoun. I have argued that the mere fact that the possessive marker is written separately from the possessor does not in itself show that it represents a clitic instead of an affix, but if it turned out, for example, that different spellings of the separated genitive were associated with different syntactic characteristics, these spellings might aid in our analysis. However, it does not appear that any differences in spelling can be related to different syntactic behaviour other than the fact, discussed in Allen (2003), that some authors consistently use his or hys for the possessive pronoun, but only use h-less forms as a separated possessive marker, suggesting that they did not equate the two. It does not appear that authors who used the h-forms used these forms differently from the authors who used the h-less forms; for example Trevisa’s Polychronicon from the late fourteenth century as well as some other texts regularly uses his, but this spelling cannot indicate an equation of the possessive marker with the masculine possessive pronoun, since Trevisa at least uses it with feminine possessors, just as authors with the h-less forms did.


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The two types of spellings have some associations with regions, but it appears to me that this is more a matter of orthographical tradition than a representation of an actual difference in pronunciation in different dialects. I have not made a systematic investigation into the different spellings, but my initial impression is that the spelling with initial h appears to have been a feature of the Southwest in the period under discussion. In texts from the Eastern part of the country we normally get instead spellings without the initial h, the same as in the East Midlands Gen&Ex of the EME period: (6-27)

he was the Duke of Yorke ys secunde sone ‘he was the Duke of York’s second son’ (CMGREGOR,210.1891) (London, c1475)

(6-28) in the left syde of the wall of the tabernacle is wel in the left side of the wall of the tabernacle poss well ‘ . . . in the left side of the wall of the well of the tabernacle’ (CMMANDEV,49.1228) (East Midlands, 1350–1420) However, spellings with an initial h are mixed with ones without it in some texts; the two examples quoted in section 6.4.1 from Capgrave’s Lives (completed 1451, in a Norfolk dialect) have one of each sort. The distribution of spellings seems more easily explained as a matter of competing orthographical traditions than as reflecting an association with the possessive pronoun. As in the EME period, there is no justification for analysing the separated genitive in the period 1380–1545 as syntactically different from the attached genitive, whatever analysis we may choose. If we analyse the possessive marker as being in D, the head of DP, in the earlier period, we will surely have the same analysis for this period from LME to EModE. The only significant difference would be that it is quite clear in this period that the possessive determiner, although it may be identical in form to the third person possessive pronoun, is simply a marker of possession devoid of gender features, as necessitated by the absence of agreement with the possessor. The appearance of group genitives in this period, with the possessive marker written either separated or attached, as illustrated in (6-25) and (6-26), is the sort of evidence that is usually adduced to argue for this sort of analysis. It would therefore appear at first that this type of analysis is on firmer ground in this period than in the earlier one. However, the fact that separated genitives are also found in the combined genitive, as in (6-20b), is puzzling under such an analysis. In the combined genitive, a PP is extraposed away from the possessor, presumably because of a preference (still strong through the earlier part of this period) for the possessive marker to be directly adjacent to the possessor. If the possessive marker is in the determiner position, however, it is difficult to formulate such a restriction.

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No such problem arises under an analysis incorporating Toivonen’s (2001) projecting and non-projecting particles. The advent of group genitives in LME would signal that the possessive marker had been reanalysed as a projecting particle, while the appearance of combined genitives, either separated or attached, could be treated as the retention of the old analysis of the possessive marker as a non-projecting particle, in competition with the new analysis. Similarly, the appearance of the separated possessive in the combined genitive raises no problems for the sort of analysis suggested by Börjars for Swedish. As we saw in Chapter 4, the attached genitive in LME seems to have been very similar in its behaviour to the possessive marker in Swedish, the main differences being that LME still has some irregular genitives, and the avoidance of edge placement when the possessor is not phrase-final is greater than it is in spoken Swedish. The difference with the earlier period would be that it was now possible to have edge placement even when the host was not marked with a genitive feature. The separated genitive can be easily incorporated into this analysis as an orthographical variant of the attached genitive. For those writers who use the separated genitive with feminine or plural possessors, there is no reason to assume a special form of the possessive marker which is used just in case the host is masculine and singular, since the separated genitive never shows clear agreement with such possessors in gender or number. Rather, his (e.g. for Trevisa) or ys (e.g. for the Celys) could be treated as a variant spelling when the possessive marker is written separately. For writers who use only non-diagnostic his, however, it is possible that this possessive marker was only used with masculine singular hosts. As discussed in section 6.3.2, such allomorphy is easily incorporated into this sort of approach. But if the separated possessive marker was in fact identified in people’s minds with the possessive pronoun, it is puzzling that the separated genitive did not quickly begin to agree with the possessor N. This development did not take place, however, until the late sixteenth century (see section 6.5). It does not seem credible that speakers identified the separated genitive with a possessive pronoun which normally agreed in gender with the possessor when it occurred independently of that possessor, as in the king ruled his land, without generalizing agreement to feminine and plural possessors, for at least two centuries. The problem becomes even worse if we assume that the separated genitives of EME are also to be treated as forms of the possessive pronoun. To summarize, more than one approach is possible, but whatever the exact analysis, the same analysis should apply to both the separated and the attached genitive in this period. Since the separated genitive of this period does not show the characteristics typical of the doubling constructions in other Germanic languages, it does not require an analysis as a doubling construction.


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6.5 The period with agreement: c1550–???? So far, we have seen that in the earliest period in which separated genitives are found in English texts, the possessive marker is always directly adjacent to the possessor N, while in the second period, such ‘head marking’, to use the terminology of Börjars (2003) is the norm, but edge marking is also found. In both periods, however, the possessive marker shows no agreement in gender or number with the possessor N, and the separated genitive can always be analysed in the same way as the attached genitive. A remarkable change, however, takes place around the middle of the sixteenth century, when the first examples of agreement with the possessor N are found, e.g. Rebecca hir father ‘Rebecca’s father’. It has frequently been noted (e.g. by Wyld 1953 [1936]: 316; Janda 1980: 249; Allen 1997: 117, 2002c, 2003: 18, etc.) that this possessor agreement is a rather late development. However, so far as I know, no one has remarked on how unusual this sort of development seems to be from a typological point of view. Within the other Germanic languages, it has been argued that grammaticalization has sometimes taken place, e.g. in Afrikaans, where the non-agreeing se is usually seen as a development from the genderspecific zijn. However, it seems clear that none of these other languages has developed a possessor-agreeing construction from a previously non-agreeing separated genitive, as argued in Chapter 5. What made English different? I believe that the answer lies in the rise of the group genitive. By the time the first examples of the possessor-agreeing type appeared, the group genitive had become quite common in the texts (see Allen 2003 for some figures), while the old combined genitive had nearly vanished. This means that there was very clear evidence to speakers that the normal position of the possessive marker was at the edge of the possessor phrase (or in D, depending on the analysis). The fact that this possessive marker was so similar phonologically to a reduction of the possessive pronoun his made it possible for people to analyse -es as a reduction of his. But since his was a specifically masculine form, the speakers/writers who had such an analysis would naturally use her with feminine heads because his would be ‘incorrect’. However, before we can go more deeply into the matter, it is necessary to establish the timing of the first appearances of the possessor-agreeing separated genitive. The first example I know of is from 1546, as discussed below. However, it is sometimes assumed that the first examples of agreement are to be found earlier than this, which would mean that the agreeing and non-agreeing periods overlap, an assumption which was recently expressed by Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2003: 668). Given the fact that generally trustworthy sources such as the OED present putative examples of both types from the

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same period, this assumption is quite understandable. However, on the basis of an examination of all the examples which I have seen in the literature given as illustrating agreement earlier than 1545, I believe that they have been misanalysed or at least are subject to another possible analysis. In the following section, therefore, I look at the evidence bearing on the question of a possible overlap between agreement and non-agreement. It is only when this matter has been sorted out that we can move on to questions about why possessoragreement arose and how it fits into the general picture of the analysis of adnominal possessives in this period. 6.5.1 Earliest examples and the question of overlap One early example given by the OED to illustrate the use of her as a possessive marker, Here begynnyt[h] the wyf of bathe hire tale is from a heading in an early Chaucerian manuscript (Camb. Gg. 4. 27). While this example is not obviously misanalysed, it is subject to another analysis, as discussed in section 6.4.1. Given the lack of examples which must be analysed as separated genitives in the early Chaucerian manuscripts, along with the fact that no clear examples of agreeing separated genitives are found until much later, the interpretation ‘Here begins the wife of Bath her tale’ is clearly to be preferred over ‘Here begins the wife of Bath’s tale’. The first such example I have found in my own reading and corpus searches of agreement with the possessor is in a letter to Nathaniel Bacon written in 1575 by Stephen Drury: (6-29) but if Rebecca hir father had had a householde so but if Rebecca her father had had a household so addressed ordered ‘but if Rebecca’s father had had a household of this sort’ (PCEEC BACON,I,149.115.1958) (1575) The possessor-agreeing separated genitive seems to be pretty well established by around 1575 (see below for examples and discussion). Earlier examples seem to be quite uncommon. One example from a 1551 translation of More’s Utopia (Lupton 1551) which appears in the OED to illustrate their being used instead of the genitive inflection, presented in (6-30), appears to be a clear case of misanalysis: (6-30) Vntyll the vtopians their creditours demaunde it. (ROBINSON tr. 1551 More’s Utop. II. (1895) 172)


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This example is frequently repeated, for example by Stahl (1927: 22) and Barber (1976: 200). The OED has apparently taken this clause to mean ‘until the Utopians’ creditors demand it’, but this is clearly a mistake, since the Utopians are the creditors in this context; the example is therefore to be taken as an appositive ‘the Utopians, their creditors’, not a separated genitive. Occasional slips of this sort are of course inevitable in a huge enterprise such as the marvellous OED, and it is for this reason that even examples from generally reliable sources must be confirmed, especially in the case of examples which appear to be unusual for the period of the text in question. It does appear, however, that an example from 1546 of her used in a separated genitive given by the OED is genuine: (6-31)

Elizabeth Holland her howse, newlie made in Suffolk ‘Elizabeth Holland’s house, newly made in Suffolk’ (Ex. from 1546, Vol. 1 p. 889 of Great Britain. Commission for printing and publishing state papers 1830–1852)

My conclusion is that the heyday of the agreeing separated genitive started around 1575, with instances being quite unusual before this time, and the earliest known example coming from 1546. Now the last example I have found of a non-agreeing separated genitive is from a year earlier than this: 25 (6-32) . . . not borrowed of other men his lippes ‘not borrowed from other men’s lips’ (Ascham Tox.A 5.23 (1545) (Wright 1904 edition)) This means that I know of no evidence that the agreeing and non-agreeing periods overlapped, although it would hardly be surprising if there were a short period of overlap. When a language change is in progress, it is normal for there to be a period when some speakers will have the older system, while some will have the newer. In the case of the agreeing separated genitive, however, it seems likely that the new construction was a rather artificial one which was not acquired in ordinary language learning, but rather in formal education, as we shall see in the following sections. Be this as it may, no given writer ever seems to have used both an agreeing separated genitive and a clearly nonagreeing one, as far as I have been able to determine. 26 Systematic investigation 25 The OED his, poss. pron., gives the example Mrs. Sands his maid (HARINGTON in Park Nug. Antiq. (1804) II. 238 ) as an ‘inverted spelling’ which it considers ‘an erroneous expansion of ’s’. This spelling is not found in the facsimile reprint of the 1779 edition (Harington 1779) where we find (vol. 1, p. 206) ‘Mistress Sands maid’ (italics in edition). It appears therefore that in Park’s (1804) edition, Sands, which has no inflection for the genitive marker, was expanded as Sands his—possibly because the editor was under the impression that this represented common usage in this period. 26 In a letter written by the same author of the sentence in (6-38), which has an agreeing her, we find what at first might appear to be a non-agreeing his with a plural possessor:

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strongly supports the view that there were two essentially distinct periods where agreement is concerned, with non-agreement belonging to the first period (subdivided into two periods in this chapter on the basis of positioning of the possessive marker) and agreement belonging to the second. 6.5.2 Characteristics and extent of the period of agreement The agreeing separated genitive is by no means unusual after 1575, particularly with feminine possessors. In the literary texts which I read, I found examples in John Lyly’s Euphues of 1579 and Sir Arthur Gorges’ (1619) translation into English of Francis Bacon’s Latin The Wisdome of the Ancients: (6-33) the sacred bands of Iuno hir bedde ‘the sacred bands of Juno’s bed’ (Lyly Euphues (Bond 1902: 229–30)) (6-34) and then is there good vse of Pallas her Glasse ‘and then is there good use (made) of Pallas’ mirror’ (Wisdome 44 (1619)) Examples using their with a plural head are less common, but the only apparent example of a separated genitive in Queen Elizabeth I’s translation of Boethius of 1593 (edited by Pemberton 1899) is of this type: (6-35) Beauty & agilitie their fame, hath their delyte ‘The fame of beauty and agility have their delight’ (QE Bo. Pr. III.ii.32 (1593)) Since PPCME2 only goes to 1500, it contains texts only from the period of non-agreement, and it is no surprise that a search for separated genitives yielded only non-diagnostic or non-agreeing examples in these texts. In the letters of PCEEC, agreeing examples are not uncommon (although not nearly as common as attached genitives with similar heads): (6-36)

the archdutches her armye is defeated ‘the archduchess’ army is defeated’ (PCEEC BARRING,238.179.3100)(Letter of Thomas Barrington, 1632)

(6-37) My noble cosin Sir William Mewx was not a lytle glad to here of your ladyship’s good healthe and his dawfter her hope of recoverie (6-ii) by Bathe and Wells his hy Commission by Bath and Wells poss high commission ‘by Bath and Wells’ high commission’ (PCEEC HOLLES,II,377.104.2927) (John Holles, 1621) However, Bath and Wells was a single diocese, and the possessive phrase here presumably refers to a single individual or entity.


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‘My noble cousin Sir William Mews was not a little glad to hear of your ladyship’s good health and his daughter’s hope of recovery’ (PCEEC BARRING,206.145.2458) (Letter of Francis Harris to Joan Barrington, 1631) (6-38) My Lord Craven hath good affection to the Queen of Bohemia her service ‘My Lord Craven has good affection to the Queen of Bohemia’s service’ (PCEEC HOLLES,III,452.130.3660) (1633) (6-39)

towchinge Mr Yelvertons their sute ‘touching the Mr Yelvertons’ suit’ (PCEEC BACON,III,14.319.5467) (Letter of William Heydon, 1586)

The earliest agreeing examples I found in this corpus (which spans c1410 to 1695) is example (6-29) from 1575, while the latest is example (6-38), from 1633. This last example is of further interest because the agreeing genitive is also a group genitive. It should be emphasized that the use of separated genitives with feminine and plural heads was never terribly common, especially in the letters, although some individual authors, such as Thomas Barrington, supply multiple examples. In the texts of all periods, the great majority of separated genitives are non-diagnostic for agreement, that is, the possessor is masculine and singular (usually a proper name). Furthermore, the separated genitive is in a distinct minority compared with the -s genitive, even for writers who use both. As example (6-37) shows, the same writer might use an agreeing genitive and an -es genitive, written with an apostrophe, in the same sentence. Although agreement with feminine possessors could not really be called rare in this period, it was much less usual than the normal -es genitive, written with or without an apostrophe. It is no easy matter to say when the last examples of agreement (or for that matter the last examples of his genitives) are found. 27 The last example of agreement which I have been able to locate is from 1700: 27 My investigation for separated genitives made use of the following corpora. I searched all the PCEEC files for noun phrases dominating $ (the symbol used for a possessive marker written either separatedly or after an apostrophe) and excluding hits in which $ represented a combination of an apostrophe and a possessive marker (as well as other non-genuine examples). I used the same search query on PPCME2. For the unparsed Lampeter Corpus, ARCHER and CLMET, I used Monoconc to find examples of nouns followed by possessive pronouns. Because of the large size of CLMET,I first identified the files which contained at least one example of his in a separated genitive and only searched for other possessive pronouns in these files, since the likelihood of finding a separated genitive with her or their in a text not using the construction with his is miniscule. With ARCHER, I searched only the Freidrpr03 (1603–1644) and Arcasc (1600–1770) files. The search of the Lampeter Corpus covered only the EcA, EcB, and LAWA files.

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(6-40) some doubt, that King James might have had, abowt the lawfulness of the Hollanders their throwing off the monarch of Spain, and their withdrawing for good and all their allegiance to that crown (Wellwood 1700: 37)28 The last examples which Wyld (1953 [1936]: 316) gives are from the seventeenth century, in letters of 1645 and 1647 in the Verney Memoirs (Verney, Nightingale, and Verney 1892). The OED’s last example (aside from the much later reference in example (6-44) below) is from 1659: (6-41)

1659 H. L’ESTRANGE Alliance Div. Off. 455 The Excellency of our Church her burial office.

It appears, then, that agreement became quite unusual in the second half of the seventeenth century, and after 1700, it disappears from literary texts and letters, at least the letters of the sort that are easily available for scrutiny. Separated genitives are certainly still found in these types of texts after this period, but all the examples which I have seen involve non-diagnostic his. The examples after the middle of the seventeenth century furthermore seem to be restricted to proper names. The very last examples which I know of in such texts come from Laurence Sterne, who was born in 1713: (6-42)

Whether John o’Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o’Stiles his face, without a trespass (Tristram Shandy (1761), Chap XX of Vol. 3 (p. 175 in Grant 1950 ed.))

We also find Sterne using Erasmus his mystic meaning and Didius his beard. Similar examples are found from some other authors born around the same time, such as Horace Walpole (b.1717) and Cibber (b.1671). As far as I have been able to determine, all the examples from this late period involve proper nouns. Thus, the agreeing genitive disappears from elegant literature by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and although the non-diagnostic his genitive is still not uncommon at that time, it disappears from texts by the end of the same century. However, it is harder to determine whether any sort of separated genitive survived beyond this period in colloquial language in any 28 The example is quoted by Lowth (1775: 18) as an instance of ‘the pronominal adjective their’ being ‘improperly added, the possessive case being sufficiently expressed without it’. Lowth’s reference is to p. 31 of the sixth edition of Wellwood’s memoirs, while the only edition which I was able to obtain was the second (from 1700), where the example appears p. 37. The example is surprising given that there are no other separated genitives to be found in pp. 1–75 of this work (the portion which I read myself), even ones using his.


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dialects. Before addressing this matter, however, we must first take a look at the relationship between the separated genitives and the use of the apostrophe in possessives, as well as the comments of prescriptive grammarians concerning separated genitives, the topics of the next two sections. 6.5.3 The separated genitive and the apostrophe In Present Day English, we use an apostrophe before the possessive marker -s , as in the man down the street’s house, etc. The other main use of the apostrophe is in the contraction of two words, e.g. can’t. This has led to the assumption by many people that in using an apostrophe with the possessive marker, the orthography is indicating the origin of this marker as a separate word, viz. his. It is therefore of some importance to look at the development of the apostrophe in English orthography and the origins of its use before the possessive marker. Handwritten manuscripts in the period before the arrival of the printing press used various ‘suspension marks’ to indicate the omission of one or more letters. The modern apostrophe developed from an upward curl either as part of a letter or at the end of a word. This particular symbol was frequently used to indicate a terminal us, es, or is, although it is also found medially to denote er, etc. It is important to realize that the original use of the apostrophe was not in contractions of words, but to show that a vowel was elided. The use in contractions of words stems from this elision. In the first book on punctuation published in English (Anonymous 1680: 8), we are told that an apostrophe is ‘A Note signifying, that Two Syllabls are contracted into One’, and the examples given include ‘Lov’d for loved’ and ‘It’s or ’tis, for it is’. The modern form of the symbol appears in some very early printed books; Parkes (1992: 75) comments, ‘The apostrophe (or apostrophus), based on Greek practice, was adopted by Bembo and Aldus to indicate elision in the Aldine edition of Petrarch’s Italian verse (1501)’. This comment is in a note to a statement on p. 55 that the apostrophe was ‘intended as a sign to indicate the elision of a vowel, but it was retained to indicate a missing letter when the vowel no longer appeared in the spoken form’. That is, a suffix such as -ed originally had a vowel, and during the period when this vowel was sometimes pronounced but sometimes not, the form ’d might be used in poetry to indicate that it should not be pronounced in a particular line. At a later stage, when no one pronounced the vowel anymore, the spelling is still sometimes found. I have used the -ed suffix here because a belief that ’s must represent a contraction is disproved by the use of the apostrophe in this suffix, as well as

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in the plural suffix, in EModE texts. 29 By the late eighteenth century, however, the use of the apostrophe as an abbreviation was on the decline. Murray (1795: 171) says that an apostrophe is used to abbreviate or shorten a word, giving the example judg’d, but comments that the chief use of the symbol is to show the genitive case of nouns. The apostrophe was certainly also used, however, to indicate the contraction of two words by the early seventeenth century. Alexander Hume’s Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britain Tongue of c1617 (edited by Wheatley 1865) tells us p. 23 that ‘apostrophus’ is ‘the ejecting of a letter or a syllab out on one word or out betuene tuae’. Interestingly enough, Hume’s own usage does not limit apostrophes to contractions and instances where a vowel has been left out, but uses it in the possessive pronouns our’s, it’s, and your’s, showing that he associated possessive markers not just with missing material, but also with possessive -s generally. It is only later that the modern rules for the use of apostrophes in possessives became set; according to Leonard (1962: 264), the usage concerning apostrophes throughout the eighteenth century was ‘confused and divided’. The use of the apostrophe in contractions as well as possessives generally in EModE would have reinforced any tendency to associate possessive -es with his, a tendency which had its origins in the phonetic similarity with the pronoun and the looseness of attachment to the host, as we have seen. Sweet (1891: §1022) remarks that ‘The gradual restriction of the apostrophe to the genitive apparently arose from the belief that such a genitive as prince’s . . . was a shortening of prince his’. The apostrophe was retained in possessives after the period when it had stopped being used generally for elision not because of any origin of the possessive in a contraction, but rather because people had come to associate it with contraction, and because of that made a mistaken assumption about the origin of ’s . Although some early grammarians railed against the ‘improper’ use of apostrophes where there was no omitted vowel (e.g. king’s), it was retained (and indeed extended) in possessives as a useful way to distinguish between possessives and plurals. It is to the comments of the grammarians that we now turn. 6.5.4 The his genitive and the grammarians Although well-educated writers of the mid-sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries clearly considered the separated genitive elegant or at least suitable 29 The OED’s entry for apostrophe says that the apostrophe originally merely marked the elision of e and was ‘equally common in the nominative plural’, especially with proper names and foreign words, as in possessives. My own impression is that in some texts, apostrophes are generally used in possessives but not plurals; however, I have not carried out a systematic study.


