This is a paper about language variation and about language change, investigating the competition between the s-genitive and the of-genitive in Modern English (written and spoken, British and American) as a case study. Drawing on a range of spoken and written corpora and considering a multivariate envelope of seven major conditioning factors (such as possessor animacy and end-weight), we seek to uncover, first, how the probabilistic preferences of British and American journalists might have changed between the 1960s and 1990s, and, second, how such changes in written English relate to the way speakers of English choose between the two genitives. We find that the s-genitive is comparatively frequent in both spoken English and contemporary journalistic English thanks to quite different reasons, and that the recent spread of the s-genitive in press English is due to a process of economization rather than colloquialization.
2023. Alternation phenomena and language proficiency: the genitive alternation in the spoken language of EFL learners. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 19:3 ► pp. 427 ff.
GLASS, LELIA
2022. Quantifying relational nouns in corpora. English Language and Linguistics 26:4 ► pp. 833 ff.
Levshina, Natalia & David Lorenz
2022. Communicative efficiency and the Principle of No Synonymy: predictability effects and the variation ofwant toandwanna. Language and Cognition 14:2 ► pp. 249 ff.
2020. The Role of Gender in Postcolonial Syntactic Choice-Making. In Gender in World Englishes, ► pp. 121 ff.
Kubota, Maki, Caroline Heycock, Antonella Sorace & Jason Rothman
2020. Cross-Linguistic Influence on L2 Before and After Extreme Reduction in Input: The Case of Japanese Returnee Children. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Law, Melanie A. & Haidee Kotze
2020. Gender, Writing and Editing in South African Englishes. In Gender in World Englishes, ► pp. 205 ff.
TAMAREDO, IVÁN, MELANIE RÖTHLISBERGER, JASON GRAFMILLER & BENEDIKT HELLER
2020. Probabilistic indigenization effects at the lexis–syntax interface. English Language and Linguistics 24:2 ► pp. 413 ff.
Bohmann, Axel
2019. Variation in English Worldwide,
BREBAN, TINE, JULIA KOLKMANN & JOHN PAYNE
2019. The impact of semantic relations on grammatical alternation: an experimental study of proper name modifiers and determiner genitives. English Language and Linguistics 23:4 ► pp. 797 ff.
Diessel, Holger
2019. The Grammar Network,
Diessel, Holger
2020. A Dynamic Network Approach to the Study of Syntax. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Akinlotan, Mayowa & Alex Housen
2017. Noun phrase complexity in Nigerian English. English Today 33:3 ► pp. 31 ff.
Heller, Benedikt, Tobias Bernaisch & Stefan Th. Gries
2017. Empirical perspectives on two potential epicenters: The genitive alternation in Asian Englishes. ICAME Journal 41:1 ► pp. 111 ff.
Romaine, Suzanne
2017. Social Conditioning. In The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, ► pp. 534 ff.
Geeraerts, Dirk
2016. The sociosemiotic commitment. Cognitive Linguistics 27:4 ► pp. 527 ff.
Travis, Catherine E. & Amy M. Lindstrom
2016. Different registers, different grammars? Subject expression in English conversation and narrative. Language Variation and Change 28:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
D'Arcy, Alexandra & Sali A. Tagliamonte
2015. Not always variable: Probing the vernacular grammar. Language Variation and Change 27:3 ► pp. 255 ff.
Ford, Marilyn & Joan Bresnan
2015. Generating data as a proxy for unavailable corpus data: the contextualized sentence completion task. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 11:1
EHRET, KATHARINA, CHRISTOPH WOLK & BENEDIKT SZMRECSANYI
2014. Quirky quadratures: on rhythm and weight as constraints on genitive variation in an unconventional data set. English Language and Linguistics 18:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
GRAFMILLER, JASON
2014. Variation in English genitives across modality and genres. English Language and Linguistics 18:3 ► pp. 471 ff.
JANKOWSKI, BRIDGET L. & SALI A. TAGLIAMONTE
2014. On the genitive's trail: data and method from a sociolinguistic perspective. English Language and Linguistics 18:2 ► pp. 305 ff.
ROSENBACH, ANETTE
2014. English genitive variation – the state of the art. English Language and Linguistics 18:2 ► pp. 215 ff.
BIBER, DOUGLAS & BETHANY GRAY
2011. Grammatical change in the noun phrase: the influence of written language use. English Language and Linguistics 15:2 ► pp. 223 ff.
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt
2009. Typological parameters of intralingual variability: Grammatical analyticity versus syntheticity in varieties of English. Language Variation and Change 21:3 ► pp. 319 ff.
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