A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE INFLECTED AND THE PREPOSITIONAL GENITIVE IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH
A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE INFLECTED AND THE PREPOSITIONAL GENITIVE IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it considers the factors that are instrumental in thechoice of the inflected and the prepositional genitive in present-day English. Secondly, it aims to identifyfrequency-related trends regarding the use of the inflected genitive and prepositional genitive in AmE andBrE. The quantitative analysis is based on data collected from the Frown and FLOB corpora. Thedistribution of tokens according to semantic categories is similar in the two varieties examined. Animatemodifier classes are more common with the inflected genitive, while inanimate classes are more commonwith the prepositional genitive. The article addresses two additional conditioning factors involved in thevariation of the inflected and the prepositional genitive: the semantic relationship holding between thehead and the modifier and the impact of the impact of the postmodifier.

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