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for formal language, the use of his as a genitive marker was condemned by grammarians as early as the late sixteenth century. The comments of the grammarians give us valuable information concerning awareness of the separated genitive and attitudes towards it in the EModE period. Ben Jonson (1640), in his English Grammar (written in 1592 but not published until 1640), comments (p. 41) on ‘the monstrous syntax of the pronoun his joining with a noun betokening a possessor; as the prince his house, for the princes house’. 30 Charles Butler’s grammar of 1634 (Eichler 1910: 35) complains ‘Ðis Teutonik termination of d-e genitive, some refined wit has turned to his; perswading himself d-at s is but a corrupt abbreviation of his . . . and d-erffor hee wil not writ, min masters soon is a cild, but min master his soon is a cild . . . ’ Similarly, Alexander Hume complained c1617 (Wheatley 1865: 29) concerning -es that ‘therfoer now almost al wrytes his for it, as if it wer a corruption’. It is generally agreed that Hume’s reference to ‘almost al’ was a gross exaggeration, and my own investigation confirms this opinion, but such comments make it clear that among the educated people to whom these books were addressed, the belief that the origin of the possessive marker lay in a contraction was widely held. Indeed, some grammarians ignorant of the history of their language held this belief themselves; Harris (1752) and Baker (1770) argued that the only proper genitive in English was the of genitive on the basis that the popular ’s genitive was a contraction of his. Harris’ comment is particularly interesting: ‘The Letter s frequently stands for his; for Example—we say The King’s Majesty, instead of the King his majesty—I need not tell you that this s displeases me, as an Abbreviation; but this is not now my only Objection, for the very Mode of Expression, when wrote at Length, is ungrammatical, and can not be translated—A Petition to the most gratious Majesty of the King would in a little Time sound as easy as a Petition to the King’s most gratious Majesty. (Harris 1752: 22)

Harris goes on to complain that the use of s for his is a direct nonsense when used with neuter, feminine, or plural, as in the Queen’s Birthday, which he assumes to be a contraction of the Queen his Birth-day, and also ignorantly assumes that expressions such as ours are similar contractions. Aickin’s grammar of 1693 is unusual in its discussion of possessive s in assuming that it could come from hers and its as well as his. In Maittaire’s grammar of 1712, we find the same assumption that ’s is a contraction of his, but Maittaire finds no fault with this possessive when used with a masculine noun: 30 As noted by Dons (2004: 45), Jonson (along with some other grammarians who condemned the construction) nevertheless sometimes used this ‘monstrous syntax’ in his own writings.

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The -s, if it stands for his, may be marked by an Apostrophus; E. G. for Christ’s sake: and sometimes his is spoken and written at length; E.G. for Christ his sake. Maittaire (1712: 28)

Maittaire apparently believed that the -s genitive was sometimes a reduction of his and sometimes not; he quotes (without condemnation) the childrens bread and the daughters husband, with no apostrophe, as an example of the genitive. Maittaire was unusual as a grammarian in accepting the his genitive at all. The majority of the grammarians who mention the use of his as a genitive marker condemn it. There are also a number of grammarians in the eighteenth century who do not actually mention that his is used in this way but are at pains to explain that ’s did not originate as a contraction. For example Greenwood (1711: 54– 55) does not explicitly mention the his genitive but comments ‘But they are mistaken, who think the s is added instead of his, (the first Part of the Word his being cut off) and therefore that an (’) Apostrophy is either always to be written, or at least to be understood’ on the basis that s was also used in forms such as the names of women ‘where the Word his cannot without a Solecism, or Impropriety of Speech, have Place’ and also words such as ours, ‘where no one can imagine the Word his to be included’. Similar comments are made by Fisher (1750: 76) and Priestley (1761: 5), who comments that ‘Venus his beauty or Men his wit, were absurd’. In his entry for his in his famous Dictionary, first published in 1755, Dr. Johnson comments: It is sometimes used as a sign of the genitive case: as the man his ground for the man’s ground. It is now rarely thus used, as its use proceeded probably from a false opinion that the form of the genitive was his contracted. Samuel Johnson (1774)

A further indication that the his genitive was no longer current is given by Priestley’s (1761: 5) comment that expressions such as Statius his Thebais were used by ‘Mr. Pope and some of his contemporaries’ to avoid ‘a harshness in the pronunciation of some genitives’. Alexander Pope’s career spanned 1711–1744. The last reference to the separated genitive that I have found is by Lowth (1775: 17), who complains about the ‘improper’ use of an apostrophe in Thomas’s book on the basis that the apostrophe should only be used to show the elision of a vowel, as in God’s grace, but no elision of the vowel is possible in Thomas’s. Lowth further comments that this expression is equivalent to ‘ “Thomasis book,” not “Thomas his book’,’ as it is commonly supposed’ and adds in a footnote to this passage the comment that ‘ “Christ his sake,” in our liturgy is a mistake, either of the printers, or of the compilers’. In the


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same footnote, he mentions Joseph Addison’s mistaken belief, published in the Spectator article (mentioned below in section 6.6.1), that ’s ‘represents the his and her of our forefathers’. Lowth comments that Addison could have deduced how groundless his belief was by considering that s could not possibly represent her. Lowth’s discussion is of additional interest as the source of example (6-40) where the possessive pronoun used is their. In general, the grammarians who mention the separated genitive at all only use examples with non-diagnostic his. This means that we must exercise some caution when interpreting what the grammarians say about the separated genitive; we know that some writers were using agreeing separated genitives in the early seventeenth century, e.g. (6-34), but although the grammars of this time generally condemn the his genitive, they do not make any mention of other pronouns being used as substitutes for the genitive. In fact, some grammars of the seventeenth century, when the his genitive was enjoying its heyday, do not even mention that the construction is used, such as Wallis’ Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae, first published in 1653. While Wallis explains that ’s is not to be understood as a contraction of his because it would not be possible to replace ’s with his after feminine nouns or possessive pronouns, he does not actually say that anyone does make such a replacement with masculine nouns. The absence of a mention of the his genitive in a single grammar can therefore not be taken as evidence that it was not used in the period when the grammar was written. However, the general silence of the grammarians concerning separated genitives with pronouns other than his after the beginning of the eighteenth century is suggestive that the agreeing genitive never had a firm hold in the language in the same way the non-diagnostic his genitive did, at least in writing. To conclude this section, Table 6.1 summarizes the views of various grammarians from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century concerning the genitives under discussion.

6.6 The demise of the separated genitive As we have seen, the agreeing genitive appears to have died out by the beginning of the eighteenth century, but the non-diagnostic his genitive is found for a longer period. We have also seen that caution is needed in interpreting the comments of the grammarians concerning the separated genitive, for example Hume exaggerated their frequency, and the fact is that although most grammarians mentioned the idea that ’s originated as a contraction of his, only a few of them explicitly comment that people are currently using expressions

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Table 6.1 Summary of Grammarians’ views of the -s and separated genitives Name

Date

Comment

Don’t mention his genitive or s < his theory Gil 1619, 1621 Dilworth 1793 Murray 1795 Bullions 1846 Green 1848 Don’t mention his genitive as being current, but do mention s < his theory Wallis 1653 Greenwood 1711 Fisher 1750 Brown 1823 Sweet 1891 Mention his genitive Hume Jonson Butler Johnson Lowth

1617 (1592) 1640 1634 1755 1775

Priestley

1761

Abbot (Shakesp. grammar)

1870

Express the belief that ’s < his Aicken 1693 Harris Baker Maittaire

1752 1770 1712

Says most people write his separately Condemns his genitive Condemns his genitive his genitive ‘now rarely used’ Condemns his genitive; gives example with plural Mentions that it was used earlier in the century; says it is based on mistaken belief Calls his a mistake for ’s

No condemnation; also thinks it can be a reduction of hers, its Condemns both ’s and his Condemns both ’s and his Thinks his is okay for masculine

such as the king his. From the comments made by Harris, for example, we might get the impression that the -s genitive had completely ousted the his genitive, but we know that some writers were using the his genitive in the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Dr Johnson’s comment that only a few people used the his genitive any more is almost certainly correct. I have not found any examples after 1775 of grammarians giving examples of writers (or speakers) using the his genitive, apart from some comments of the late nineteenth century which will be discussed in the next section. Johnson’s


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comments about the old-fashioned nature of the his genitive in the period when he composed his dictionary accord with the findings from my corpus study, that is, that the his genitive starts to decline in the later part of the seventeenth century and is not found in the writings of authors born after about 1720. For the most part, the grammars of the nineteenth century do not even mention the his genitive, although some, as we have seen, do mention (to dismiss it) the theory that -s arose from a contraction. It is interesting to note that in the third edition of his Shakespearean grammar, Abbott (1966 [1870]: 144) treats the his genitive of Shakespeare’s period as a mistake, but does not suggest that this was a mistake that people were continuing to make in his own time. However, in the late nineteenth century, we get some comments about the ‘vulgar’ use of the his genitive, most famously by Jespersen. It is time to turn to the question of the sociolinguistic status of the his genitive in different periods in English, and to reconcile apparently conflicting evidence concerning the retention of the his genitive after the beginning of the nineteenth century. 6.6.1 Sociolinguistic status of the separated genitive Janda (2001: 303) suggests that the his genitive ‘shows hypercorrective hallmarks suggesting an origin among a much more numerous body of barely, or even non-literate speakers’. Similarly, Lehmann (1995: 19) says that ‘dialects and lower sociolects of Middle English had the alternative construction [to the -s genitive—CLA] NP his N (e.g. the king (of England) his daughter) available’. But John Lyly’s use of the separated genitive in his Euphues is proof that by the late sixteenth century at least, the separated genitive had no colloquial associations, since this work gave rise to the word euphuism which means ‘an affected style in imitation of that of Lyly’. The separated genitive is furthermore used in the Book of Common Prayer in phrases such as for Jesus Christ his sake, and its association with solemn language, at least for some people, is reflected in the fact that in the early seventeenth-century letters of John Barrington, the separated genitive is only found with God or other expressions referring to the deity: 31 (6-43) . . . to the lord his protection (Barr. Let 116, p. 135.2, by John Barrington, 1630) It is also used by Joseph Addison in his pieces in the Spectator, who comments in issue 135 (1711) of the Spectator that his as a possessive marker was still retained ‘in writing and in all the solemn offices of our religion’. Possessor 31

I examined all the letters by John Barrington in Searle’s (1983) edition.

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doubling was elegant, at least in the period from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. It is also a fact of great importance to this question that although the prescriptive grammarians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries usually condemned the separated genitive if they mentioned it at all as being current, they never castigated it as ‘vulgar’. It is of particular interest to notice that the his genitive is not mentioned in one grammar book of the early eighteenth century which specifically targeted ‘vulgar’ usages. This is Savage’s (1833) The Vulgarisms and Improprieties of the English Language. Savage criticized various ‘vulgar’ types of genitives, such as yourn for yours, and recursive genitives such as her husband’s sister’s child (he considered the correct expression to be the child of the sister of her husband), but there is no Savage attack on the his genitive, which does not get a mention. This is strongly suggestive that the ‘vulgar’ people for whom Savage’s prescriptions were written were not using the his genitive in Savage’s time in speech or writing. There thus seems to be no evidence that the separated genitive had its origins in colloquial language in English, and even if it did, there is clear evidence that it was not vulgar in its heyday in the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, being used in the highest styles. I have also been unable to find evidence supporting the idea that the separated genitive is associated with any geographical dialects in PDE. Stahl (1927: 24) notes that the use of the separated genitive seems to have disappeared in current-day English dialects, and neither Wright (1905) nor Wakelin (1977) mentions the his genitive, as one might expect if they continued to exist in dialects after dropping out of the written language, since both these works mention some other non-standard possessives. 32 However, in apparent contradiction to this evidence that the his genitive had disappeared entirely from English by the early twentieth century at the very latest, Stahl notes an interesting example in the entry for her in the OED (signification 3 After a n., a substitute for the genitive inflexion): (6-44)

1873 F. HALL Mod. Eng. 355 note, In England, to this day, the vulgar write, in their Bibles, Prayer-books, and elsewhere, ‘John Crane his book’, ‘Esther Hodges her book’, etc.

Furthermore, Jespersen (1894: §254) comments that examples of the separated genitive can be found ‘from Chaucer down to the vulgar speech or burlesque 32 I am grateful to Juhani Klemola for discussions concerning the possible continuation of his genitives in Late Modern English dialects. The Survey of English Dialects questionnaire used by Orton and Dieth (1971) yields no examples of the construction, and Klemola confirms that he knows of no examples of this particular construction.


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style of our days’. 33 How can we reconcile these comments with the clear evidence for a high sociolinguistic status of the separated genitive in an earlier period? I believe the answer to this question is that the agreeing separated genitive did indeed arise as a hypercorrection resulting from the lessened degree of attachment of the possessive marker, as evidenced by the group genitive. However, this was hypercorrection by the educated, who made the logical extension of the separated genitive to feminine and plural possessors. It is the educated speakers and writers who would have been most affected by the condemnation by the grammarians of the seventeenth century of the notion that -es derived from his. By the early eighteenth century, the agreeing separated genitive, which seems never to have taken very strong root, stops being used by educated speakers. The non-diagnostic his genitive was more resistant; Addison’s and Maittaire’s comments demonstrate that there continued to be a strong belief among the educated that -(e)s was a reduction of his, and the use of the his genitive in the liturgy of the church would have extended its life in solemn language. The eighteenth century saw a flourishing of grammars and intense interest by the educated in ‘correct’ language, and these grammars generally either condemn the his genitive or the theory that this genitive is the ancestor of -s . By the time Samuel Johnson made his authoritative statement about the incorrectness of this theory, there was no need to condemn the his genitive because it was dying out. However, among some less well educated but aspiring people, the separated genitive had become associated with elegant language. It is notable that Hall’s comment, reproduced in (644), does not indicate that ‘the vulgar’ use the (agreeing) separated genitive in speech, but rather that they use it in a very specific context, the ex libris of books, particularly religious books. The idea that the separated genitive was a hypercorrect feature of the lower classes in the nineteenth century is also consistent with a plausible interpretation of one of the few instances where it is found in literature in the nineteenth century. Jespersen (1894: §254) cites the following example from Thackeray’s novel Pendennis, written in 1849: (6-45)

. . . in King George the First his time ‘in King George the First’s time’ (Thackeray (1849) Pendennis Vol. 1, Chap. 23(22))

33 In the revised discussion of the his genitive in his A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (1942), Jespersen says only ‘Thus we find the explanation of the following cases’, leaving out the mention of ‘our days’. This volume (volume 6) was published in 1942, one year before Jespersen’s death. It is impossible to tell whether Jespersen left the reference to ‘our days’ out because he considered that there had been a change in his lifetime and no one used it any more or simply to shorten the passage.

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This example cannot be taken as a certain reflection of anyone’s speech in the early nineteenth century; a novelist may have a very good ear for dialect but may also entertain stereotypes which are not accurate. With this caveat, let us consider what Thackeray might have been trying to convey here. In his study of Thackeray’s language, Phillipps (1978: 119) comments on this particular passage, ‘To suggest bucolic overtones when a rustic guide conducts a party over a stately home, the novelist revives that Tudor phenomenon, which Jespersen . . . calls the quasi-genitive, as in John Smith his mark.’ However, it seems at least as likely that what Thackeray was trying to convey here was not rusticity, but rather the hypercorrect speech that is often associated with people such as housekeepers. More research is needed into the question of whether the his genitive did indeed survive into the nineteenth century as a living construction, but from the evidence produced so far, it appears that the association of this genitive with low levels of education was a phenomenon of the nineteenth century, when the better-educated had stopped using the construction. 6.6.2 Analysis of the agreeing and latest periods One matter which complicates things here is the question of how accurately the texts represent spoken language. This is always a concern when trying to uncover the grammar underlying texts, but in the case of the agreeing separated genitive, I have argued that the construction is particularly likely to be rather artificial, a late addition to the grammars of some people. Be that as it may, however, the texts are all that we have to work with, and some sort of rule system underlies them, even if it is not the grammar learned in normal childhood language acquisition. I shall therefore proceed as though all the variants of the separated genitive construction during the agreeing period represent constructions for which a syntactic analysis must be provided. It should be kept in mind, however, that the -s genitive was by far the commonest type of prenominal genitive in all periods. As in other periods, our analysis of genitives in the agreeing period must depend on our assumptions about many fundamental matters concering morphology and syntax. However, one thing that can presumably be agreed on is that the possessor-agreeing separated genitive represents a possessor doubling construction similar to those found in the other Germanic languages. The most common assumption is that the possessive pronoun occupies D in this construction and that the possessor occupies the Spec, D position. It is for the attached genitive and the non-diagnostic his genitive that suggested analyses will diverge most widely. One approach would be to assume


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that all genitive constructions have the same syntax, that of the doubling construction. By this approach, we could assume that for some people, there were two versions of possessive D: invariant -s and a possessive pronoun, which agrees with the possessor in Spec. For other people, there was only one pronoun available for the pronoun option, which (as with the first group of people) obligatorily agreed with the possessor. These people used only non-diagnostic his. They also all used -s, which, when used with a masculine singular possessor, would be ambiguous between a reduction of his and the invariant -s usable with all types of possessors. Still other people, those who never used the separated genitive, had only the invariant -s in D. Another possible approach is the one inspired by Toivonen’s (2001) suggestion of projecting and non-projecting particles. By this approach, the group genitive would involve a projecting particle, that is, the possessive marker, whether separated or attached, would be in D, as in the previous approach. However, attached non-group genitives could involve a non-projecting particle, as they had in the preceding period. The reduction of the his genitive to masculine proper nouns in the later period could be treated as the retention of a non-projecting particle for a limited class of nouns. A final possible approach would be to treat the agreeing pronoun as being positioned in D, but to treat the more usual possessive marker -s as a phrasal affix. Since his is restricted to masculine singular possessors by this time, even for people who do not use her, his is best treated as a separate word, presumably in D, rather than an allomorph of the invariant -s.

6.7 Conclusion I have suggested these stages in the development of the separated genitive in English: 1. In EME, the first examples of the possessive marker being written separately from the possessor are found in some texts. The writing of the possessive separately may be a purely orthographical matter, but it is likely to reflect the reduced degree of attachment of the possessive marker which resulted from the generalization of -es as a general possessive marker. The evidence is against the idea that these separated genitives developed from a reanalysis of two NomPs as one. The separated genitive of this period, always adjacent to the possessor N in this period and invariant, demands the same analysis as the attached genitive.

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2. Around 1380, group genitives start appearing in the texts, using both attached and separated possessive markers. The separated genitive is still invariant. As in the preceding period, the separated and attached genitives should be given the same analysis. It is possible that the separated genitive represented an invariant possessive pronoun, but this seems dubious. The group genitive and the older combined genitive were variants sometimes used in the same text for about a century, and the separated possessive marker is used in both types, causing difficulties for an analysis whereby the old combined genitive involves an inflection but the group genitive involves a clitic. 3. The group genitive steadily gained ground, and just around the time when the combined genitive has nearly disappeared from the texts (midsixteenth century), we find the first examples of a separated genitive agreeing in gender and number with the possessor. The group genitive, by now quite common, provided clear evidence for phrasal attachment rather than head attachment. It is probably this fact which made possible the reanalysis of the separated genitive as a reduction of his. The generalization of his to other pronouns was a logical extension of this reanalysis. However, it appears that the agreeing genitive was always a fairly artificial construction, and it is only found in the texts for about a century and a half. It would not be surprising to find that the earlier non-agreeing period and the later agreeing period overlapped a bit, but the periods seem to be essentially distinct, as no writer appears to use both types. 4. The use of the apostrophe to mark elision meant that it was frequently used in the attached possessive, where what was written es was frequently pronounced without a vowel by this time. The later extension of the apostrophe to contractions reinforced the idea that the possessive was a contraction of his with the preceding word, and so the apostrophe remained as a marker of the possessive in written language when it had ceased being used to mark vowel elision and was otherwise restricted to marking the contraction of two words. 5. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the agreeing separated genitive has disappeared from the texts, although the use of the his genitive with masculine names continues nearly until the end of the same century. It appears that this use was confined to writing. 6. After the end of the eighteenth century, it appears that the separated genitive is confined to specific uses by people of somewhat limited education.


