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The impact of semantic relations on grammatical alternation: an experimental study of proper name modifiers and determiner genitives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2019

TINE BREBAN ,
JULIA KOLKMANN  and
JOHN PAYNE
TINE BREBAN
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and English Language, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom, tine.breban@manchester.ac.uk, john.payne@manchester.ac.uk
JULIA KOLKMANN
Affiliation:
Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdomjulia.kolkmann@york.ac.uk
JOHN PAYNE
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and English Language, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom, tine.breban@manchester.ac.uk, john.payne@manchester.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this article we investigate the role of semantic relations in grammatical alternations. The specific alternation we look at is that between the proper name modifier construction, e.g. the Obama government, and the determiner genitive, e.g. Obama's government. Through the use of an experimental study in which participants were asked to rate the naturalness of the two constructions in 20 attested natural language contexts and provide paraphrases of the semantic relations in question, we tested when the two constructions alternate and whether either construction expresses semantic relations that block alternation. Our initial finding is that none of the relations we studied is categorically associated with only one of the constructions, but that certain relations – notably possession and name – are far more preferentially associated with determiner genitives and proper name modifiers respectively. Despite these ‘default’ associations, participants nevertheless identified a range of possible interpretations for many of the examples, meaning that our study simultaneously supports the opposing theoretical views of default relations and semantic underspecification. Further, our study validates the inclusion of semantic relations in genitive alternation studies as a major factor despite the notorious difficulties in their operationalisation. Animacy distinctions, although more straightforward to codify, appear to be of lesser importance. Methodologically, our study shows the value of an experimental approach as a corrective to researcher intuitions about the identification of semantic relations in context.

Keywords

genitive alternationproper namessemantic relationsdefault interpretationsexperimental study
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Different perspectives on proper noun modifiers , December 2019 , pp. 797 - 826
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions, as well as to the other authors in this special issue and colleagues at the University of Manchester. We'd like to thank Mareike Hamann, the research assistant who compiled the list of predicates. Tine Breban carried out this research as part of an AHRC Leadership Fellowship (AH/N002911/1).

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