TY - JOUR
T1 - Toward more accountability
T2 - Modeling ternary genitive variation in Late Modern English
AU - Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt
AU - Biber, Douglas
AU - Egbert, Jesse
AU - Franco, Karlien
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2016/2/23
Y1 - 2016/2/23
N2 - Whereas the alternation between the s-genitive (the New Year's message) and the of-genitive (the message of the New Year) is well documented, our study offers a more accountable analysis of genitive variation by including noun-noun (NN)-genitives (the New Year message). We consider four different variable contexts (s versus of, NN versus of, NN versus s, and NN versus s versus of ), which we analyze using regression analysis. The dataset consists of 10,054 variable genitives drawn from the Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. The material covers the period between 1650 and 2000, thus enabling us to track the evolution of variable genitive grammar in real time. We report that there is an overall drift toward the NN-genitive, which is preferred over other variants when constituent noun phrases are short, possessor constituents are inanimate, and possessum constituents are thematic. In addition to these substantive contributions, we showcase methods of dealing with a complex dataset covering nonbinary grammatical variation.
AB - Whereas the alternation between the s-genitive (the New Year's message) and the of-genitive (the message of the New Year) is well documented, our study offers a more accountable analysis of genitive variation by including noun-noun (NN)-genitives (the New Year message). We consider four different variable contexts (s versus of, NN versus of, NN versus s, and NN versus s versus of ), which we analyze using regression analysis. The dataset consists of 10,054 variable genitives drawn from the Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. The material covers the period between 1650 and 2000, thus enabling us to track the evolution of variable genitive grammar in real time. We report that there is an overall drift toward the NN-genitive, which is preferred over other variants when constituent noun phrases are short, possessor constituents are inanimate, and possessum constituents are thematic. In addition to these substantive contributions, we showcase methods of dealing with a complex dataset covering nonbinary grammatical variation.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0954394515000198
DO - 10.1017/S0954394515000198
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84959343386
SN - 0954-3945
VL - 28
SP - 1
EP - 29
JO - Language Variation and Change
JF - Language Variation and Change
IS - 1
ER -