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The separated genitive provides a good illustration of why it should not be assumed that constructions which look similar in two languages are necessarily the result of the same development, or that they must be given the same synchronic analysis. The agreeing genitive which first appears in the mid-sixteenth century looks like the doubling construction found in so many Germanic languages. The lack of examples in the earliest texts of any of the Germanic languages makes it impossible to assume a common source in all these languages, but it is natural enough to assume parallel development. In particular, it is prima facie plausible to assume that the breakdown of case marking, specifically the loss of prenominal genitive case, was the reason why the separated genitive developed. We saw in the last chapter that the separated genitive developed in Dutch at a time when genitive case marking was still productive, however, and in this chapter we have seen that separated genitives of earlier English cannot simply be equated with the doubling constructions of some other Germanic languages. Most strikingly, the first separated genitives in the text do not exhibit the agreement with the possessor that is typically found in the doubling constructions. It is normally assumed that a non-agreeing linker pronoun in the doubling construction is the result of grammaticalization. For example, in his treatment of Low Saxon, Strunk (2004b: 98) assumes that at some point, a possessive pronoun became reanalysed as a possessive marker which may have had some referential properties associated with it for a short period, but which quickly became ‘a mere possessive marker’. 34 In English, however, the agreeing type appears much later than the non-agreeing type. This is not what we expect of grammaticalization, at least if we consider that gender and number marking involve more semantic content than an invariable possessive marker. We could substitute the word ‘generalization’ for ‘grammaticalization’, given that it is quite clear that the use of her and their in the separated genitive has its origins in the belief that the possessive marker represented his, but it is clear that the agreeing separated genitive had a very different status in EModE from its status in the other Germanic languages. For one thing, it appears to have been a rather artificial construction, whereas there can be no doubt that possessor doubling constructions are a real part of the everyday grammar of the speakers of German, Dutch, Norwegian, etc. The earliest English examples furthermore all have the possessive marker directly adjacent to the possessor noun. There is no reason to treat them 34 Since Strunk assumes that these linkers have no semantics of their own whether they have agreement features or are invariant (and are therefore equally purely grammatical), it is not clear to me in what sense the non-agreeing se can be considered more advanced along the path of grammaticalization by his LFG analysis.

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differently from the attached genitive. This is in contrast to languages such as Dutch, where -s possessives must be adjacent to a very restricted class of nouns, but the doubling construction places the possessive marker at the end of an entire possessor phrase. If we assume that the earliest separated genitives represented an inflection, just as the attached genitive did, there is no mystery about why the generalization to feminines and plurals took place so late. It was only after the group genitive became widespread that the possessive marker was analysable as a separate word, and this is when the extension to feminine and plural pronouns takes place. In several other Germanic languages, possessor doubling constructions arose when speakers began to substitute analytic constructions for synthetic ones generally. The doubling constructions were a part of ordinary language and essentially performed the same function prenominally as the prepositional possessives did postnominally. The original inflectional prenominal genitive was allowed to shrink to a very restricted domain. In English, however, it appears that this agreeing separated genitive never became firmly established. This is easier to understand if this genitive had its origins in a reanalysis, primarily by well-educated people, of the group genitive, as I have suggested. The attempts of Dutch prescriptive grammarians to root out the possessor doubling construction, as described by Duinhoven (1977), have not been successful. In contrast, the English prescriptive grammarians appear to have had a rare triumph here. The difference becomes easy to understand if it was precisely the better educated, who are the most likely to be influenced by grammarians, who used the separated genitive. In English, as in Swedish, speakers continued to use the old inflectional genitive and extended it to entire phrases, instead of adopting a doubling construction. The comparison with Swedish is particularly instructive. The Swedish -s genitive is very similar to the English prenominal possessive, although a bit more restricted. In Swedish, however, it is not plausible that the construction is the result of a reduction of a possessive pronoun. This being so, there is no need to assume that the English -s possessive is a reduction of his, simply because of the phonological similarity. The facts do suggest that the agreeing separated genitive was the result of a reanalysis of -es, but this reanalysis was not caused by the impossibility of maintaining the genitive as a morphological case, but rather by the fact that the group genitive made an analysis of the possessive marker as a separate word plausible. However, the -s genitive, however it is analysed, was so entrenched with possessors of all types, that a new construction which was probably limited to the written language was not


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able to compete successfully with it, particularly when grammarians pointed out the folly of equating his with ’s . Some of the comments just made are speculative, but some facts at least seem to be solidly established: 1. The separated genitive was not the origin of the group genitive, as is sometimes assumed, since the writing of the possessive marker as a separate element antedates the appearance of the group genitive. 2. The separated and the attached genitives should be analysed as the same construction in the period before the agreeing separated genitive appears. 3. There is not a shred of evidence for the assumption that the separated genitive began in colloquial language in English. We cannot know what was going on in speech, but we do know that the separated genitive was associated with the highest sort of language in one period at least. 4. The separated genitive, even the more common non-diagnostic type, is used in a small minority of sentences in the texts compared with the -es genitive in all periods. Finally, the story of the separated genitive in English offers a good illustration of how important it is to discriminate properly between periods. The centuries-long period in which genitives were written separately from possessors was not a monolith, and the separated genitives cannot be studied without establishing the syntax of related constructions of the various periods, such as group genitives. This concludes the discussion of the doubling construction. In the next chapter, I look at the co-occurrence of determiners and possessives in the history of English, and make some comparisons with other Germanic languages.

7 Determiners and possessives 7.1 Introduction In PDE, it is generally impossible for a possessive or a possessor phrase to co-occur with a demonstrative or other determiner, in either order. Cooccurrence is not possible at all with a definite article (∗ the man’s/my the house), but it is possible for a demonstrative to co-occur with a possessive (phrase) under some circumstances: (7-1) . . . on this, his third NASA assignment (ABC TV News, 1 March 2001) This construction is quite restricted in PDE. It has a rather solemn ring to my ear and it seems only to be possible with the proximal demonstrative this; substituting that in example (7-1) sounds odd to me, and Wood (2007a) found only proximal demonstratives in the construction in PDE in a study she made of the British National Corpus. Concerning the combination of a demonstrative and a possessive, Taylor (1996: 115) says that the possibility of an intonation break after the demonstrative makes it plausible to claim that the demonstrative and the rest are in apposition and comments ‘[e]ach serves to ground the noun expression with which it is associated’. An appositional analysis for some examples is also suggested by Denison (1998: 115) and Wood (2007a). The opposite order, i.e. with the possessive preceding the determiner, as in ∗ his this third NASA assignment, is completely impossible. However, both the det poss and the poss det orders are found in OE texts, as mentioned in Chapter 3, where examples of both constructions are given. As discussed there, the co-occurrence of these elements in OE has often been taken as evidence that possessives were not determiners at that stage of English. In this chapter I look at the co-occurrence of a demonstrative or definite article with possessives in the history of English and show that the facts cannot be explained by simply assuming that English has moved from being

Determiners and possessives

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an ‘Adjective Genitive’ (AG) language to a ‘Determiner Genitive’ (DG) one. 1 Although there will be discussion at some points of possessive phrases containing nominal possessors, such as John’s/the man’s, the main focus will be on possessives. I will make no attempt at a complete survey of such co-occurrence in the Germanic languages generally, but I will make some observations on some of these languages to show similarities with English at various stages and to shed light on the best treatment(s) of the English data. I will begin with some observations on the co-occurrence of determiners and possessives in the other Germanic languages in section 7.2, followed by sections on the co-occurrence patterns found in OE, ME, and EModE. My conclusions are summarized in section 7.6.

7.2 Det poss and poss det in Germanic: overview 7.2.1 DET POSS The det poss pattern is not uncommon in the Germanic languages. It is found in early stages of other Germanic languages, including German, Old Saxon, and Dutch; see for example Behaghel (1923: §226, 233), Heinrichs (1954), and De Korne and Rinkel (1987: 39), to mention only a few sources which discuss the construction. An example from modern German is given in (7-2). (7-2)

diese meine Bücher these:n.nom.pl my:n.nom.pl books:(n)nom.pl ‘these books of mine’

Plank (1992b) indicates that this construction is a marked construction in German which is favoured only by some speakers. It seems to have a particular discourse use, which seems quite parallel to the OE construction discussed in 7.3.3. Demske (2001: 160) says that while the use of diese ‘these’ would normally signal that in the given situation there is exactly one salient group of books, the appearance of the possessive pronoun in (7-2) signals that this is not the case: there is in fact a further set of books which have the property of being the speaker’s books, but they are at a greater distance from the speaker. Demske argues against Löbel’s (1996) analysis of possessives as adjectives in German on the basis of such ‘relics’; while she agrees that in such examples the possessives are adjectives because they combine with a noun to form a ‘sortal’ concept, she maintains that the normal situation in modern German is that when a possessor combines with a noun it forms a ‘functional’ concept—that is, it picks out a definite individual or group, not a class of entities—and that the 1

Wood (2007a) makes similar arguments.

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fact that the possessives are sometimes adjectives does not mean that they are always adjectives. A plausible analysis for the construction for PDE and presumably for modern German would be that the demonstrative fills a topic-like position in the left periphery of the NomP. A different sort of analysis, not involving apposition, is usually suggested for the Scandinavian languages, where demonstratives and the definite article have had different possibilities of occurrence for their whole recorded history. For these languages, the most widely adopted sort of analysis has demonstratives heading DemP, higher than DP, where the definite article resides. Analyses of this general type are proposed by Faarlund (2004: 83) for Old Norse and Julien (2005: 113) for the modern Scandinavian languages to account for the fact that demonstratives and definite articles can co-occur in Old Norse and some modern varieties, e.g. Danish, with the demonstrative coming first. What about the position of possessives? Like definite articles, possessives can generally follow demonstratives in the Scandinavian languages. However, possessives do not have exactly the same distribution as definite articles. For one thing, in some varieties they may co-occur, with the possessive preceding the definite article (see section 7.2.2). For another, demonstratives only precede definite articles when an adjective is also present (see section 7.4 for more details), but there is no such restriction with a demonstrative followed by a possessive. Julien argues that possessives are in Spec, DP rather than in D, the position of the definite article. The reason why the definite article is not compatible with the possessive in most varieties, Julien assumes, is that there is a prohibition on definiteness being spelled out by the definite article when it is already contributed by another element such as the possessive. This prohibition does not apply with the demonstratives, since they contribute more semantic information than mere definiteness, and so demonstratives can precede possessives even in varieties which do not allow a demonstrative and a definite article to co-occur. 7.2.2 POSS DET Whatever analysis is given, det poss appears to be a genuine Germanic construction. In contrast, poss det is not found in most modern Germanic varieties. Harbert’s (2007: 150–5) discussion of the co-occurrence of genitives and determiners summarizes what Behaghel (1923) says about det poss but makes no mention of poss det. Typologically, the combination of a possessive pronoun followed by an independent determiner seems to be highly unusual. In his discussion of the co-occurrence of determiners and possessives,


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Haspelmath (1999) discusses the fact that some languages have det poss, but makes no mention of poss det. Looking at the early records of the other Germanic languages, it becomes apparent that although OE was rather unusual in having poss det in the prenominal position, it was not unique. The construction is attested in Old Norse. Faarlund (2004: 60) presents examples including (7-3): (7-3)

þitt hitt milda andlit your the mild.def face ‘your mild face’ (Barl 187.13)

Heusler (1962: §410) and Barnes (2001: §3.3.5) present similar examples. Note that the Old Norse construction involves the definite article hinn rather than a demonstrative sá ‘that’. How did such a typologically unusual construction arise in these languages? A clue comes from the fact that although OE and Old Norse appear to be the only early Germanic varieties in which prenominal poss det is found, in the postnominal position a possessive is found with a following demonstrative quite generally in the early Germanic texts. The following examples come from Heinrichs (1954): (7-4)

frô mîn the gôdo Lord my that/the good ‘My good Lord’ (Old Saxon, Heliand 2099)

(7-5)

Drúhtin min ther gúato Lord my that/the good ‘My good Lord’ (Old High German, Otfrid IV, 32)

(7-6)

liuba sunus meins sa my that/the dear son ‘my beloved Son’ (Gothic, Mk. I.11)

(7-7)

bródir okkar inn böðfrœkni brother our the battle_valiant ‘Our warlike brother’ (Old Norse, Hm 28,3)

Heinrichs presents these examples in his discussion of the definite article used as a ‘linking particle’ between nouns and adjectives and does not differentiate between examples with a possessive and those without, as in (7-8): (7-8)

drohtin the gôdo lord that/the good ‘the good lord’ (Old Saxon, Heliand 401)

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As discussed in section 2.2.2, the weak adjectives of Germanic originated as nominalizations. It is reasonable to assume that the construction represented by (7-4)–(7-8) still had a rather nominal feeling to it, as Heinrichs suggests, and that it was appositional. It is also reasonable to suppose that in the earliest stages, the possessive and the following combination of determiner and adjective were two separate constituents, i.e. the bracketing of (7-6) was [sunus meins] [sa liuba]. Now all we need to explain the existence of prenominal poss det in Old Norse and OE is to assume that in those languages, the construction with postnominal poss det was reanalysed as having a bracketing in which the possessive was part of the postposed appositive NomP, e.g. [bródir] [okkar inn böðfrœkni] for (7-7). When the postnominal material lost its appositional feeling, it shifted to the prenominal position normally found for determiners and adjectives, resulting in the unusual poss det construction. poss det has disappeared from English, a development which is discussed in section 7.5.1. However, it is still found in some Scandinavian varieties; for a thorough survey see Delsing (2003b). Example (7-9), from colloquial Danish, comes from Hansen (1995): (7-9) mine de røde vanter my the red gloves ‘my red gloves’ (Hansen 1995: 112) Hansen (p. 113, note 5) states that this poss det construction is only used with an adjective in Danish, a generalization which is confirmed by Delsing (2003b) and Julien (2005: 21). Vangsnes (1999: 149–61) presents examples of poss det constructions from more than one Swedish dialect, such as example (7-10) from Lappträsk Swedish: (7-10) mett te stór hús-e my the big house-def ‘my big house’ As in colloquial Danish, the construction is found only with adjectives in Lappträsk Swedish. In the Scandinavian languages, there is a close association between the definite article (de, te, etc.) and adjectives; in the absence of an adjective, definiteness is usually marked by a suffix to the noun (in ‘double definiteness’ languages, both the determiner and the suffix may be used, as in example 7-10). Analyses such as those discussed in Julien (2005) try to account for the suffixed article in terms of movement of the noun from its underlying position to the determiner phrase, where the definiteness of the NomP gets identified by the suffix. By such analyses, movement of the noun is


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blocked when an adjective intervenes, necessitating the use of the independent determiner to spell the definiteness features out. This explains why the definite article is found only when there is an adjective. Leaving aside such explanations of why the free-standing determiner is found only when there is an adjective and operating on the level of descriptive generalizations, I will refer to the restriction of the poss det construction to NomPs containing adjectives as the ‘adjective constraint’. The adjective constraint appears to have held even in Old Norse; while none of the sources I have consulted say explicitly that all the examples of poss det contain an adjective, none of the Old Norse examples of poss det which I have seen in the literature lack an adjective. There is strong evidence that the adjective constraint was also in force in OE, as will be discussed in section 7.3.1, where (since OE had no suffixed article) the appearance of a determiner is not normally dependent on the presence of a modifier. Having looked briefly at poss det and det poss in the Germanic languages generally, let us turn to a consideration of these constructions in OE.

7.3 Poss, poss det, and det poss in OE Some important facts concerning poss det and det poss in OE were sketched in section 3.12. In this section, I will present the evidence justifying the empirical claims made in that section, introduce some more facts, and make some suggestions concerning analyses of the constructions combining a possessive and a determiner. To illustrate the det poss construction, I repeat example (3-44) as (7-11), while (7-12) (which includes 3-43, repeated as 7-12b) illustrates poss det. (7-11)

a. Willaþ ge þæt ic eow agife þysne eowerne Will ye that I you give this:m.acc.sg your:m.acc.sg cyning king:(m)acc.sg ‘Do you wish me to give you your king/this king of yours?’ (coverhom,HomS_24_[ScraggVerc_1]:135.134) b. ðær ðu ðæt þin halige where thou that:n.acc.sg thy:n.acc.sg holy:n.acc.sg blod on eorðan agute blood:(n)acc.sg on earth shed ‘where you shed your holy blood/that holy blood of yours onto the earth’ (coverhom,HomS_40.3_[ScraggVerc_10]:94.1437)

280 (7-12)

Genitives in Early English a. to his þam leofan þegne to his the:m.dat.sg dear:m.dat.sg thane:(m)dat.sg ‘to his dear thane’ (coverhom,HomS_24_[ScraggVerc_1]:231.247) b. to minum þam ecan life to my:n.dat.sg the:n.dat.sg eternal:n.dat.sg life:(n)dat.sg ‘to my eternal life’ (coverhom,HomS_3_[ScraggVerc_8]:74.1214)

I have drawn these examples from a single manuscript, Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CXVII, written by a single scribe, to illustrate that both patterns were used in the same area, at the same time (the second half of the tenth century). While det poss examples like those of (7-11) are frequently discussed in the literature, the existence of poss det in OE frequently goes unmentioned in the linguistics literature. When poss det is mentioned at all, it is normally just treated as a variant of det poss, although Yoon (2002) and Wood (2003: section 4.1; 2007a and 2007b) are exceptional in both noticing that these constructions are different and attempting to deal with some differences formally. More traditional treatments of the language of a specific text or the OE period generally are more likely to mention the existence of both orders, but are likely to treat the two constructions as mere variants which arise from the generally freer word order found in OE. A notable exception is Mitchell (1985: §§103– 113), who exhaustively catalogues all the types of combinations of determiners, possessives, and adjectives found in the OE texts. As noted in section 3.13, a failure to notice the existence of the poss det construction has serious consequences for any argument that possessives were adjectives in OE, since adjectives, unlike possessives, did not precede determiners. The fact that poss det is so frequently overlooked is the more puzzling given that it occurs so much more frequently in OE texts than does det poss, as is illustrated in Table 7.1. While there is a total of only 136 examples of det poss, there are 256 examples of poss det. It is important to note that although poss det in particular is a frequently occurring construction in the OE texts, neither of the constructions in which a possessive and a determiner co-occur comes close to the frequency of a possessive unaccompanied by a determiner when no adjective is also involved. For brevity, I will refer to the use of a possessive without a determiner (with or without an adjective) as poss. A search for poss in the text which yields the largest total of poss det and det poss in Table 7.1, namely the Blickling Homilies (YCOE file coblick.o23.psd), yields no fewer than 1,198 ‘hits’. The same search on the file cocura.o2.psd (the

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Determiners and possessives Table 7.1 poss det and det poss in OE texts

ASC(A) Orosius Alexander CP Poetry Blickling Vercelli (MS A) BenRule WSGospels Leechbooks Ælfric CHs Wulfstan GregoryC Other YCOE Total

D Poss N

D Poss Adj N

Poss D Adj N

Poss D Adj

Poss D N

0 2 20 5 1 21 12 2 9 0 0 0 22 24 118

0 0 2 0 0 4 3 0 2 0 0 0 4 3 18

0 12 6 2 13 50 37 1 3 0 5i 0 48 32 209

0 0 0 2 9 10 16 0 0 0 1 0 5 4 47

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Two of the CH1 examples are from Appendix B. This appendix is a passage in Homily 17 not included in the main manuscript, but found in a manuscript which is not far removed from Ælfric’s time and which can be considered a reasonably reliable witness of Ælfric’s dialect.

i

Hatton manuscript of the CP) yields 1,691 possessives. Because the number of simple possessives is so large, I have not considered it worthwhile to make further comparisons (although a comparison when an adjective is also present will be made in the next section). However, it is important to establish that the co-occurrence of possessives and determiners in OE was less frequent than a simple possessive in view of some recent assumptions which have been made about OE possessives in the linguistics literature. As was mentioned in section 3.11, Wood (2003: 119) suggested that OE glossators may have added demonstratives to possessives to give them a definiteness which the possessives lacked on their own. Taking this idea that the OE possessives needed ‘beefing up’ further, Alexiadou (2004: 45) explicitly claims that the ability of a possessive to appear without a determiner is an innovation of ME. The figures just discussed concerning possessives in CP, one of the EWS anchor texts, show that this is simply incorrect. The use of a simple possessive was the norm in all attested stages of English. The fact that the use of a determiner with possessives was less common than simple poss naturally raises the question of whether any factors can be found which can predict when one construction will be chosen instead of another. We can recognize two main questions here. First, is it possible to make any predictions about when the possessive will be combined with a determiner

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instead of letting poss do the job on its own? Second, given that a determiner is being used, is it possible to make any predictions about whether it is poss det or det poss that will be used? Regarding the first question, the fact that some forms give more information about morphological categories than others might seem the obvious place to look for answers. Since the third person possessives were different from the other possessives in being incapable of declining to agree with the possessum, we might expect that the third person forms would be especially prone to being combined with determiners which were marked for the case and/or gender of the possessum. Other possessive forms such as mine had overt agreement morphology but did not provide a unique specification of the features of the possessum. Could it be that a determiner was added to the possessive when the possessive form was particularly deficient in marking the grammatical features of the noun it modified? It seems not. Wood (2003: 114–15), working within a framework in which inflectional morphology is assumed to play a central role in the ‘licensing’ of forms in particular positions, was unable to find a correlation between inflection on the possessive and the co-occurrence with a demonstrative. An inspection of the examples presented in (7-11) and (7-12) is enough to dispel any idea that a determiner was combined with a possessive only when it contributed more information about the grammatical features of the possessum; in (7-11a) for example, eowerne identifies the possessum quite specifically as masculine, accusative, and singular. The form þysne contributes no more agreement features than this and it must be assumed that its presence in this example is due to its semantic and/or discourse contribution rather than to grammatical necessity. A similar situation is found in (7-12b). It is thus clear that the agreement features of the determiner were sometimes redundant. It is also clear that no overt marking of the gender, case, or number of the possessum N was required, as attested by examples such as his noman myccledon ‘glorified his name’ (Blickling Homily 2:15.27). In this example, noman, being a weak noun in an oblique case, does not show its masculine gender or whether it is to be regarded as dative or accusative, but the determiner which would have clearly marked these features (þone) has not been added. Whether or not determiner and possessive combinations turn out to be more frequently used when the determiner adds to the information about the grammatical categories of the possessum, we can only conclude that no grammatical necessity governed the addition of a determiner to a possessive. This leaves us with the question of the choice between det poss and poss det. I believe that a thorough examination of examples using poss, poss det, and det poss is likely to reveal that the two constructions had rather different


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discourse functions, although I have not carried out such an investigation and will only make a few suggestions below. However, there are two grammatical constraints on the poss det construction which do not apply to the det poss construction, to which we now turn. 7.3.1 POSS DET: data The poss det construction has been illustrated by examples (7-12a, b). One important characteristic of this construction is that it is associated with adjectives. As indicated in Table 7.1, every example I have found of this construction in the texts from the early eleventh century or earlier which I included in my study has an adjective in it. 2 In many of the examples, the adjective appears without a following head noun: (7-13) Matheus, min se leofa Matthew my:m.nom.sg the:m.nom.sg beloved:m.nom.sg ‘Matthew, my beloved’ (coblick,LS_1.2_[AndrewMor[BlHom_19]]:229.24.2937) Although attributive adjectives cannot be used without a following noun in PDE except in very restricted situations, notably when a plural generic head N is understood, as in ‘the blind’, they were freely used without following nouns in OE even when a specific referent was involved, as in se blinda ‘the blind man’. Such ‘substantival adjectives’ are a feature of Germanic languages generally. For arguments that such forms really are adjectives rather than nouns in Dutch, see Kester (1996), and for a discussion concerning the adjectival status of the words in question in English see Pullum and Huddleston (2002: 538). Here, the treatment of substantival adjectives as adjectives allows us to make the generalization that poss det always involves an adjective, which makes OE similar to the Scandinavian varieties discussed in section 7.2.2. I am aware of only two examples of poss det in OE and ME manuscripts which fail to conform to the adjective constraint, and both are from manuscripts from after the middle of the eleventh century, a period when the construction was no longer productively used. Given the very large number of examples of poss det which do conform to the adjective constraint and the fact that this constraint is found in some Scandinavian varieties, the evidence that the constraint was in force in English up to the period when the poss det construction was obsolescent is 2 I have not included agen or cardinal numbers as adjectives in my counts of poss det and det poss, or in my comparative statistics with simple possessives used with adjectives. There are two reasons for this. First, unlike the ‘prototypical’ adjectives in the sense of Dixon (1982), these words are not found in any of the poss det examples which I have found. Second, the ‘central’ adjectives were declined weak after possessives, but cardinal numerals had no weak forms, and agen was usually (although not always) declined strong (see Mitchell 1985: §501, §551 on the declension of agen and the cardinal numerals, respectively).

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Genitives in Early English Table 7.2 det poss, poss det, and poss in selected OE texts D Poss Adj N

Poss D Adj N

Poss Adj N

ASC(A) Orosius CP Blickling Vercelli∗∗ BenRule Mt(WSCp) CH1∗∗ Wulfstan ASC(D) 1002–end

0 0 0 4 2 0 2 0 0 0

0 12 2 50 14 2 3 2 0 2

0 43 62 28 18 21 19 60 20 14

Total

8

87

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very strong. I will accordingly defer discussion of these two counterexamples until section 7.5.1, in which the disappearance of this construction is discussed. It is also worth noting that although poss det is not as common as poss overall in OE texts, poss det is in fact more common than poss in some texts just when the noun is modified by an adjective as well as a possessive. Table 7.2 gives some figures comparing the use of poss det and poss when a noun is modified by an adjective as well as the possessive. 3 It can be seen that in the two texts with the greatest frequency of poss det, this construction is favoured over poss when an adjective is involved. This is not the case with the other texts, however, where poss is more common. The association of poss det with adjectives has not gone unnoticed in the literature, dating back at least to Heltveit (1977). Mitchell (1985: §106) comments that poss det is rare without an adjective (his sole example lacking an adjective will be discussed in section 7.5.1) and Traugott (1992: 173) notes that the det poss order is ‘preferred’ over the poss det order when no adjective is present. Wood (2003) assumes that the adjective is an essential ingredient of poss det. So far as I know, however, a second restriction on poss det which I have noticed was not explicitly mentioned in the literature before Allen (2006). 4 In every single example of poss det which I have seen, 3 In this investigation, I only collected examples for a portion of some texts; these are designated by ∗∗ . The selection read from the Vercelli homilies was the first ten homilies, all from the A manuscript. The figures from Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies are from the first twenty homilies. For the reasons already discussed, agen and the cardinal numerals were not treated as adjectives. 4 Mustanoja (1958: 32) seems to take the definite article as the prototype in this construction, but his reference to ‘[t]he possessive followed by the definite article (or a demonstrative)’ does not explicitly rule out the proximal demonstrative. An explicit statement about the lack of examples with a proximal demonstrative is therefore in order.


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the determiner is always se, never þes. In contrast, þes is common in det poss. The analysis of poss det which I propose in the next section accounts for both the adjective constraint and the restriction to se in the poss det construction. 7.3.2 POSS DET: analysis Since the use without an adjective apparently never became established before the construction died out, our analysis of poss det in OE should include some account of why the adjective was essential. In LFG, no movement is assumed, so no explanation can be made in terms of e.g. spell-out of the determiner becoming possible when movement of the possessor noun from its underlying position to the determiner node is blocked. I propose instead to account for the adjective constraint in OE by assuming that an adjective phrase could have a position for a determiner. Specifically, I suggest that in OE an AP could be the complement of a determiner. In section 2.2.2 I discussed the fact that the weak adjectives were originally nominalizations. It is not implausible that adjective phrases were a sort of hybrid phrase in OE, retaining some nominal characteristics. Stripped of some of the specifically LFG formalism, the structure of the phrase minum þam ecan life of (7-12b) can be represented as (7-14): (7-14)

DP D

DP (POSS)

NP

(CASE = cGEN) D

DP

NP

minum

(ADJ)

life

D

D

AP

þam

ecan

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For a more detailed discussion with the complete LFG apparatus, see Allen (2007b). Essentially, the analysis treats possessive pronouns and genitives in the same way, that is, as the Specs of DP. These Specs are given the poss (possessive) function within the functional structure corresponding to the larger DP and are annotated with a ‘constraining equation’ which ensures that genitive case must be supplied somehow. In this structure, it is the lexical entry for the determiner minum which supplies the genitive case. 5 One crucial feature of the analysis is that DP can be an ‘extended projection’ of adjective phrases; that is, an adjective phrase (which will have the adj (adjunct) function) can be a complement to a determiner, allowing for two determiners within a noun phrase just in case there is also an adjective. Another crucial feature is the assumption that the determiner se already had a dual nature as a demonstrative or a definite article in OE. That is, it could serve as a pronoun (i.e. project a DP phrase) or it could be a definite article (i.e. the head D). When it was a pronoun, it had a lexical meaning (that is, it was equipped with a pred in LFG terminology), but as a determiner it only introduced a definiteness feature. LFG assumes that a given functional structure can only have one pred, and so it is only as a determiner that se would fit into the structure proposed here for poss det—since the pred of the AP is already supplied by the adjective (ecan in 7-14), a demonstrative such as a form of þes cannot be used. This feature of the analysis captures a parallel with Old Norse, which already had different forms for the distal demonstrative (sá) and the definite article (hinn). All the examples of poss det in Old Norse of which I am aware involve the definite article, rather than the demonstrative. I have been speaking of only possessives followed by a determiner, but the analysis suggested here, in which the possessive is phrasal, also allows for a genitive phrase preceding the determiner, just when there is an adjective for the determiner to modify. 6 The predicted examples are found: (7-15)

5

þurh mines Fæder þone Halgan through my:m.gen.sg Father:(m).gen.sg the:m.acc.sg Holy Gast Ghost:(m)acc.sg ‘through my Father’s Holy Ghost’ (coblick,LS_20_[AssumptMor[BlHom_13]]:157.357.1987)

I assume that the lexical entries for possessives supply genitive case and additionally supply information concerning the case of the element which they modify, as discussed in section 3.4. So a form like minum supplies the information that the word is a pronoun in the genitive case and that it furthermore modifies something in the dative case. For details, see Allen (2007b). 6 As explained in section 3.7, I am assuming that although the phrase structure would supply a position for a determiner within the DP when there is a possessive phrase in the Spec of DP, this determiner is suppressed because the possessive phrase essentially performs the same ‘anchoring’ function as a definite determiner.


287

As noted by Mitchell (1985: §1313), examples like (7-15), in which the possessor phrase has a determiner, are not common. Examples in which the possessive phrase consists of a single (usually proper) N are considerably more frequent. It is not difficult to explain the infrequency of examples like (7-15); as noted in section 3.11, the pre-head position was not very common for phrasal genitives when the possessum was modified by an adjective. Since the adjective was essential to the co-occurrence of a possessive phrase and a determiner, we do not expect examples of this co-occurrence to be easy to find when the genitive was phrasal. The analysis presented here appears to go well with the discourse functions of the poss det construction, from the preliminary examination of examples which I have made. A systematic investigation into the poss det and the det poss constructions needs to be carried out, but my impression at this point is that the discourse function of poss det was to emphasize the adjective. Of course, this is an impression which is difficult to prove, but it is worth noting that in many instances the adjective in poss det is contrastive: (7-16)

his þone menniscan dæl his the:m.acc.sg human:obl part ‘his human part’ (coblick,LS_32_[PeterandPaul[BlHom_15]]:179.136.2276)

In this passage, Christ’s divine nature is being explicitly contrasted with his human nature. Although not all of the poss det examples are clearly contrastive, a comparison of poss and poss det when an adjective is clearly contrastive would be a good place to start in sorting out the discourse functions of poss det. 7.3.3 DET POSS In contrast to poss det, the det poss construction clearly does not have the function of emphasizing an adjective; indeed, an adjective is not found in most examples of it. In examples that do have an adjective, the demonstrative is typically referring back to a noun which has been introduced into the text, and the adjective is old information: (7-17)

Hie þa lærde se heora halga them:acc.pl then instructed the:m.nom.sg their holy bisceop bishop ‘their holy bishop then instructed them’ (coblick,LS_25_[MichaelMor[BlHom_17]]:201.83.2577)

288


In this particular example, the bishop, whose holiness has been established, was mentioned earlier in the text and is being reintroduced here after a narrative in which the bishop is not involved. Another difference is that det poss is found both with þes and se in OE, as illustrated in examples (7-11a, b). An interesting difference between det poss in OE and the very limited similarlooking construction in PDE is the fact that it was the distal rather than the proximal demonstrative that was used more commonly in OE, although both were possible. In fact, only the distal demonstrative se is found in det poss in the text in which the construction appears the most frequently, namely the Blickling Homilies. The proximal demonstrative seems to be found most often (but not exclusively) in translations of the Latin proximal demonstrative hic (for more discussion, see Allen 2004b). Kytö and Rissanen (1993) point out that OE det poss is not always a rendering of a Latin construction which combines a demonstrative and a possessive. Nevertheless, I believe there is an association of det poss and a Latinate register. With poss det, there can be no question that we are dealing with a native English construction. This construction is found in all types of OE writings, including native poetry. Its use in native poetry is important because this poetry typically lacks constructions which appear to be due to Latin influence. In contrast, I know of only one convincing-looking example of det poss in the poetry: 7 (7-18) Dreogeð se min wine micle suffers that:m.nom.sg my:m.nom.sg friend:(m)nom.sg much modceare sorrow ‘that friend of mine will suffer great sorrow at heart’ (Wife 50) This example is not unassailable because of the possibility that a better translation might be ‘he, my friend’. Such a translation is possible since the demonstrative pronouns were frequently used in OE where we would use a personal pronoun in PDE. The lack of punctuation in the manuscript of course does not militate against this sort of purely appositive reading, since punctuation was practically non-existent in poetic manuscripts in particular and at any rate was not used by OE scribes to set off appositives in the way it is in later English writing. It is also easy to find OE texts which have poss det but not det poss. Texts with both are less easy to find, but by no means uncommon. It is difficult, however, to find texts which have det poss but not poss det. While det poss is by no means simply a translation of a similar construction in Latin, it is 7

See Mitchell (1985: §109) for two other, less convincing, examples.


289

nevertheless almost completely limited to texts which are either translations of Latin or draw substantially on Latin sources. Some of the translations in which the construction is found are very free translations of the Latin, and it would be wrong to see det poss as a simple calque. I think that it must be accepted that it was a genuine possibility in written OE at least. However, I think it was probably a construction which was part of a Latinate register which a writer might use—it made a text more similar to Latin, and so might be employed even when it was not translating a Latin original very closely. Given that det poss was a genuine possibility for OE writers, we need to suggest an analysis for it. Whatever analysis we adopt will presumably be parallel to the analysis adopted for languages such as modern German, such as the analysis in section 7.2.1 in which the demonstrative fills a topic-like position in the left periphery of the NomP. The development of det poss in later English is discussed in section 7.5.3.

7.4 A non-occurring construction It should be noted that the analyses which I have suggested for the OE NomP do not give an account in terms of phrase structure for the lack of examples in the texts in which demonstrative se or þes co-occur with determiner se in OE. The widely held view that possessives were adjectives in OE has no problem in explaining the fact that possessives co-occur with determiners but demonstratives do not, assuming that there is only one slot in the NomP for se, whether it is more like a demonstrative or an article in its meaning. As we have seen, however, this assumption is untenable, and I have assumed that in the det poss construction the demonstrative is to be analysed as a phrase at the left periphery of the DP it introduces, rather than a head D. This being so, the phrase structure provides a slot for a determiner before a noun. Since the demonstrative and a determiner would perform very similar functions, the lack of examples with e.g. þes se N ‘this the N’ is not particularly troublesome. Since we must assume that an initial se was a demonstrative rather than an article, the contradictory combination ∗ se þes N would also not be expected. However, since I have suggested that the se in the poss det construction goes with the adjective, rather than the noun, we might expect to find combinations such as þes se Adj N. As far as I am aware, however, such examples are not found in OE texts. Interestingly enough, the equivalent of the predicted construction is found in the modern Scandinavian languages. We must make a distinction here between the suffixed definite article found in the Scandinavian languages

290


and the independent prenominal definite determiner which is found in these languages with adjectives. As discussed by Julien (2005: 113–114), a definiteness suffix on the noun regularly co-occurs with a demonstrative in the ‘double definiteness languages’ Norwegian, Faroese, and Swedish. This happens whether or not an adjective precedes the N, as Julien’s Swedish example denna (svarta) häst-en ‘this (black) horse’ illustrates, where the suffix -en is the suffixed definite article. Interestingly enough, however, the prenominal definite article is possible just when an adjective modifies the noun. This is true even in Danish, which otherwise does not allow ‘double definiteness’, as Julien’s example 4.8c, dette (det) høje hus ‘that (the) tall house’ in which definiteness may be (optionally) marked with the definite article det. This co-occurrence of the demonstrative and a definite article appears to be a very old feature of the Scandinavian languages, as it is found also in Old Norse, as in example þau in stóru skipu ‘those (the) big ships’ (Hkr I.437.13). (Faarlund 2004: 82, example 3.d). All the Old Norse examples I have seen with such co-occurrence of a demonstrative and a determiner involve an adjective, and Barnes’ (2001: §3.3.5) statement that it was common to combine a definite article with a preceding demonstrative in Old Norse when a noun was modified by an adjective, as in sá (h)inn blindi maðr, lit. ‘that the blind man’, comes quite close to an explicit statement that an adjective was always found in the combination of a demonstrative and a definite article. Julien admits (2005: 212) that it is unclear to her exactly what the decisive factor is in whether definiteness is allowed to be ‘spelled out’ twice in this construction. But if the definite article is associated with the adjective, rather than with the noun, in the Scandinavian languages, as I have suggested for OE, then the co-occurrence of the definite article with either a demonstrative or possessive just in case there is an adjective is explained: a demonstrative or possessive modifying a noun by itself needs no extra definiteness marker (i.e. the definite article), but a definite article modifying the adjective may optionally be added. The problem then becomes to explain why se modifying an adjective is found after a possessive in OE, but not after a demonstrative; that is, why do we not find a dem se construction? The phrase structure I have proposed offers no explanation, but given that the occurrence of a definite article with an adjective is always at best optional when a possessive phrase or a demonstrative has already performed the job of fixing the reference of the noun, the phrase structure only gives the possibilities, but does not explain when one possibility is chosen over another. It therefore does not seem unlikely to me that the explanation for the missing pattern should be sought in the discourse function of the optional determiner rather than in the phrase structure possibilities.


291

I have no specific suggestion to offer here, but an investigation into what causes speakers to elect to use the optional determiner after a demonstrative in the Scandinavian languages could be expected to be helpful in understanding why the construction was used in Old Norse but apparently not in OE.

7.5 Poss det and det poss in later English 7.5.1 The demise of POSS DET: data The poss det construction disappears completely from the texts early in EME. I have found no examples in texts which were certainly composed after 1100. I have found one example in a PC annal which can be dated with certainty to the end of the eleventh century at the earliest: (7-19)

Ða þa seo gode cwen Margarita þis gehyrde, hyre then when the good queen Margaret this heard, her þa leofstan hlaford & sunu þus the:nom.pl beloved-est:nom.pl lord and son thus beswikene betrayed ‘when the good queen Margaret heard this, her most beloved lord and son betrayed this way’ (ASC(E) 1093 (cochronE,ChronE_[Plummer]:1093.27.3133))

This annal was copied by the scribe who started the First Continuation of PC with the 1122 annal, a year which puts a terminus ad quem to the composition of this sentence. There are also five examples of poss det in the life of St. Margaret found in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge manuscript 303 (MargCCCC303), one of which is presented as (7-20): (7-20)

on þinre þære sweteste lufa in thy:f.dat.sg the:f.dat.sg sweetest love:(f)dat.sg ‘in thy sweetest love’ (comargaC,LS_14_[MargaretCCCC_303]:4.24.44)

Laing (1993: 23) assigns a date of ∗ C12a to this manuscript, which means that although the manuscript was written in the first half of the twelfth century, it contains material from OE. It is not certain that this particular saint’s life is a copy of a much earlier composition, however. The editors of this text are of the opinion that this text was probably composed after the Norman conquest and that it is likely that the original composition did not greatly antedate the extant copy of this text (Clayton and Magennis 1994: 106). I have also found eleven

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examples of poss det in a group of Rogationtide homilies in Bodleian Library Hatton 114 which conform to the adjective constraint, for example (7-21): (7-21)

Utan nu gehyran, mine þa leofestan gebroðra lets now hear, my.pl the:nom.pl dearest brethren ‘let us now hear, my dearest brethren’ (Rog 9.50)

This manuscript is from the third quarter of the eleventh century (Ker 1957: item 331; Clemoes 1997: 41). In conjunction with the PC example, the examples from CCCC303 and Hatton 114 suggest that some writers may have still been spontaneously using poss det at the turn of the twelfth century. Examples of poss det are also not infrequent in copies of texts of OE composition, such as those found in Vespasian D. xiv, even in the middle of the twelfth century, although there is no evidence of spontaneous use of the construction at such a late date. In addition to the eleven examples conforming to the adjective constraint in the Hatton 114 rogation homilies just mentioned, there is an additional example from this manuscript, viz. (7-22), which does not conform to the adjective constraint. (7-22) on his þæm domsetle in his the:m.dat.sg judgement_seat:(m)dat.sg ‘in his seat of judgement’ (Rog 10.92) It is unclear whether this homily is a composition of the late eleventh century or copy of an earlier text. If it is a copy, an adjective might have been left out in the transmission. I am aware of only one other example of the poss det construction in OE or ME which does not conform to the adjective constraint; it is presented here as (7-23): (7-23) mid his þæm anwealde with his the:m.dat.sg power:(m)dat.sg ‘with his power’ (coboeth,Bo:30.69.22.1291) This is in fact the only example presented by Mitchell (1985: §106) in his very comprehensive discussion of patterns found within the NomP in OE, in which he cautiously comments that it is ‘rare’ not to have an attributive adjective in what I am calling the poss det construction. Since this example comes from an ‘Alfredian’ text, that is, a text which was composed in the late ninth century, it looks at first to be a solid example of poss det without an adjective in EWS. When we have only a single example of a construction from a given period, however, the example must be scrutinized closely. It turns out that this particular example is found only in a manuscript of the twelfth century,


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from much later than the composition of the text, namely Bodleian Library manuscript Bodley 180, discussed in section 1.9.3 as an example of the pitfalls of not considering the difference between the date of composition of a text and the date of the manuscript which contains that text. With such a huge gap between composition and the extant copy, it is entirely possible that an adjective failed to get copied somewhere along the line. Another possibility arises from the fact that both (7-22) and (7-23) come from manuscripts which belong to a period when poss det had nearly disappeared. Even if these two examples are not simply copying errors, it could be that the scribes were attempting to use an archaic construction which was not part of their own grammar. This explanation seems particularly attractive in view of the continued copying of poss det in manuscripts well into the twelfth century. The scribes who chose to write in English after the Norman Conquest were backward-looking scribes who wished to preserve an old culture (see Irvine 2000 for a discussion). It would not be surprising if such scribes attempted to use a construction which was familiar to them from older manuscripts but which they did not really command; a parallel can be drawn here with the sometimes risible attempts of PDE speakers to use a construction familiar to them from the King James Bible. Finally, the scribes who produced these examples would have had an apparent pattern for poss det with only a noun in the form of some of the ‘substantival adjectives’ which had, by late OE at least, acquired some uses which made them more like nouns than like adjectives. The adjective halga (the weak masculine nominative form of halig) meant ‘holy, sainted, consecrated’ etc. when used with a following N, but when used on its own is best translated ‘saint’, so we find examples such as his þa halgan ‘his saints’ in OE. Similarly, his þæm nehstan in Blickling Homily 3:37.198 means ‘his neighbour’, although nehstan means ‘nearest’ when modifying an overt noun. These two particular nouns form a high proportion of the poss det examples lacking an overt noun in our texts, and it is plausible that such forms which were amenable to an analysis as nouns rather than adjectives served as a model for using the construction without an adjective. 7.5.2 The demise of POSS DET: explanations Given the number of changes which took place within the NomP in ME, it is logical to look for a trigger for the loss of poss det in this period. With so many potential triggers in ME, the loss of poss det is an area in which typology is very helpful in eliminating some potential explanations which might seem plausible when only the shift between OE and EME is

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considered, but lose their plausibility when we consider facts from other languages. To start with, we can easily dismiss one popular idea, namely that a change in status of possessives from adjectives to determiners in ME made it impossible for possessives to co-occur with determiners, as the two now belonged to the same word class and competed for the same position. We have seen at any rate that the arguments which have been put forward for the adjectival nature of possessives in OE do not bear scrutiny, and the fact that poss det is found in some modern Scandinavian varieties appears to make this hypothesis of a change in status of possessives completely untenable. These Scandinavian languages undoubtedly have definite articles, and linguists who have recently offered analyses of poss det in these varieties have not assumed that possessives are adjectives or that possessives and determiners compete for the same position; Vangsnes (1999) and Julien (2005) both assume that the possessives in these constructions are in the Spec of DP. Changes to the determiner system in EME thus do not seem to offer a satisfying explanation for the demise of poss det. In Chapter 3, I argued against the view that there was a change in ME whereby NomPs containing prenominal possessor phrases became more definite in ME, and in this chapter I have emphasized that possessives did not need a determiner in OE to render them definite. Here, it remains only to be pointed out that the disappearance of poss det would not be explained by any assumed change in the status of possessives as more definite. This is because the same construction which is adduced as the strongest argument for the indefinite nature of possessive constructions in OE, namely the low prenominal genitive, is found in ME texts from the period when poss det has disappeared. The deflexion which took place in EME is another place where it would be reasonable to look for the cause of the demise of poss det. It is in fact notable that such examples as we have from the late eleventh century and early twelfth century are from texts in which the weak/strong distinction is fairly well preserved in the adjectives—although it is not the case that in every example, the weak nature of the adjective is unambiguously signalled. We might therefore suggest that the determiner position in the AP was dependent on the presence of a weak adjective, and when the weak/strong distinction became sufficiently obscured, the position was lost. But this explanation runs into problems when we compare the Scandinavian varieties that have poss det with those lacking it. In both types of languages, adjectives are inflected for the weak/strong distinction. The maintenance of a weak/strong distinction has not prevented the disappearance of poss det in most Scandinavian varieties


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(assuming those varieties had it in the past), although it could be that such morphology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the existence of the poss det construction. The Scandinavian varieties differ in the extent to which possessives, adjectives, and determiners signal the grammatical features of the noun which they modify, but as Julien (2005: 213–214) notes, attempts to predict which Scandinavian dialects will have poss det solely on the basis of the inflectional morphology of these elements have not been entirely successful. For example, Vangsnes’ (1999: 157) explanation for why definiteness can be spelled out in both the Spec, DP (i.e. the possessive) and D itself depends on the assumption that gender can’t be marked more than once in the DP projection, and the languages which allow poss det do so because they lack marking of gender distinctions on the determiner. This account does not seem to be adequate even within the Scandinavian family, as Julien notes, and it certainly will not explain why poss det was possible in OE, where gender was marked on both elements, but not in EME, when gender marking disappeared on both elements. I conclude with Julien that there is no (universal) ban on a language spelling out a determiner when the features it supplies, such as definiteness, have already been made ‘visible’ by another element such as a possessive. By the sort of analysis which I have proposed, the disappearance of the poss det construction must signal the end of the possibility of a determiner taking an adjectival complement. I have not been able to find another grammatical change which would have triggered this loss, and the fact that poss det has disappeared in both the inflection-rich and inflection-poor original texts by the middle of the twelfth century (at least) suggests that any attempt to tie the disappearance of poss det to deflexion is unlikely to succeed. But as we have seen poss det is a marked construction typologically, and it is hardly surprising that a generation of language learners should simply fail to learn a marked construction. It is reasonable to assume that language learners only learn a marked construction when confronted with fairly robust evidence for that construction in their language. Now although poss det is more frequent in the OE texts than is the typologically less marked det poss, it is not evenly distributed in the texts and is not in fact found in all texts of substantial length. It gives the appearance of being a stylistic device which was used by some writers but not by others (we don’t know about speakers). A stylistic device of this sort may simply go out of fashion at any time. The fact that some backward-looking scribes copied poss det is suggestive that the construction was simply archaic rather than truly ungrammatical up to the end of the twelfth century. Once no one used the construction any more, however, language users internalized grammars in which determiners did not

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take adjectival complements, and the poss det construction would have had the sharply ungrammatical feel that it has in PDE. There is finally some rather equivocal evidence that poss det was on its way out in the late OE period. It is not commonly found in LWS texts. As Table 7.1 indicates, Ælfric used it, but only sparingly, and Wulfstan appears not to have used it at all. When we compare these facts with the frequent use of poss det in the Orosius of about a century earlier, a diachronic change seems plausible. Furthermore, Yerkes (1982) points out that the Reviser of Gregory’s Dialogues (GD) tended to replace both det poss and poss det with a simple determiner or possessive, and argues that such revisions are likely to reflect diachronic changes. 8 On the other hand, the low frequency in CP, an anchor EWS text, suggests that the low frequency in the texts mentioned is not simply the result of a diachronic development, and the use of the construction in the late MargCCCC303 (mentioned above) gives no support to the hypothesis that the construction was dying out in late OE, although the possibility of individual scribes using archaic constructions can deal with such oddities. It is possible that the use of the construction depended very much on an author’s (or scribe’s) particular style. 9 At any rate, the patchy use of poss det in the OE texts does not lend support to the idea that its disappearance in EME was the result of a change to the grammar such as the resetting of a parameter. 7.5.3 Later development of DET POSS Since det poss is found in EModE texts, it is natural enough to assume that it was part of an unbroken tradition from OE to EModE, and that it has only gone into decline fairly recently. 10 Kytö and Rissanen (1993) used the 8 See section 3.16 on the revision of GD. Wood (2007a) provides a detailed discussion of the treatment of poss det and det poss by the Reviser. 9 A diatopic explanation does not seem to be very promising in explaining the distribution of poss det in the texts. Broadly speaking, it does appear to be true that the construction is most frequent in texts which are either of Mercian origin or have some Mercian features in them; for more details, see Allen (2006: n. 18). The idea that the true picture of poss det in late OE is skewed by the West Saxon dialect mix runs into difficulty explaining the use of this construction in the late MargCCCC303, in which the non-WS features are Kentish rather than Mercian. Even if it is true that the construction is mainly Mercian, we still need some explanation for why the Mercian texts of the early thirteenth century do not contain the construction. poss det is found (albeit only twice) in The Life of St Chad (edited by Vleeskruyer 1953), a copy of an OE text made in the first half of the twelfth century. Laing (1993: 135) says that the language of Chad is not late WS but a late OE more reminiscent of the language of the Katherine Group. This is of relevance because poss det is not found in the thirteenth-century Katherine Group. Even if poss det was more robust in (west) Mercia than in other dialects in OE, it did not survive into the thirteenth century there either. 10 Mitchell (1985: §108) notes that examples are common in EModE but comments, ‘Whether it has had a continuous existence since OE and whether it was in origin a calque on Latin remains to be established.’ That Mitchell’s caution was justified is borne out by the finding that det poss disappeared from the texts for a lengthy period.


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combination of demonstratives and possessives to illustrate how the Helsinki Corpus could be used to track the history of constructions, and not just words. They found 35 examples of det poss in the Helsinki Corpus (a smaller corpus than PPCME2), and although this is a smaller number than we would expect in a corpus of this size on the basis of the numbers found in OE and EModE, this figure does suggest that det poss was not rare in ME. However, it turns out that nearly all of Kytö and Rissanen’s examples come from the last period (m4) of ME. The very few examples which they found in the m1 and m2 periods turn out to be dubious at best, as discussed in Allen (2004b). In that paper, I reported that even in a greatly expanded corpus I had found no convincing examples of det poss in the m3 period (1350–1420) apart from the one already identified by Kytö and Rissanen: (7-24)

Y biseche, forZyue thou the synne of this thi puple ‘I beseech you, forgive the sin of this people of yours’ (CMOTEST,XIV,1N.648)

Since writing that paper, I have come across one probably genuine example from around 1350, at the end of the m2 period: 11 (7-25)

Þys her way his sclaunder to hem this their way is scandal to them ‘this way of theirs is scandal to them’ (CMEARLPS,58.2552)

The King James version of the Bible has This their way is their folly here, so it looks as though this example is probably genuine, although the text is emended by the editor (Bülbring 1891) here. 12 If we accept this example, my earlier conclusion that det poss disappears in the texts from the beginning of the EME period until the late fourteenth century must be modified somewhat, but the conclusion remains that det poss disappears from sight in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If the changes made by the Reviser of GD are to be taken as evidence that poss det was falling out of favour, the same logic applies to det poss, since, as noted earlier, the Reviser replaced most combinations of a determiner and a possessive in the earlier version with a single word, whatever the order in the original. Surprisingly, given the later reappearance 11 This example was not included in Kytö and Rissanen’s findings because although selections from Early Prose Psalter are included in the Helsinki Corpus, this example is from a portion not included in those selections. 12 Bülbring marks her in this example with a footnote ‘MS. ys (expuncted) her’. It should be noted that this particular manuscript was, according to Bülbring (p. ix), mechanically copied by someone who was apparently very ignorant, knowing little of either Latin or English and coming up with all sorts of senseless phrases. Therefore any unusual examples from the manuscript must be treated with suspicion. However, Bülbring collates another (and much better) fourteenth-century manuscript with his base manuscript, and he does not mention any difference in reading here.

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of the combination of a demonstrative and a possessive, det poss is not even found in copied manuscripts in the late twelfth century in the way poss det is. 13 I believe that this fact lends weight to the idea that det poss, although not alien to English grammar, was associated with a Latinate style. As I have mentioned before, the scribes who thought it worthwhile to copy OE texts were essentially backward-looking and it is not surprising if they eschewed constructions associated with Latin. When det poss re-emerged in original documents in the fourteenth century, it is found first in translations based on the Latin Vulgate Bible; for example the NomP of interest in (7-25) is haec via illorum in the Vulgate. As in OE, the translation does not follow the word order of the Latin and we can assume that whether or not the det poss construction was reserved for a Latinate style and not an everyday idiom, it certainly did not do violence to English grammar in the way that the Latin word order would have, but was a recognized resource available to writers. 14 After the end of the ME period, it becomes very easy to find examples of det poss. 15 It is found with both this/these and that/those, as illustrated in examples (7-26a, b) from PCEEC: (7-26)

a. I trust your Ladyship will not take this my begginge in any ill part. (BACON,I,60.041.762, Anne Bacon 1573) b. & so requyred me to carrye that his meanyng to my Lord, which I dyd. (PCEEC BACON,I,168.123.2224, Francis Wyndham 1575)

The definite article is also found, but apparently only when this article was part of a phrase, as in (7-27): 16 13 det poss is not entirely lacking from twelfth-century copies: two examples are to be found in the Chad mentioned in footnote 9. Vleeskruyer (1953: 9) notes in his edition that Chad is unlike most copies of the time in that no intermediate stages appear to have intervened between the early Mercian original and the (unusually faithful) copy. See also footnote 14. 14 In fact, the examples of det poss found in the WS Gospels (summarized in Table 7.1) are retained in two copies of this text made in the twelfth century, one of which belongs to the very last decade of that century (or possibly even the very early thirteenth century). For a discussion of these copies see Liuzza (1994, 2000). This is suggestive that the construction may have been retained for a Latinate style all through the ME period. More examination of copied texts is necessary. 15 The statements made in this chapter concerning demonstratives and possessives are based on searches for demonstratives followed by possessives in selections from electronic corpora, supplemented by my own reading. The corpora I used were the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC), the Modern English Texts CLMET files covering 1710–1780, and selections from the Lampeter and ARCHER corpora. For details of these corpora, see the Appendix. I limited my searches in the ARCHER corpus to the sample texts in ARCHER-1 up to 1770 and the freidrpro03 texts of ARCHER-2. 16 The phrase the same my request is reminiscent of phrases such as another his friend, found in the same collection of letters. For a discussion of the history of some of these ‘predeterminers’ which are now impossible, see Mustanoja (1958), who also makes some perceptive comments about the use of ‘intervening element’ (including possessives and articles) in emphasizing particular constituents, as

Determiners and possessives (7-27)

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to haue the same my request in your remembrance (DERBY,118.033.239, Edward Stanley 1533)

I am not aware of any genuine-looking examples in either ME or EModE in which the is followed directly by a possessive. It is important to make this point because it has been claimed in the literature that such examples are to be found in ME, for example by Demske (2001: 192), who supports the claim with a single example, presented here as (7-28) (her 92a, from The Northern Prose Rule of St. Benet, British Library MS Lansdowne 378, dated a1425, edited by Koch 1904): (7-28)

Lauerd, I mustird [þe myne dedis]

(Benet Rule 13.32)

I have reproduced Demske’s bracketing here, but I believe it is based on an incorrect analysis. Demske’s German translation is ‘Herr, ich zeigte die meinen Taten’, literally ‘Lord, I showed the my deeds’. But þe in this example is presumably not the definite article but the second person singular pronoun thee and the correct translation is ‘Lord, I showed thee my deeds’. It is to Demske’s credit that she produces the entire sentence, making the possibility of another analysis clear. 17 Given that this would be the only example in ME of a definite article directly preceding a possessive, the ditransitive analysis which I have suggested is surely superior. The fact that definite articles only seem to occur before possessives when other material intervenes between them and the possessive suggests that the demonstratives in this position are phrasal (i.e. pronouns). Narrowing our attention to the demonstratives only, it can be said that although both the distal (that/those) and the proximal (this/these) are found in the det poss construction in EModE, it is the proximal demonstrative that is by far the more common, foreshadowing the modern situation in which the distal demonstrative is quite odd before a possessive. As we have seen, this is different from the situation in OE, in which the distal demonstrative was the more common. Further investigation is needed into why this should be, but it could be that the newer det poss construction had a rather different discourse use in sweet my child as opposed to my sweet child. A systematic investigation needs to be made into the possible relationship between the decline of det poss and the obsolescence of these constructions. 17 Because considerations of space force economy in the presentation of examples, authors naturally leave out material in examples which they consider to be irrelevant to the point under discussion, meaning that sometimes material which would suggest the possibility of a different analysis is left out. Thus Alexiadou (2004: 45) makes the same claim as Demske and uses the same example, but leaves out the part before Demske’s bracketed part, giving the reader the impression that the string beginning with þe is unambiguously a single NomP.

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from the older one. 18 Cornish (2001) makes some interesting observations on the semantics and discourse functions of the demonstratives which are of relevance here. He argues that that is used to distance the speaker from the referent and a speaker uses it when he assumes that the listener’s attention is not already focused on the intended referent and wants to instruct the addressee to focus on it. It also serves the purpose of characterizing the referent as not falling within the speaker’s discourse sphere (p. 300). In contrast, this sets up a ‘discourse node’ corresponding to a narrated event and indicates that the referent is personally involved (p. 302). If something along these lines is correct, it could be that the proximal demonstrative is more suited to the discourse functions of the det poss construction in PDE than is the distal demonstrative because of the emotional colouring it gives of the speaker’s involvement. Just as it is not certain that det poss had the same discourse functions in all stages of English, it is not certain that the structural analysis should be the same in all periods. For example, I have put a comma in my this, his third NASA assignment example (7-1) because it ‘feels’ appositive to me and because there was a clear intonational break as the newsreader produced the phrase. However, not all of the EModE examples seem as amenable to an analysis as appositive, and examples like those of (7-26) would not sound natural any more from a PDE speaker. Further research is needed to sort out the similarities and differences between the limited sort of det poss possible in PDE and the less restricted sort found in EModE, which seems more reminiscent of that found in the Scandinavian languages. Here, I will note only that while det poss flourished in the texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, examples become much harder to find after about 1750. Examples are found in authors from the early eighteenth century such as Addison, Fielding, and Pope, and Horace Walpole, born in 1717, is one of the latest authors to use the construction frequently. 19 These authors’ works are characterized by complex syntax and Latinate vocabulary, and it is not unlikely that the decline of this construction in literature is related to general changes in the later eighteenth century in preferences towards writing which is more like natural speech. Wood (2007a) argues against the frequently expressed idea (e.g. by Denison 1998 and Rissanen 1999: 314) that the use of the combination of demonstrative and possessive is exclusively archaic in PDE, using examples from sports pages in newspapers (all with proximal demonstratives) to support her point. 18 Wood (2007a) makes a rather similar suggestion that when the det poss construction reemerged in LME, it had the function of acting as a focus marker for the following nominal. 19 The late examples from these authors all involve the proximal demonstrative, usually singular this but occasionally plural these.


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However, there can be little doubt that while the construction is structurally possible, it has a very limited sort of use. While Wood’s example this his ninth world title from a sports page sounds fine to me, I would find ∗ I’ll just put this my jacket on extremely odd. 20 Both the decline of the det poss in the eighteenth century and the reaction of native speakers to strings like this my chapter suggest strongly that the construction has undergone a shift in status of some sort. While I think it likely that det poss has always been a feature more of written rather than casual spoken language, this of course cannot be proven. The story of det poss is not finished, and research is needed on such questions as whether it is found in natural PDE speech as well as writing, whether the PDE examples exclusively use singular this, and what the discourse functions of the construction are. 7.5.4 DET POSS and the status of possessives As we have seen, the existence of the poss det construction in OE is problematic for the widely held view that possessives were adjectives in OE but were reanalysed at a later stage. The facts concerning the history of det poss also do not support the idea that possessives were reanalysed as determiners at some point in the history of English. It is notable that the supporters of the reanalysis hypothesis never offer an exact date when this reanalysis is supposed to have happened. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the reason for this is that it is simply not possible to identify a period when the possessives became distinctively more like definite articles than they had been earlier. For example, Demske (2001: 197) says that possessives underwent the reinterpretation as determiners in the course of ME, but does not say when in ME the reanalysis is supposed to have happened. One of the two examples Demske uses to support her contention that possessives behaved like adjectives in ME is (7-28), from late in the period. Demske’s own argument that the possibility of det poss in German is not proof that possessives are normally adjectives in that language also weakens her position. I agree with her contention on this point, but given that the mere existence of an example of det poss is not admitted as counterevidence that possessives are never determiners at a given stage, how are we supposed to know when the reanalysis as determiners happened? 21 If we are looking for a time when there was a substantial reorganization of the 20 In contrast, I’ll just put this jacket of mine on is fine. On the idea that X of Y’s construction is a replacement of det poss, see section 7.5.5. 21 Other than the existence of det poss in ME, Demske’s only argument that possessives were adjectives in ME is the fact that they sometimes occur postnominally, a property which Demske (p. 192) says they share with adjectives. This argument is hardly convincing, however, as postnominal possessives are limited to poetry, as in the example she adduces from K. Alex. 4193, which contains both at tabel myne and of lorde þyne. If we admit the contorted syntax that is used in verse to make

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determiner system in English, the early thirteenth century, when poss det disappears from the language forever and det poss drops out of sight for a period, would seem like a more promising candidate than LME, but if we assign the presumed reanalysis to the earlier period, we cannot use examples of det poss from LME as evidence that possessives behaved like adjectives ‘in ME’. We are also left with no structural explanation for why det poss re-emerged in texts in the late fourteenth century but became obsolescent in the later eighteenth century. An explanation in terms of structural possibilities is probably not the most promising approach. The idea of a reanalysis is not the only popular idea for why det poss went into decline. In the next section, I discuss the idea that det poss was driven out by competition from a new construction with the same function. 7.5.5 DET POSS and ‘that friend of mine’ The det poss construction found in earlier English (and in other Germanic languages) is usually rendered into idiomatic PDE with what is often called the ‘double genitive’ construction, in which a genitive is used as the object of a preposition which also has a genitive function, as in a/that friend of mine. Two important early investigations of the double genitive construction include van der Gaaf (1927) and Hatcher (1950). Allen (2002d) re-examines the findings of these early investigations and establishes that van der Gaaf ’s conclusion that demonstratives are ‘more or less usual about the middle of the 14th century’ (p. 25) does not stand up under a critical examination of his earliest examples, and that Kellner (1892: 115) was in fact correct in his assertion that the use of a demonstrative in the double genitive was a later development than the use of the indefinite article. The first convincing examples of demonstratives in the double genitive construction come from the middle of the fifteenth century, while examples with quantifiers and the indefinite article appear earlier and are always more frequent in the texts than examples with demonstratives. Since the double genitive construction appears in English later than the det poss construction, and since it is usually assumed that the det poss construction was a feature of all periods of English until it lost popularity fairly recently, it is only natural that it is also usually assumed that the reason why the det poss construction disappeared is that it was driven out by the upstart double genitive. Jespersen (1927: §1.56) comments that ‘this . . . of his takes the place of this his . . . , which was frequent in former times, but is now rare’. rhymes or fit the metre, we will have to conclude that possessives still have adjectival characteristics in EModE, where it is possible to find similar examples.


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Rissanen (1999: 206) similarly refers to det poss as having been ‘superseded’ by the double genitive. This traditional idea needs to be re-evaluated in view of the findings presented in this chapter. The textual evidence indicates that det poss was used quite frequently up to the early part of the eighteenth century, long past the period when the double genitive was well established. We also do not find det poss becoming steadily less frequent as the double genitive using a demonstrative becomes more frequent in the texts, the typical development when a new construction is gaining ground on an old one. Rather, in the period when det poss is becoming less common, many texts have neither it nor the double genitive with a demonstrative. It is also important to realize that the double genitive and the det poss construction might be used by the same writer in a single text or type of text. So for example in the letters which Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son between 1746 and 1752. In 1748, he writes at this your first appearance upon the great stage of the world, and in 1747 we have this last edition of mine. The fact that the same person used both constructions shows that any replacement of det poss was not a simple matter of older speakers using the older det poss construction while younger ones used the double genitive, or that the double genitive was used because the combination of a determiner and a possessive (or possessor phrase) had become impossible. It also suggests to me that the two constructions may have served slightly different functions in EModE. Although the double genitive is the best PDE translation for det poss, I am not convinced that the two constructions had no difference in meaning. Consider the following example from a letter of 1586: (7-29)

I praie yow therefore to call before yow the said Rolf and to informe your selfs of the cause of this his imprisonment, (William Cecil to Nathaniel Bacon, BACON,III,13.318.5461)

In this example, we have an ‘objective genitive’ in which his is equivalent to the object of imprison. Objective genitives with this nominalization are certainly possible in PDE; there is no problem with the cause of his imprisonment, but an objective genitive is unnatural in a double genitive construction, as in ∗ the cause of this imprisonment of his. If further investigation suggests that a similar restriction was in force in EModE, the existence of examples like (7-29) would suggest that the two constructions did not perform exactly the same function. If this sort of rather subtle difference can be established between det poss and the double genitive in EModE, we should not see the double genitive as a simple replacement of det poss, but we could suggest that the constructions, although slightly different in their use, had enough overlap that language users

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couldn’t see the point in having two, and so one of them was dispensed with. The fact remains, however, that the two constructions coexisted in writing for centuries, and so it was not inevitable that a choice must be made. My own opinion is that det poss went into decline because of its associations with a rather ponderous and artificial Latin-inspired style, as discussed in section 7.5.2. This decline would have been assisted by the existence of an alternative, more colloquial, construction which covered much of the same semantic territory.

7.6 Conclusions This chapter has looked at the co-occurrence of determiners and possessives in the history of English. Data have been presented which firmly establish that poss det and det poss in OE are not to be regarded as mere variants made possible by the freer word order of that period. There is furthermore no evidence to support claims that OE possessives were different from PDE possessives in the definiteness they conferred on the possessive phrase containing them. The analysis of the poss det construction proposed here is bolstered by the existence of poss det in some Scandinavian varieties, which provide striking support for the conclusion which must be drawn from the OE texts that poss det is associated with adjectives. The fact that poss det is grammatical in some Scandinavian varieties only when there is also an adjective modifying the noun shows that although the OE situation is typologically unusual, it is not impossible for a human language. I have suggested that the association with adjectives in OE is due to the ability of adjectives to be complements of determiners, a reflex of the origins of the weak adjectives as nominalizations in Germanic. The OE facts are of particular interest because unlike the Scandinavian languages, OE did not have a suffixed definiteness marker. In the generative literature, it is usual to explain the association of the independent definite article with adjectives as a result of the blocking by the adjective of the movement of the N to a higher position to spell out definiteness with a suffix. The treatment I have suggested here for OE proposes instead that the definite article in some cases ‘goes with’ the adjective rather than the noun. I believe that this sort of analysis suggests possibilities for an analysis without movement for the occurrence of definite articles in the Scandinavian languages. Whatever explanation is given for the adjective constraint, however, it can now be considered a well-established fact of OE. The poss det construction disappears in EME, a development which must be seen as the loss of the ability of a determiner to take an AP complement by the analysis proposed here. There is no obvious trigger for the loss of poss


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det, but it is not necessary to suppose that the loss of the slot for a determiner before adjectives was the result of any change to the grammar. A decline in the poss det construction would have led to a dearth of evidence for this position for the determiner. Another construction which disappears from sight in EME is the det poss construction, with the opposite order of determiner and possessive, a finding which goes against the usual assumption that det poss had an unbroken textual history from OE to EModE. Although it is tempting to connect the loss of both constructions in which determiners and possessives disappear to a change in the word class to which the possessives belong, such an attempt runs into difficulties both because of the evidence for the non-adjectival nature of possessives in OE offered by poss det and because of the re-emergence of det poss in LME. While it is not unlikely that det poss had rather different discourse functions in OE and EModE, no evidence suggests that the constructions were structurally different. The facts simply do not fit the idea of a reanalysis of possessives as determiners. I think the history of combinations of determiners and possessives in English is not to be explained in terms of grammatical changes alone; changes in style and preferences also play a role. An investigation into the discourse functions of such combinations in living languages which have them would shed some light here. Finally, the long coexistence of det poss and the double genitive construction shows that the double genitive construction did not arise to make up for a deficiency in the grammar caused by a new inability of combining demonstratives with possessives, as might be supposed. An account in terms of preferences rather than grammatical possibilities is in order.

8 Conclusions In addition to empirical findings concerning the history of genitive constructions in English, this investigation has resulted in some conclusions for the study of diachronic syntax in general and English historical syntax in particular, including some conclusions concerning the role of typology in diachronic studies. This final chapter will begin with a discussion of the implications for methodology in diachronic syntax and then summarize the major empirical results, commenting on some theoretical implications. I conclude with some remarks on further directions which the investigation suggests.

8.1 Methodological matters 8.1.1 Investigating diachronic (English) syntax One methodological point which needs to be highlighted about diachronic studies generally is the need to get as much detail as possible concerning the grammatical systems of periods which can be considered essentially uniform insofar as the crucial features are concerned, taking care to keep separate data from texts which differ in some important feature. What the crucial features are will depend on what is being investigated, and while the division of texts purely temporally (m1, m2) is adequate for some investigations, the optimal temporal boundaries will depend on just what is being looked at, and further subgroupings of the texts are often necessary. With the texts of the Helsinki Corpus’ m1 and m2 periods, for example, we must separate the texts according to their case marking systems if we are looking at changes which might plausibly be linked to deflexion. We can only get a sharp picture of how a change proceeded by making the right distinctions both in texts grouped together and in the grouping of examples as similar or different. It is common practice to look only at a stage prior to a given change and the stage after the change has been completed, and to identify something different about the two stages likely to be related to a change, suggesting a possible trigger for the change under consideration. While this is a good way to

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generate hypotheses, these hypotheses cannot be tested by looking just at the beginning and end periods; the intervening periods must also be examined. A case in point is the loss of postnominal genitives. If we just look at OE and LME, it seems plausible to relate the loss of postnominal genitives to the changes in morphology which took place between the two periods. When we look more closely at the intervening periods and divide the texts into groups according to the state of their case marking systems, however, we find that the change is not a simple matter of the loss of morphology triggering the disappearance of postnominal genitives. Detailed sketches of essentially uniform stages can also help evaluate competing hypotheses in a way that a ‘broad brush’ approach cannot. If two hypotheses seem equally plausible on theoretical grounds, the one that counts for the widest array of facts is obviously to be preferred. It will often happen that more than one hypothesis seems plausible when we look only at the beginning and end stages. However, a consideration of intervening stages may show that one hypothesis gives a more satisfying account of all stages than the others do. It is also frequently the case that a hypothesis looks plausible when only a highly schematic view of the stages is considered, but a finergrained approach indicates that the relative timing of two changes is not what is predicted by a hypothesis. Such is the case with the assumption of a single trigger, namely the loss of genitive case as a morphological category, as the cause of the disappearance of all now-obsolete genitives. Finally, looking only at the beginning and end stages will sometimes give a misleading impression about the apparent continuous existence of a construction. For example, the separated genitive found in many ME texts is sometimes assumed to be a continuation of an OE construction, but the long gap between the putative OE examples and the first separated genitives of ME lends support to the other evidence that the OE construction found in a few examples is to be treated as left dislocation, rather than the forerunner of the EME separated genitive. Looking at the details of intervening stages will typically lead to some generalizations but also reveal some apparent counterexamples to those generalizations. So for example I found two apparent counterexamples to the adjective constraint in the poss det construction. How we should deal with apparent counterexamples will depend on various factors including the strength of the generalization and the quality of the texts from which the examples are drawn. In the case of the adjective constraint, the two possible counterexamples can be safely excluded as evidence against the adjective constraint, at least before the period when poss det was obsolescent. In other instances, however, a small number of counterexamples may be significant. A course needs to be steered

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between treating every example as equal in weight as evidence and ignoring the existence of examples which don’t fit a plausible hypothesis. When the facts gleaned from a corpus study seem to go against a hypothesis, it is possible that the explanation lies in considerations such as the conservatism of written language or artefacts of the text. A good familiarity with the nature of the texts is important here, but my investigations have convinced me that an assumed conservatism of texts does not give an adequate explanation for the long gap between the collapse of the old case categories and evidence for a change which has been assumed to be a direct consequence of this collapse, namely the introduction of the group genitive. In this case, it seems much better to entertain a completely different hypothesis which fits the facts from the corpus better than to try to save the original hypothesis by appealing to unproven assumptions about the existence of the construction in the spoken language for a very long period when it is absent from the texts. The unavailability of negative data means that we have to make some judgements about whether the absence of a given construction can be taken as evidence that the construction was not generated by the grammar(s) of the period. Each case must be considered individually, but I have argued that in some instances, there is good reason to accept the absence of a particular type of sentence from the texts as evidence of ungrammaticality, as with the adjective constraint in the poss det construction. 8.1.2 Typology and historical syntax In this book, I have highlighted the role of typology in the investigation of historical syntax. Typology has played a prominent role in the analysis of genitive constructions in earlier English. In particular, it has been used to argue against the inflectional status of the -es genitive of EME. The superficial similarity of the ‘his genitive’ of EME with possessor doubling constructions in some modern Germanic languages has also led to the assumption that all these constructions are amenable to the same analysis. The point of view which I have taken is that while typology has an important role to play in the study of diachronic syntax, typological considerations must not be allowed to outweigh the evidence which comes from the texts. If we find ourselves in a situation in which two analyses would fit the facts equally well, a typologically common analysis will undoubtedly be preferred to one which is not needed to describe the known facts of any language currently spoken. However, I think that this would be an unusual situation with such a well-documented language as English if enough data-gathering is done; usually two analyses that differ this much in their typological status will not

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fit the facts equally well when all the available facts are considered rather than just a sketchy outline of stages. A more common situation will arise in which the data point to an analysis which puts a phenomenon into a typologically known, but unusual, situation, as I have argued is the case with the -es genitive in EME. In this situation, I think there is no justification for not going with the facts, if they point strongly in one direction. Occasionally, we may come across facts which seem to point to an analysis which seems not to be needed for any spoken language. In this situation it will be very tempting to attribute the data to something other than the grammars the scribes of a period have internalized—to a data gap or to some convention of writing which is not part of the core grammar but some fairly superficial rules added to the grammar of an adult, perhaps. Even in this situation, however, we should entertain the possibility that the texts are reflecting the core grammar of the scribes and that typology has simply let us down by not recording an unusual but existing type of construction. This is the situation in which I found myself when I set about analysing the poss det construction— I could not find any reference to anything like this construction with an adjective constraint in the typological literature. I felt more confident when I discovered that Old Norse appeared to have a similar construction with the same constraint, but this is another written language with no speakers available to give grammaticality judgements, and the same lack of negative evidence. This appears to be a situation in which an unusual construction has simply not yet made it into the typological literature, however, since a parallel situation is found in some Scandinavian dialects, a fact which has only made its appearance in the theoretical linguistics literature recently. Historical linguistics can feed into typology: if a historical study turns up strong evidence of a situation which has not been reported in the typological literature, the possibility of that situation should not be dismissed on the basis of our current typological knowledge, but rather typologists should take the opportunity to expand our knowledge of linguistic possibility by reviewing reasons why a given construction has not before been reported—simply due to grammars not making fine enough distinctions?—and add it to the list of things to look for. A final comment to be made about the use of typology in diachronic syntax is that we must not assume that similar-looking constructions in different languages are necessarily subject to the same analysis; they may be superficially similar but display differences under further probing. The relevance of this to diachronic syntax is that while a good analysis for a given construction in a spoken language is a good starting point for analysing a similar-looking construction in an earlier stage of English, it should be our end point only if

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the available facts are examined and found to be consistent with that analysis. In the case of the ‘his genitive’ in earlier ME, it turns out that the similarity with possessor doubling constructions in some other Germanic languages is quite superficial and a rather different analysis is needed. It turns out also that the assumption that the possessor doubling construction developed in Dutch in exactly the same way as it did in German is unwarranted. Assuming that the construction is a typical Germanic possessor doubling construction on the basis of the superficial similarity has led to some incorrect assumptions about the history of group genitives in English. I have used the labels det poss and poss det as cover terms for constructions which are similar in the positioning of the determiner as before or after the possessor, but further scrutiny of the facts in particular languages may reveal some differences which should give rise to different syntactic analyses for different languages.

8.2 Major empirical findings Some of the findings of this investigation will require the rethinking of widely accepted accounts of the history of English, while others simply add to our existing knowledge. One major finding concerns the relationship between deflexion and changes to genitive constructions in English. The fact that so many genitive constructions disappear in roughly the same period leads naturally to the hypothesis that the loss of morphological forms and consequently morphological categories is the cause of the obsolescence of these constructions. My investigation indicates only indirect connections between morphological changes and the syntactic changes which have been studied. English has undoubtedly undergone a typological shift from a language which relied primarily on inflection to signal grammatical relationships to one in which constituent order carries the major signals, but a view of this shift as driven entirely by phonological change is too simplistic. It is certainly possible that phonological changes before the CG period initiated the tendency to rely more heavily on analytic devices, but by the OE stage, English already made heavy use of prepositions and had a default word order which served to disambiguate grammatical relations when the morphology was not sufficient. Once a language reaches this stage, it is likely to rely more and more on analytic devices. The loss of the postnominal genitive is best seen as the culmination of a favouring, over a long period, of a word order which was the most common at the beginning of the period, to the point where it became the only order possible by the end of the period. The assumption that the obsolescence of the postnominal genitive began with the loss of the genitive case as a morphological category doesn’t fit the facts.

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Genitive objects disappeared around the same time as postnominal genitives, but cannot be the result of the loss of the genitive as a case since, like the non-partitive postnominal genitives, they disappear by the early thirteenth century from texts in which it is impossible to deny the existence of the genitive as an inflectional category because this case triggers (optional) agreement on modifiers. The loss of genitive objects is similar to the loss of postnominal genitives in that prepositions often replaced morphology. The system of four productive cases in OE was not capable of signalling very many semantic distinctions, and prepositions were already used as alternatives to genitive case at that stage. It is interesting to note that the genitive objects were not universally replaced by prepositional phrases in ME, however, since they were sometimes treated as ordinary objects, getting accusative case in the dialects which retained the dative/accusative distinction. It seems probable that by the OE period, genitive case marking on objects only had the vaguest sort of semantic value, with the selection of genitive objects by particular verbs largely lexically idiosyncratic rather than following a regular rule. Speakers either substituted a preposition for the genitive case marking to add semantic content or incorporated the erstwhile genitive object into the more usual transitive pattern. One very interesting result is that the existence of the genitive as a morphological case was not enough to save the postnominal genitives and the genitive objects. The facts suggest that it was the appearance of optionality in case morphology that finished these two genitive types off. In EME, we find a real difference in the texts in which agreement is not optional versus ones where agreement has largely disappeared, but there is no substantial difference between the case-impoverished texts and the ones which maintain the old case system but have substantial optionality in the marking of agreement: postnominal genitives and genitive objects are gone in both. It appears that although the case categories still existed in these dialects, they had undergone a downgrading in their importance as analytic devices became more important in signalling grammatical relationships even though there was still adequate case morphology to do the job. Although most postnominal genitive types disappear around the end of the twelfth century, regardless of the state of inflection in a given dialect, the partitive genitives offer an exception. Genitive complements of adjectives are also still found after most postnominal genitives have gone. This leads to the hypothesis that genitive case within the NomP could be structurally assigned or lexically assigned. In terms of the grammar, the loss of postnominal genitives represents the loss of the ability to assign genitive case structurally in the postnominal position. With quantifiers, inherently partitive nouns, and

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adjectives, however, genitive case is lexically determined. Lexical assignment of genitive case in the post-head position seems to have lasted longer than structural case assignment did. There is both morphological and syntactic evidence for the retention of the genitive as an inflectional category in EME in even the case-impoverished dialects. There is also evidence, however, for a lessening of the degree of attachment of the possessive marker to its host. At this stage, only possessor nouns could serve as hosts for a possessive marker, whether it was -es, which had now generalized as a possibility for all nouns in both the singular and the plural in some dialects, or one of the other genitive inflections which still remained at this period in some regions. The difference with OE is that with the new optionality of agreement morphology on modifiers of nouns, once-only marking became a possibility, that is, the possessive marker became more agglutinative. The indeclinable -es marker could be placed at the end of an entire coordinate or appositive possessive phrase, rather than on each element of these complex possessors. Whatever our analysis of -es in EME, the grammars that we assume for this period must allow for more than one alternative for the same person, because onceonly marking was in variation with the old concordial genitive in the same text. Group genitives, i.e. genitives in which the possessive marker is attached to a phrase-final noun which is not the possessor, do not appear until the last quarter of the fourteenth century, long after the disappearance of case agreement morphology in most dialects, at a time when the -es possessive had become a possibility with all nouns although not the only one with a small set of nouns. It is only at this point that there is evidence for an analysis of the -es which is essentially the same as that needed for PDE -s. There is no reason to believe that the texts would be particularly conservative in the use of the group genitive, and even if they were, they would presumably also be conservative in the use of inflection which was no longer used in colloquial speech, and so although the absolute timing of the changes may not be reflected accurately in the texts, the relative timing probably is. The long absence of group genitives from the text after the appearance of once-only genitive marking is unexplained by the hypothesis that the loss of inflection led immediately to the reanalysis of -es as a phrasal inflection (or clitic) of the same sort it is in PDE, but the facts support the idea that the development of a more clitic-like marker was a gradual affair, going through at least two stages: first, it became a once-only marker which was still hosted by the possessor N, and then it became less selective in its host and attached to any N at the end of a possessor phrase.

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The so-called ‘his genitive’, or separated genitive, in which the possessive marker is written separately from the possessor noun or phrase, has been assumed by some to be the origin of the group genitive, as the -es was reanalysed as a reduction of his and the king of France his daughter serves as a model for the king of Frances daughter. This theory runs into the problem that the separated genitive does not appear in group genitives until the same period when the group genitives first appear with -es written attached to the last element of the possessor phrase. Until the sixteenth century, the separated and attached genitives have exactly the same distribution (although this distribution is not the same after c1380 as it was before). I have argued that it was the ousting of the old combined genitive (the kinges/king (h)ys daughter of France) that was responsible for the appearance of a new type of separated genitive in which the possessive marker agreed in gender and number with the possessor (e.g. the queen her portrait). This new, agreeing separated genitive was indeed parallel to the possessor doubling constructions found in many Germanic languages but never seems to have become firmly established in English. It is found in the highest styles of literature and there is no evidence that the possessor doubling construction ever had the low sociolinguistic status that similar constructions have in some Germanic languages. The separated genitive offers a good example of the dangers of assuming that similar-looking constructions should be given the same analysis in different languages or even at different periods in the same language. Strunk’s comment (2004b: 6, fn. 7) that possessor doubling constructions in the Germanic languages all have essentially the same analysis with some minor variations seems incorrect to me, but I agree with his further observation that the similarities could arise from a number of sources, including parallel development. The possessor doubling constructions found in so many Germanic languages cannot plausibly be derived from a common origin. It appears that a construction using a linking pronoun is typologically a very common way to express possession prenominally, and there is no reason to assume that two languages have travelled the same road to develop such a construction. The final set of findings concerns the co-occurrence of possessives and determiners. The fact that the det poss construction was possible in OE but is marginal in PDE is frequently taken as evidence that possessives were adjectives in OE but became determiners at some period. Those assuming this development have not taken the poss det construction, in which the possessive precedes the determiner, into account, and this construction causes severe difficulties for the view of possessives as adjectives in OE. It is usually assumed that det poss had an unbroken history up to EModE, but this

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investigation shows that it disappears from the texts for a long period in ME, a development which is problematic for any attempt to judge the status of possessives as adjectives or determiners based simply on whether they are found co-occurring with determiners. The fact that the determiner in det poss is always a demonstrative, rather than the definite article, is also problematic for an explanation of the co-occurrence in simple word class terms. Since demonstratives can be treated as phrasal adjuncts to NomPs, with the phrase consisting only of its head D, it is possible to treat both elements of det poss as occupying determiner positions when they co-occur, and the explanation for the complementarity of the two in languages such as PDE is probably not best sought in terms of word classes. The poss det construction cannot be considered a mere variant of the det poss construction because they had different characteristics: unlike det poss, poss det always involved an adjective and the determiner involved was always se, not þes. The similarity with constructions in which possessives precede definite articles in some Scandinavian varieties is striking, and the facts seem best explained by assuming that OE had a position in adjective phrases for a determiner that conferred only definiteness, that is, a definite article. The rise of double genitive constructions such as a friend of mine cannot be the result of a new inability of possessives and determiners to co-occur, since the double genitive and the det poss construction coexisted for a long time. The idea that genitive constructions were not determiners in OE is tied up with the idea that they were not definite, but the arguments that OE possessives and Saxon genitives differed in definiteness from their PDE counterparts do not bear examination; the indefiniteness found in a new old person’s home says nothing about the definiteness or otherwise of those old people’s homes, and so the fact that low prenominal genitives can follow indefinite elements in OE says nothing about the definiteness of the Saxon genitive, where the genitive element is in a different position. The changes which have been documented here are all consistent with the view that a change to the grammar which makes an old construction impossible is not the beginning stage of syntactic change, but rather the end stage. That is, a construction is gradually used less frequently to the point where language learners no longer hear sufficient evidence that their grammar should produce that construction. At this point, they construct grammars which do not generate the construction. This viewpoint contrasts sharply with that of, for example, Lightfoot (1991, 1999), in which syntactic change begins with a change to the grammar, that is, a new parameter setting is the beginning of the obsolescence of a construction, rather than the result of it.

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8.3 Future directions There are many matters concerning genitive constructions in the history of English which have barely been touched on in this study, and the investigation has raised many questions which have not been answered. There is a great deal of scope for further investigations into the history of English NomPs generally, and genitive constructions specifically; a systematic history of genitive complements to adjectives remains to be written, for example. I believe that we need investigations into both structure and discourse functions of different constructions. It may be that the absence of a particular construction from the texts of a particular period is due to discourse factors rather than to structural impossibility, and a purely syntactic explanation is not the best one. Findings from any diachronic study have the most potential to influence the theory of language change. Diachronic studies also have a role to play in evaluating synchronic theories. Explanations in current formal syntactic theories aim at uniting universal principles and language-specific features and avoid making language-specific stipulations which cannot be learned by language learners from innate principles and knowledge of possible language-specific features. Accordingly, if the difference between two languages is attributed to a difference in a language-specific feature, then it would bolster the proposed explanation for the difference if we find a diachronic change which mirrors the difference in the addition or loss of the specific feature and leads to the predicted result. On the other hand, a change may fail to support the proposed explanation. An area which has only been touched on here with the potential to test a synchronic hypothesis is that of the ‘unaffected’ objective genitives. In PDE, only ‘affected’ objects can appear in objective genitives, as discussed in section 4.5.3. This constraint did not hold in OE, however, as discussed in section 3.6. An explanation which is widely accepted by generative linguists for the fact that the affectedness constraint applies to English but not in the Romance languages was proposed by Jaeggli (1986). An updated version of this explanation is outlined by Longobardi (2001). The essential idea is that certain nouns, such as nouns of cognition, universally require a subject to be present in the syntax, even if that subject is not expressed phonologically (i.e. is pro). In the Romance languages, there are two ‘external’ positions in a NomP, one for a subject and one for a possessor, a possibility which Longobardi argues is established by independent facts. This means that the underlying object of a noun can be ‘possessivized’ without competing with the (possibly phonologically null) subject for a slot; both elements can be accommodated,

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and la sua percezione ‘the perception of it’ (lit. ‘the its perception’) is possible in Italian. In English, however, there is only one slot. The subject outranks a possessivized element in the competition for this slot, and so its perception cannot mean ‘the perception of it’ in English. Given that OE and PDE differ in the absence versus the presence of the affectedness constraint, we would hope that any explanation of the affectedness constraint would give us an explanation for how English acquired this constraint. By the explanation just outlined, English must have acquired the affectedness constraint by losing the ability to have two external arguments. As far as I know, however, no one has made an independent argument for such a loss at any period. Since the independent evidence for the two positions involves matters involving binding and control, it would not be easy to find such evidence from texts. However, this example illustrates how diachronic change can play a role in evaluating competing hypotheses; if a new hypothesis is proposed which would also explain the difference between English and the Romance languages and also has the merit of fitting the historical facts well, it is surely to be preferred. For this use, however, detailed and systematic investigations are crucial. Although my results with the three nouns used are highly suggestive, a thorough investigation grouping nouns into different semantic classes and extending into EModE is needed to solve the puzzle of how the affectedness constraint came about and what is behind this descriptive generalization. Another area that could lead to some rethinking of theoretical assumptions is that of elliptical or independent possessive pronouns. Lindauer (1998: 127– 128) suggests that without the agreement suffixes, these pronouns don’t have enough morphosyntactic features to function as a complete DP. In Allen (2002b) I showed that in some dialects of ME, possessive pronouns such as her and our are found in positions where no head N follows, causing problems for a view in which hers and ours became necessary because extra morphology was necessary to contribute enough features for a complete DP. A comprehensive comparative study of possessive pronouns in the Germanic varieties (including non-standard dialects) is likely to yield some interesting results. My findings support the view that discourse functions of constructions play a role in syntactic change which should not be ignored, because these functions affect the frequency of use of a construction and frequency is a key player in syntactic change. There are many questions which could be investigated here. It is clear that the of genitives did not simply replace postnominal genitives, for example. Recent advances in our understanding of

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discourse structure mean that the time is ripe for new studies on the factors promoting prenominal and of genitives at different periods to supplement findings for PDE such as those of Anschutz (1997) and Rosenbach (2005) and to replace older studies of earlier periods like Thomas (1931). Rosenbach (2002) demonstrates that the use of these constructions is undergoing change currently, and there is every reason to suppose that periods differ in the factors which were paramount in selecting the type of genitive. Given that no structural change in prenominal genitives appears to have taken place at the time when their decline was arrested and they came back into favour, I think it is likely that we will find an explanation for the changed patterns in a change in the factors which determined which structurally possible type was selected. Many other matters could be mentioned here, but the final area which I will mention where the study of discourse factors is likely to yield interesting results is in the uses of the det poss construction in different periods and what factors promoted the use of poss det in OE. A comparison with the Scandinavian varieties that allow both constructions should be highly rewarding. I would like to remark in closing that our conclusions about the nature of syntactic change will be most convincing if we do not just rely on studies based on texts from earlier periods but supplement these studies with investigations into syntactic change in progress. There are many questions surrounding the nature of syntactic change to which corpus studies of dead languages cannot give us a definitive answer. I agree wholeheartedly with Kroch (2001) on the need for sociolinguistically informed studies of change in progress: Given the strong possibility that textual data do not give evidence for the process of language change in a vernacular, there is a real need for the study of syntactic innovations in living languages, using sociolinguistic methods to observe unreflecting speech. Such studies do not at present exist, in part because syntactic change is relatively rare and hard to catch on the fly. (Kroch 2001: 723)

However, I believe that the judgement that syntactic change in progress is difficult to detect is overly pessimistic. Certainly, major changes such as a shift in the order of constituents do not happen often. But smaller changes such as the introduction of the poss one construction (e.g. my one) are surely not rare and offer a wonderful opportunity to investigate questions such as the nature of variation in speech when two syntactic options are available. The optionality of case markers in some Low Saxon varieties offers a similar opportunity.

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Research into these changes in progress can be expected to provide an answer to important questions Kroch raised such as how representative the variation found in texts is likely to be of the sort of variation found in spoken language. Such questions bear directly on the extent to which it is legitimate to use texts from earlier stages of languages to recover the grammars internalized by the writers of those texts, and the role of diachronic studies in developing synchronic theory.

Appendix: Primary texts and electronic corpora used Information is given here only concerning English texts. Where examples from other languages have been taken from secondary literature, the references are as presented in the cited literature. Where an example from a language other than English is the subject of special scrutiny or debate, I have provided references in the main body of the book. A. Early English Corpora ARCHER-3 = A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers 3. 1990– 1993/2002/2007. Compiled under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan at Northern Arizona University, University of Southern California, University of Freiburg, University of Heidelberg, University of Helsinki, Uppsala University, University of Michigan, University of Manchester, and University of Zurich. I used the ARCHER-3 corpus as a registered computer user at the University of Manchester. CLMET = Corpus of Late Modern English Texts. Complied by Henrik de Smet. Access through http://perswww.kuleuven.be/∼u0044428/clmet.htm DOE Corpus = The Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form, Tei-P3 Conformant Version, 2000 Release. Compiled by Antonette diPaolo Healey, Joan Holland, Ian McDougall, and Peter T. Mielke. University of Toronto Center for Medieval Studies DOE Project. Also commonly referred to as the Toronto Corpus. Helsinki Corpus = Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal (1991). Matti Rissanen and Ossi Ihalainen, compilers. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Lampeter = The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts (1641–1732). The text markup was done in collaboration with Lou Burnard and the Oxford Text Archive. Available at http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/LAMPETER/LAMPHOME. HTM PCEEC = Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, Parsed Version (2006). Annotated by Ann Taylor, Arja Nurmi, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Terttu Nevalainen. Compiled by the CEEC Project Team. York: University of York and Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Distributed through the Oxford Text Archive. This corpus is based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), compiled at the University of Helsinki by the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English. PCEEC contains over three-quarters of the original CEEC, with 84 letter collections (4,970 letters) consisting of approximately 2.2 million words. The time span covered is from c1410 to 1695. The citation references from this corpus are prefixed with ‘PCEEC’ in this book.

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PPCME2 = The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (2000). Anthony Kroch and Ann Taylor, compilers. Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. References from this corpus have the prefix ‘cm’. YCOE = The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (2003). Compiled by Ann Taylor, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths, Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. Distributed through the Oxford Text Archive. References from this corpus have the prefix ‘co’. B. Early English texts cited not included in electronic corpora Most of the examples used in this book appear as they are cited and referenced in the corpora listed above. The references are explained in those corpora and in the interests of space the details will not be listed here. When examples have been drawn from texts not covered by these corpora, references to the bibliographical details of the edition used have been given in the text. In a few instances, such a text is referred to by an abbreviation in more than one place in this book. These abbreviations are included in the list in Cii below. C. Abbreviations of text titles used in text and tables In the material below, only a short reference to the Bibliography is given in cases when a reference to the edition was made earlier in the book, for example Clemoes (1997). I present first the abbreviations which are used for texts included in YCOE and PPCME2,then the abbreviations used for texts not included in these corpora. i. My abbreviations for texts included in YCOE and PPCME2 In the tables below, my abbreviation is listed in the left hand column, and the first part of the corresponding YCOE or PPCME2 filename is listed on the right. Note that not all the YCOE filenames are provided with an extension indicating the period of the manuscript. Abbreviation

YCOE Filename

Alexander ASC(A) ASC(A1)

coalex.o23 cochronA.o23 cochronA.o23 excluding post-924 entries, that is, excluding hands later than 2f cochronD cochronE.o34 cobenrul.o3 coblick.o23

ASC(D) ASC(E) BenRule Blickling

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Abbreviation

YCOE Filename

CH1 CH2 CP curaC curaPref GregoryC Leechbooks MargCCCC303 Mt(WSCp) Oros Other YCOE

cocathom1.o3 cocathom2.o3 cocura.o2 cocuraC coprefcura.o2 cogregdC.o24 colacnu.o23, colaece.02 comargaC.o34 cowsgosp.o3 (Matthew) coorosiu.o2 All texts from YCOE in manuscripts dating before the middle of the eleventh century not separately listed coverhom, but see notes in text cowsgosp.o3 cowulf.o34, but see notes in text

Vercelli WSGospels Wulfstan

In addition to these texts, I have used the poetic texts contained in the Helsinki Corpus but not in YCOE in some of my investigations. These texts are not differentiated in the tables, but grouped together under the label Poetry. Abbreviation

PPCME2 filename

ARiwle KathGroup

cmancriw-1.m1, cmancriw-2.m1 cmhali.m1, cmjulia.m1, cmkathe.m1, cmmarga.m1, cmsawles.m1 cmkentho.m1 cmkentse.m2 cmorm.po.m1 cmpeterb.m1 contains the First and Second Continuations but does not distinguish them cmvices1.m1

Kentho KS Orm PCCont1, PCCont2 VV

ii. ME texts not included in YCOE or PPCME2 The following texts are not included in the electronic corpora used in this study: BL = Brook and Leslie’s 1963, 1978 edition of LaZamon’s Brut. Brut(C) = the version of LaZamon’s Brut found in MS Caligula A. ix. Brut(O) = the version of LaZamon’s Brut found in MS Cotton Otho C xiii. Gen&Ex = The Middle English Gen&Ex. Arngart (1968).

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Other Vesp. D. xiv EME = Four short texts from British Library Manuscript Cotton Vespasian D. xiv (the manuscript which also includes the two homilies of cmkentho.m1). Edition used: Warner, Rubie (ed.) (1917). Early English Homilies from the Twelfth Century Ms Vesp. D. Xiv. Early English Text Society 152. These texts are numbers XXVII (pp. 66.26–67.25), XXXIII (pp. 89.33–91.7), XLII (pp. 129.4–134.4), and XLIV (pp. 139.26–140.19) in Warner’s edition. PC Hand 1 additions (PC H1 Add. in tables) = the additions (interpolations and First Continuation) made by the scribe who copied the pre-1121 annals of the Peterborough Chronicle. PCInterp = The interpolations added by the Hand 1 scribe to the Peterborough Chronicle. These interpolations are printed in small font by Irvine (2004). PM(L) = Lambeth 487 version of the Poema Morale. Edition used: Morris, Richard (ed.) (1867–8). Old English Homilies of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Vol. I). EETS 29, 34. 159–183. Proclamation = Proclamation of Henry III issued in 1258. Edition used: Dickins, Bruce and Wilson, R.M. (eds) (1956 [1951]). Early Middle English Texts. London: Bowes and Bowes, pp. 8–9. Rog = Four homilies from Hatton 114 in Bazire, Joyce and James E. Cross (eds.) (1982). Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies. Toronto Old English Series 7. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Vesp. A. xxii EME = two homilies of EME composition in Cotton MS Vespasian A. xxii. Edition used: as for PM(L). These homilies are pieces XXV and XXVI in Morris’ edition, pp. 231–243.

D. Dating systems The many sources from which I have gathered information concerning the assumed dates of early English writings do not all use the same conventions. The systems employed in the three main sources I have used for these dates are explained here. Ker: In Ker’s (1957) system of dating, s . stands for saeculum ‘century’ and Roman numerals identify the century. Superscripted Latin abbreviations such as in. (incipit) are used to indicate which part of the century. When dating cannot be made more precise, superscripted numerals are used to indicate the first or second half of the century. Thus ix ex. denotes ‘the end of the ninth century’ etc. This system is adopted by YCOE. Laing: Dates beginning with C or C∗ are taken from Laing (1993). C represents the century and an asterisk indicates that the manuscript derives from a pre-Conquest original. The first and second half of the century are denoted by ‘a’ and ‘b’, respectively. Laing uses numerals to give more specific dating within the half-century; thus ‘C12b2’

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means ‘second part of the second half of the twelfth century’, i.e. the last quarter of that century. MED Dates like a1450 follow the system of the Middle English Dictionary (explained in the supplement to the MED). In this system, ‘a’ (ante) means that a manuscript is dated to before a particular date, but probably not more than a quarter of a century before, while ‘c’ (circa) means that the date of the manuscript is asumed to be within 25 years before or after the mentioned date.

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Index Abney, S. 9, 10 n. 16 absolute genitives see independent genitives accusative case: opposition with dative case 15, 33, 122–3, 124, 126, 130–1, 133, 135 in possessive constructions 53, 55 replacing genitive objects 57 Ackles, N. 98, 99 Addison, Joseph 263, 265–6, 300 adjective constraint see poss det adjective genitive languages 103, 274–5 adjective phrases 101–2 adjectives: with dative complements 65 n. with genitive complements, see genitive case as nominalizations 39, 102, 134, 278, 285 position of in OE 104–5 predicative 69, 77 substantival 283, 293 weak/strong distinction 38–40, 70–1, 76, 77–8, 109, 294 Ælfric 61, 62, 73, 79, 80, 88, 90, 91 n. 26, 91–2, 94, 96, 97, 98, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 Affectedness Constraint 168, 173, 174, 315–16 affix: criteria for 44–5, 148 no sharp distinction with clitic 52, 152, 183, 195, 239, 312 Afrikaans: contact with African languages 212 Dutch feeder dialects of 198, 212–13 possessor doubling in 211–13 AZenbite of Inwit 125–6, 133 Aickin, Joseph 261 Alexiadou, A. 16, 281, 299 n. 17 Altenberg, B. 85 Ancrene Riwle 126, 131 n., 166, 176, 177, 236 Ancrene Wisse 131 anchor texts 60 Anderson, M. 12, 168 Andrews, A. 54, 68 Anschutz, A. 317

apostrophe 246 n., 257, 259–60, 262, 270 see also separated genitives appositive 92–4, 139–41, 147, 153, 182 see also NAPA ARCHER Corpus 257 n. Arngart, O. 231 n. articles: as heads 100–2, 276, 286 in OE 99, 286, 314 ASC(A) 61, 86, 114, 115, 117, 237 Askedal, J.-O. 42 n., 45 Atanasov, P. 22 attached genitive 223, 247 Baker, C. 13 n. 5 Baker, Robert 261, 264 Bald’s Leechbook 229 Barber, C. 255 Barnes, M. 38 n. 2, 277, 290 Barrington, John 265 Barrington, Thomas 257 Bately, J. 60–1, 237, 238 Behaghel, O. 38, 188, 275, 276 Benedictine Rule (BenRul) 61, 62, 98, 114, 115, 116 n., 117 Besten, H. den 212 n. Bethurum, D. 61 Bhatt, C. 49, 195 Blake, B. 20, 24 Blickling Homilies 280, 281, 284, 288 Boethius (OE) 30, 32 Booij, G. 48 Börjars, K. 45–6, 151–2, 154–5, 156, 158, 215, 239, 240, 252, 253 Bree, C. van 201 Bresnan, J. 8, 9, 10, 11, 67, 77 Brut (C) (Cotton Caligula A. ix) 131–3, 161 n., 175 n. 2, 230, 236 n. Brut (O) (Cotton Otho C xiii) 131–3, 142, 144, 161 n., 229–30, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 239 Buehler, P. 231 n. Bülbring, K. 241 n. 10, 297 Burridge, K. 189, 202, 203, 204, 228 Burrow, J. 123 Butler, Charles 261, 264

346

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Calabrese, A. 20 Campbell, A. 60, 64, 70, 118 Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) 11, 13 n. 5, 98, 106 Capgrave, John 244, 251 Capidan, T. 22 Carstairs, A. 155, 236 case: acquisition of 23–4, 42, 57 category vs. form 13–15, 20, 33, 64, 123–4, 132 definitions of 13–15 morphological 14, 15, 18 syncretism 63, 64, 118, 119 syntactic 14, 15, 122 case assignment/licensing: structural vs. lexical/inherent 15–16, 17–18, 66, 83, 116, 120, 185, 311–12 in partitives 83, 116 to postnominal/posthead position 57, 116 case filter 16–17, 178 case hierarchy 20–4, 57, 58–9, 181, 234–5 case-impoverished ME texts 126, 130 genitive case in 148–9, 165, 181, 183 case-rich and inflection-rich ME texts 126, 127, 129 Cely letters 244, 245, 248, 252 Chaucer, Geoffrey 134, 153, 241–2 Chaucerian manuscripts 153, 241–2, 254 Chomsky, N. 7, 15–16 Christophersen, P. 99 Cibber, Colley 258 Clahsen, Harald 16, 42 Clark, C. 129, 237 n. 8 classifying genitives see descriptive genitives Clayton, M. 291 Clemoes, P. 292 clitic see affix, -s genitive Cognitive Grammar 65, 119 combined genitive 92, 94–5, 137–8, 151, 153–4, 155, 182 Common Germanic 37–42 adjectives in 39 case in 38, 63 position of genitives in 38 possessive pronouns in 40–1 competing grammars 26, 27, 140 Cowen, J. 153, 242, 243 Cornish, F. 300 corpora, electronic 32

Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMET) 257 n. Corver, N. 196, 215 n. 22 Crisma, P. 12, 93, 97 n. 30, 113 Csató, É. 19 Cura Pastoralis (CP) 60, 61, 114, 115, 117, 281, 284, 296 Curme, G. 39, 72 Dalrymple, Mary 67 n. 11 Danish: definiteness in 290 poss det in 278 possessor doubling in 213 d’Ardenne, S. 33, 127 n., 130, 131, 147 dative case: as an alternative to genitive 217–18, 220, 222 see also accusative case, oblique case dative hypothesis see possessor doubling, origin of De Korne, A. 275 definiteness: in OE 70–1, 77, 294 of possessive constructions 10, 70–1, 107, 108 and weak adjectives see also adjective, possessive pronoun deflexion (in English) 139, 146–7, 294 in determiner system 133–4, 294 see also inflection-poor texts in LME 134–5 and loss of genitive case 173 and loss of genitive objects 175–6, 181 and loss of poss det 294–5 and loss of post-head genitives 159–62, 183 deflexion as trigger of syntactic change 15, 17, 57, 307 degrammaticalization 156 degree of attachment 46 see also s-genitive, separated genitive Delsing, L.-O. 38 n., 41, 42 n., 43, 55, 56, 57, 58, 158, 174, 185, 186, 187, 213, 214, 223, 278 demonstrative: compound see þes position in phrase structure 100, 181 proximal see þes Demske, U. 48, 77–8, 80, 103–5, 275, 299, 301

Index Denison, D. 274, 300 descriptive genitives 11, 81, 108, 146 and compound nouns 11, 81–3, 101, 103, 146 det poss 62, 104, 112, 274, 275–6, 280, 313–14 and agreement features 282 as appositive 274, 276, 288, 300 characteristics of in OE 279–81, 288–9 determiners used in 101, 177, 285, 288, 289, 298–300 discourse function of 275, 283, 287–9, 299–300, 303–4 and double genitives 302–4 in early Germanic languages 275 in the King James Bible 297 in ME 296–9 in OE poetry 288 in translations 288–9 typological status of 275–6, 295 detached possessive see separated genitive determinative see determiner determiner 98–9 status in OE 179, 294, 301, 313–14 determiner genitive 11, 89, 99, 102–3, 107 determiner phrase 14, 99 Di Meola, C. 42 dialect AB 33, 131 n., 141, 147, 177 Dictionary of Old English 62 Dilworth, Thomas 14, 264 dislocated genitives 89–92, 95, 117, 120 and semantic types 91–2 Dixon, R. 283 n. Donaldson, B. 198, 211 Dons, U. 261 n. double definiteness see Scandinavian languages double genitive 73 n., 302–4 DP hypothesis 9 Duffield, N. 22 Duinhoven, A. 188, 207, 210 Dutch, Early ambiguous case marking in 205–6, 207 deflexion in 204, 208, 209–10, 220 genitive case in 202, 207, 208–9, 210, 220 optional case marking in 208 possessor doubling in 201, 202–10, prepositional genitives in 209 Dutch, Modern (Standard): independent genitives in 197–8 possessor doubling in 188–9, 197–8, 272

347

prepositional genitives in 72 -s genitives in 47–9, 50, 52–3, 135 weak adjectives in 39 see also Flemish Early Middle English: discontinuity with OE dialects 30 sociolinguistic status of 26, 30, 153 Earliest Complete Prose Psalter 32, 133–4, 240 n., 297 Early Reanalysis Hypothesis 122, 140, 150–1, 153, 164, 177, 183, 238 Early West Saxon 30, 60–1 East Dutch see Low Saxon Eisenbeiss, Sonja 16, 42 Elders, S. 17 elective genitive 87 elliptical genitive. see independent genitive Experiencer Constraint 168 external possessor 204 (Early Dutch), 207–8 (OE), 230 (OE) Faarlund, J. 276, 277, 290 Falk, Y. 10 Faroese: case categories in 53–7 genitive case in 24, 53–7 lack of possessor doubling in 213–14 possessive pronouns/adjectives in 54–5 prepositional genitive constructions in 55 Sa(r) genitive 55–7 Fehringer, C. 198 Fielding, Henry 300 Fischer, O. 103, 170, 172–3 Fisher, A. 262, 264 Fiva, T. 215–16 Flemish independent genitives in 200 possessor doubling in 198–202 se(n) construction 200–2 ‘a friend of mine’ see double genitive Frisian: independent possessives in 211 possessor doubling in 210–11 Funke, Otto 39, 132 n. Furnivall, F. 231, 236, 237 Gaaf, W. van der 73 n., 302 Gaelic 22 garp genitive (in Scandinavian languages) see possessor doubling

348

Index

genitive agreement 80–3, 142–4 see also Saxon genitive Gavruseva, E. 196, 215 n. 22 Genesis and Exodus (Gen&Ex) 133, 229, 230, 231, 232 n. 4, 233, 234, 236 n. genitive case: adverbial 179–181, on complements of adjectives 65, 177–8, 311–12, 315 functions of 24, 64–5 as inherent/lexical case 16, 174, 311–12 as morphological case in ME 134, 138–9, 147–9, 151, 161, 164, 167, 183, 312 loss of irregular forms 148–9, 150, 151, 153–4, 169 and once-only marking 150, 153, 312 in partitives 83 see also partitives semantics of 65 as structural case 16, 17 genitive hypothesis see possessor doubling, origin of genitive objects (of verbs or adpositions) 18, 20, 42, 53–5, 56, 66, 110–12, 182, 183 alternatives to 110–11, 118 and case assignment/licensing 176, 311 in Late OE 117–18 in EME 174–6 see also individual language names genitive pronouns 66–7, 68 German (Middle High and Modern) adjective inflection in 40 deflexion in 220–1 det poss in 275–6 genitive case in 42, 47 position of possessive constructions in 57 possessive pronouns in 41 possessor doubling in 182, 197–7, 220–1 prepositional genitives in 72 -s genitives in 47–9, 52–3 Gill, Alexander 14, 264 glosses, interlinear 71 glossing conventions 33, 34, 64, 187 Gothic 38, 41 poss det in 277 grammaticalization 36, 101, 189, 225, 253 Gregorgy’s Dialogues (GD) 112–13, 296–7 Grimshaw, J. 9

Greenberg, J. 21–2 group genitives 35 in German 47–8, 154 in ME 137, 152–8, 182, 238–9, 251–2, 253, 269, 270 as projecting particle 269 see also separated genitives in Swedish 43–4, 152, 154–5, 155–8 Greenwood, J. 262, 264 Haeberli, E. 15, 17 Haegeman, L. 186, 187, 196, 198, 199–200, 201, 215 n. 22, 219 n., 223, 241 Halvorsen, P.-K. 67 n. 11 Hanga Hundi 22 Hand 1 additions see Peterborough Chronicle Hansen, E. 278 Harbert, W. 43, 276 Harris, George 261, 264 Haspelmath, M. 10, 277 Hatcher, A. 72 n., 302 Hawkins, J. 20–1 head agreement 80–3, 142–4 Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar 48 head-placement 46, 152, 155 Heinrichs, H. 275, 277 Helsinki Corpus 125, 297, 306 Heltveit, T. 79, 103, 284 n. 4, 298 n. 16 Hendriks, J. 188, 201 n. 202–3, 204, 205–6, 229 Henn-Memmesheimer, B. 195, 201 n. 10 Heusler, A. 38 n., 277 Himmelmann, N. 100 Hogg, R. 27, 63, 71 Huddleston, R. 11, 12 n., 13 n., 98, 106, 283 Hudson, R. 9 Hume, Alexander 260, 261, 263, 264 Hungarian 219, 220 hyphens 223 n., 237 Icelandic: lack of possessor doubling in 214 position of possessive constructions in 38, 57 retention of case in 37, 42 independent genitives 12–13 in OE 69 inflection-poor EME texts 129, 138 status of genitive case in 145–50, 153, 177–8

Index inflection-rich ME texts 127, 128, 161, 177 optional agreement in 127–8, 138–40, 144, 149, 175–6, 184, 311, 312 postnominal genitives in 137, 161, 166, 170, 173, 177 Irish, case in 22 Irvine, S. 33, 237, 292 Jackendoff, R. 12, 13 n. 5, 89, 108 Jaeggli, O. 315 Jakobson, R. 65 Janda, R. 20, 43, 189, 225, 231, 234, 253, 265 Jespersen, O. 43, 85 n., 228, 234, 236, 242, 243, 265, 266, 267, 302 Johanson, L. 19 Johnson, Samuel 14, 262, 264, 267 Jones, C. 130, 232 Jonson, Ben 261, 264 Jul Nielsen, Bengt 214 Julian of Norwich 251 Julien, M. 38 n. 41, 49, 56, 77 n., 165, 174, 186, 214, 216, 217, 218, 220–1, 276, 278, 290, 294, 295 Kane, G. 153, 242, 243 Kaplan, R. 67 n. 11 Katherine Group 126, 131, 147, 149, 166, 176, 236, 296 n. 9 see also dialect AB Kellner, L. 302 Kentish homilies, see MS Vespasian D. xiv Kentish Sermons 126, 129, 133, 141, 166 Ker, N. 31, 60, 61, 132 Kerckvoorde, N. van 201, 210 Kester, E.-P. 283 Kitson, P. 139 Klemola, J. 123 n., 266 n. Kniezsa, V. 179, 180 Koelmans, L. 204 Koike, T. 3, 24, 65, 87, 90 n. 26, 92, 96, 99, 102–3, 110, 112, 115 Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. 7, 22, 186 n., 192 n., 234, 253 Kroch, A. 26, 27, 209, 231, 235, 317–18 Kytö, Merja 266, 296–7, 300, 302 LaZamon’s Brut see Brut(C), Brut(O) Laing, M. 60, 127, 131, 132, 133, 236, 291, 296 Lampeter Corpus 257 n. Langacker, R. 65, 108 Lanouette, R. 38, 42 n., 48–9 Lapointe, S. 45

349

Lappträsk Swedish 278 Larson, R. 10 n. Lass, R. 121 n., 134, 148 Late West Saxon 61, 113–15, 119 Latin influence 62–3 and det poss 288–9, 298 and partitives 87, 107 and possessive constructions 71, 94, 112 Lehmann, C. 189, 265 Leonard, S. 260 LFG (Lexical Functional Grammar) 8, 10 The Life of St. Chad 296 n. 9 Lightfoot, D. 20, 122, 231, 235, 314 Lindauer, T. 47, 195, 316 Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) 125, 131, 133, 223, 231, 236, 243, 244 linker see possessor doubling Liuzza, R. 31, 298 Löbel, E. 275 Lockwood, W. 41, 53, 55, 56 Longobardi, G. 10, 16, 103, 104 n. 36, 168, 315 Low German see Low Saxon low prenominal genitive 12, 80–3, 108, 141–6 adjectives in 82 Low Saxon: case categories in 49–50 dialects 49–50 group genitives in 51–2 optional inflection in 50 possessive pronouns in 50 possessor doubling in 190–5, 271 prepositional genitive in 193–4 -s genitive in 50–2, 194–5 Lowth, Robert 268 n., 262–3, 264 Lyly, John 265 Lyons, C. 12, 103 Macintosh, A. 60, 125, 127 McLagan, H. 87, 88, 96–7, 113, 115 Madden, F. 230, 231, 237 n. Magennis, H. 291 Maittaire, Michael 261–2, 264, 267 Maling, J. 178 Manly, J. 243 Megleno-Romanian 22 Middle English periods and dating systems 123–4, 125–7 EME vs. LME 125–6 m1–m4 system 125–6

350

Index

Millar, R. 130, 142 Mitchell, Bruce 39, 41, 62, 68 n., 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 88, 96, 104, 105 107, 109, 114, 180, 280, 283 n., 284, 287, 288 n., 292, 296 n. morphological blocking 54, 67 Mossé, Fernand 38 n. MS Bodley 180 31, 296 MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College (CCCC) 302 61 MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College (CCCC) 303 291–2, 296 MS Hatton 113 61 MS Hatton 114 292 MS Lambeth 487 126, 129, 144, 161, 175 n. 23, 176, 181, 236 MS Vespasian A. xxii 126, 127 determiner inflection in 128, 144, 175 genitive objects in 176 objective genitives in 171 postnominal genitives in 161, 166 temporal genitives in 180 MS Vespasian D. xiv 126, 292 determiner inflection in 127, 144 genitive objects in 176 objective genitives in 171–2, 174–5 postnominal genitives in 160, 166 temporal genitives in 180 Mufwene, S. 220 Mundang 17 Mustanoja, T. 3, 107, 155, 179, 225, 284 n. 4, 298 n. 16 NAPA (non-agreeing possessive appositive), 140–1, 149, 256 negative evidence 29, 308, 309 Neidle, C. 66 Nevis, J. 44 Norde, M. 42 n., 43, 45, 46, 155–8, 186, 188, 192, 202, 204, 205, 207, 212, 213 Norwegian partitive genitives in 165–6 -s genitive in 43 possessor doubling in 213, 214 Nunnally, T. 63, 103 objective case see oblique case objective genitives 74–6, 167–72, 174, 182, 184, 315–16 in case-impoverished texts 170–1 position of in early English 97–8, 169–72

and typological harmony 172, 174 see also affectedness constraint, experiencer constraint oblique case 15, 49–50, 124, 146, 147 of genitive 16–17, 71, 72–3, 84, 120 and French influence 71 in inflection-rich texts 169 and Latin influence 73 in partitives 73–4, 160 as replacement of objective genitives 169–71, 172 Old High German 38 Old Norse 38, 53, 55 det poss in 276, 277 determiner and article in 290–1 poss det in 278, 279, 286 Old Saxon 49, 275, 277 poss det in 277 once-only marking 46 Ormulum 33, 126, 146, 151, 161 n., 163, 164, 167, 236 Orosius 60–1, 87 n. 24, 114, 115, 117, 226, 281, 285, 296 Otoguro, R. 14, 19 n. 9, 45 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 225–6, 253, 254–5, 258, 260 n. Panagiotidis, P. 12, 13 n., 77 Parkes, M. 259 partitive apposition 106–7 partitives 85–9, 106–7 case assignment/licensing in 173–4, 184 and cynn 86, 91, 164 position of (OE) 87–9, 115–16 post-head, in ME 160, 161, 162–7, 173–4, 182, 184 prenominal, in ME 163, 167, 182 and quantifying nouns 87–8, 114–16 with two determiners 88–9 see also partitive apposition Paston letters 244, 250 Paul, H. 188, 195 Payne, J. 11, 12 n., 98, 106 Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC) 256, 257 n., 298 Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (PPCME2) 125, 126–7, 130, 131, 133, 181 parsing in 145 n. 13, 169 Perlmutter, D. 13 n. 5

Index Peterborough Chronicle (PC) 30, 33, 125, 126, 236, 237, 291–2 Phillipps, K. 268 phrasal affix 44–5 Plank, F. 47–8, 84, 85, 103, 104, 275 Plattdeutsch see Low Saxon Plautditsch 49, 193, 194 see also Low Saxon pleonastic possessive pronoun see possessor doubling Poema Morale, see MS Lambeth 487 Pollard, C. 48 Polychronicon 245, 250, 252 Ponelis, F. 211 Pope, Alexander 262 poss det 101–3, 276–9 adjective constraint in 279, 283–6, 287, 290, 292, 304, 314 analysis of 285–6 characteristics of in OE 101–2, 279–87, 314 in copied manuscripts 262–3, 296 n. 9 and definiteness 281 demise of 291–9 and dialects 297 n. discourse function of 287 frequency of (OE) 103 in languages other than English 276–9, 295 neglect of in the literature 11, 104, 280 origins of 277–8 postnominal 277 vs. simple possessive (OE) 182 restrictions of determiners in 285, 286, 314 typological status of 276–7, 295, 304 poss function 11, 17, 66, 83, 286 poss one construction 12–13, 27, 317 possessive constructions: without marking 17, 28 predicative see independent genitives semantic types 74 possessive phrase 9–11 possessive pronouns: declension of in OE 77–8 and definiteness 70–1, 107–110 as determiners 11, 54, 67, 67, 77, 286 LFG treatment of 11, 54, 286 in modern Germanic languages 42 vs. possessive adjectives 47, 53–5, 66–68, 77, 275–6, 280, 289, 301–2, 313–14 postnominal (in English) 96, 106

351

postnominal (in other languages) 38 n., 54–5 reflexive 41, 213, 214 status of in OE 77–80 possessor doubling: case of possessor in 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 204–9, 206, 210, 212–13, 214, 215 n., 219–20, 221 in child language 212 complexity of possessor phrase in 191, 215, 218 in creoles 220 and ‘extraction’ constructions 190, 193 and grammaticalization 36, 189, 201, 203, 211–13, 216, 218, 253, 271 and inanimate possessors 203, 232 and independent genitives 190, 193, 196, 216, 218, 248 and ‘linker’ terminology 186 origin of 187–9, 204, 206–9, 212, 213, 217, 220–1, 310 and possessor agreeing/non-agreeing linkers 189, 197, 202–3, 210, 211, 214, 218–19, 220 sociolinguistic status of 194, 195–6, 214, 222, 272 structure of possessor phrase in 192–3, 195–6 see also individual language names, separated genitive possessor phrase 41 complexity of in ME 135–8 conjoined (in early English) 93, 95, 149, 153 determinants of position in OE 95–8, 114, 120 dislocated see dislocated genitives in doubling constructions 195 postnominal/post-head, in OE 72, 83–5, 106 postnominal/post-head, in ME 137, 159–162, 165–7, 170, 173, 177, 182 prenominal (in OE) see Saxon genitive structure of 10–11, 77 pred feature 13, 286 with pro value 13, 67 prenominal periphrastic possessive see possessor doubling prepositional genitive see of genitive projecting head 44 Priestley, Joseph 14, 262, 264 Primus, B. 20, 21, 22

352

Index

processing 85, 87, 119–20 Proclamation of Henry III 126, 166, 176 Prokosch, E. 38, 39, 40, 41 Pullum, G. 44, 45, 283 Ramat, P. 187, 188, 189, 206, 223 Rappaport, M. 168 resumptive possessive pronoun (RPP) see possessor doubling Rickert, E. 243 Riemsdijk, H. van 65 n., 179 n. Rissanen, M. 107, 288, 296, 300, 303 Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle 234, 241 Rosenbach, A. 2, 11, 12, 81, 82 n., 96, 103, 135, 137, 168, 245 n. 17, 317 Ross, A. 148 -s genitive 37, 43–57, 58 and abbreviations in ME 236–7 as clitic (in ME) 122, 147, 149–150, 151, 231, 238, 270, 312 as clitic (in PDE) 10–11, 16–17, 18, 43–9, 51–3 complexity of, in other Germanic languages 47–8, 50–2, 53, 154, 164 complexity of, in ME 133–7 degree of attachment in ME 150–1, 154, 183, 238, 312 as edge-located inflection 11, 17, 45, 148, 150, 152 183, 312 morphophonemic conditioning in ME 147–8, 150 as non-projecting particle 52–3, 152, 239 in OE, putative examples of 225–7, 234 as phrasal affix 44, 45, 53, 122, 155–7, 183, 312 typological status of 19, 22, 24, 185 see also genitive case, group genitive, Saxon genitive Sadock, J. 44 Saxon genitive 37, 76–7, 80–3, 84, 119, 173, 314 and adjectives 76–7 agreement in 135 recursion in 76 Savage, W. H. 266 Scandinavian languages: definiteness in 276, 278, 290, 294 h-genitives in 216

inflectional features in 295 possessor doubling in 213–18 see also individual language names se 70, 79, 99–102, 109 separated genitive 35, 187 and adjacency to possessor 240, 245, 253, 269, 271–2 agreeing type, analysis of 268 agreeing type, characteristics of 256–9 agreeing type, earliest examples of 254–6, 263 agreement/non-agreement in 224–5, 232–3, 238, 245–8, 252, 253–6, 270, 271, 272, 313 as allomorph of -es 240, 269 and apostrophes 259–60, 262, 270 case of possessor phrase in 226, 227, 249 and case categories 271 as a clitic 231, 233, 235, 236, 238 in combined genitives 247–8, 251–2, 270 comparison of early examples with attached genitive 231, 235, 240, 245, 251, 268, 269, 271–2 comparison of early examples with possessor doubling 223, 232, 249, 251, 252, 271, 272, 273 and degree of attachment 238, 239, 260, 267, 269, 270 dialect distribution of 230–1, 241–5, 251, 266 distinguishing periods of 225 earliest true examples 207, 269, 313 EME examples, characteristics of 230–3 EModE examples as possessor doubling 225, 268–9, 271 in extraction constructions 248–9 grammarians’ comments on 261–3, 266 and grammaticalization 224, 253, 271 in group genitives 233, 247–8, 249–50, 251–2, 257, 270 and his 233–5, 240, 245 n. 16, 250–1, 252, 253, 261–3, 265, 270, 272 identified in literature with possessor doubling 223, 228, 234, 235, 313 and inanimate possessors 232 in ‘independent’ possessives 248 in later Modern English 258, 265 and left dislocation 226, 227–8

Index non-agreeing type, analysis of 248, 251–2, 272 non-agreement in 145–7, 255–6 non-diagnostic type 245, 247, 252, 256, 257, 258, 263, 267, 268–9, 273 as non-projecting particle 239, 252 as origin of group genitive 235, 238, 273, 313 origins of agreeing type 253, 272 origins of non-agreeing type 228–9, 233–6, 245 n. 259–63, 269, 271 as orthographical variant of -es 234, 236–7, 239, 240, 249, 252 and reanalysis 226, 229, 231, 234–5, 252, 253, 269, 270, 272 sociolinguistic status of 238, 260–1, 263, 265–8, 270, 272, 273, 313 spellings used in 231, 247, 250–1 Shorrock, L. 12, 13, 27 Sijs, N. van der 204 Sisam, C. 161, 181 Skellefteå Swedish 217 Smith, J. 38 Spencer, A. 14, 19 n. 9, 45 split genitive 92–5 non-appositive 93–5, 117 see also appositive, combined genitive spoken vs. written language 25–8, 58 Sprockel, C. 86 n. 22 Sprouse, R. 47 Stahl, L. 187, 223, 241, 242, 243, 255, 266 Stanley, E. 132 Sterne, Laurence 258 Stirling, L. 13 n. Stoett, F. 188, 201, 204, 205 Strunk, J. 10, 50–2, 186, 187, 190–5, 212, 223, 271, 313 Stump, G. T. 45 subjective genitive 5–7, 98 Survey of English Dialects 266 n. Swedish deflexion in 42 n., 58, 155–7 loss of genitive types in 174 possessive pronouns in 41 -s genitive in 43–4, 45–6, 151, 152, 155, 158, 185, 212 see also group genitives Sweet, H. 260, 264 syntactic change: and gradualness 26, 179, 314–15 as parameter re-setting 26, 17, 316

353

and pragmatics 305, 316–17 in progress 13 n. 5, 27, 317–18 role of frequency in 316–17 and synchronic theory 2, 4, 316, 318 see also competing grammars, variation Szabolsci, A. 119 Taeldeman, J. 198 Taylor, J. 9, 10, 14, 19 n. 11, 24, 65, 98, 103, 108, 168, 274 texts: copied vs. original 25, 29, 30, 32, 126–7, 133–4, 224 and data gaps 29, 309 and dates 32, 306 and editorial practice 135, 237–8 as evidence for linguistic systems 4, 25–9, 31, 128, 151, 308, 309, 312, 318 vs. typological evidence 6–7, 22, 184–5, 308–10 Thackeray, William Makepeace 267–8 Thráinsson, H. 53, 55, 56 Thomas, R. 2–3, 74, 81 n., 113, 159, 162, 167, 184, 317 Tiersma, P. 210–11 Timmer B. 113 Toivonen, I. 44, 52, 152, 239, 252, 269 Torp, A. 213, 215 Tracy, R. 22, 42 Traugott, E. 284 Trevisa, John 250, 252 Turville-Petre, T. 123 Turkish, case in 19, 150 typological evidence: applications in diachronic syntax 4–6, 128–9, 185, 248, 308–9 limitations of 6, 184, 309–10, 313 þes 70, 79, 99, 101–2 Ura, H. 15 Vangsnes, Ø. 278, 294, 295 Vainikka, A. 16, 42 variation: at individual level 209, 312, 318 and syntactic change 27 in texts 26–8, 318 Vercelli Homilies 280, 281, 284 Vergnaud, J. R. 16 Vespasian Psalter (VP) 108–9

354

Index

Vices and Virtues (VV) 126, 128, 129, 139, 140, 144, 145 n. 13, 149, 162, 166, 167, 171, 175, 176 see also inflection-rich EME texts Vleeskruyer, R. 296 n. 9, 298 n. 13 Verney Memoirs 258 Vocative case 21, 22 n. Wakelin, M. 266 Waldron, R. 243 Wallis, J. 263, 264 Wallis, Thomas 14 Walpole, Horace 258 Watkins, C. 12 Weijnen, A. 211 Weinhold, K. 201 n. Weerman, F. 18, 20, 23, 42 n., 47, 50 n. 8, 135, 187, 188, 192, 197, 202–3, 223, 231 Wendel, T. 22–3 West Jutlandic 213, 214 Wilder, C. 16

Wit, P. de 16, 18, 20, 23, 42 n., 47, 48, 50 n. 8, 77n., 135, 187, 189, 192, 202, 203, 208 n., 223, 231 Wood, J. 77, 99, 100 n., 105 n. 39, 107, 108–9, 274, 280, 281, 282, 284, 296. n. 8, 300–1 word order 63, 70, 120, 172 Wouter’s journal (Early Dutch) 204, 207, 208, 210 Wright, J. 266 Wright, J. and M. 39 Wulfstan’s homilies 61, 63, 98, 114, 115, 117 Wurff, W. van der 103, 170, 172–3 Wyld, H. 223 n., 234, 253, 258 Yerkes 63, 112–13, 296 Yoon, H.-C. 280 York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) 32 Zribi-Hertz, A. 12 Zwicky, A. 11, 44, 45

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