This special issue concerns English genitive variation: the choice between the s-genitive and the of-genitive. It has grown out of the workshop ‘Genitive variation in English’, which was held at the conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English at the University of Boston in June 2011. While previous research on genitive variation has already unearthed a wealth of factors predicting the variation, the aim of this volume is to add new dimensions to existing parameters.

This article is a survey of quantitative research on the choice between the s-genitive and the of-genitive in English. It provides a detailed and critical review of the methodological problems and advances as well as major findings and how these have been treated in theoretical frameworks. The article concludes with a discussion of objectives and challenges for future research. It is argued that research into English genitive variation not only enhances our knowledge of this specific case of syntactic variation but also helps us to further understand the mechanisms of syntactic alternations in general.

This article explores measures, operationalisations and effects of rhythm and weight as two constraints on the variation between the s-genitive and the of-genitive. We base the analysis on interchangeable genitives in the news and letters sections of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers), which covers the period between 1650 and 1999. Thus, we are ultimately concerned with the applicability of two factors that have their roots in speech (rhythm: phonology; weight: online processing) to an ‘unconventional’, written data set with a historical dimension. As for weight, we focus on the comparison of simple single-constituent and more complex multi-constituent measurements. Our notion of rhythm centres on the ideally even distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables. We find that in our data set, both rhythm and weight show theoretically unexpected quadratic effects: rhythmically better-behaved s-genitives are not necessarily preferred over of-genitives, and short constituents exhibit odd weight effects. In conclusion, we argue that while rhythm is only a minor player in our data set, the quadratic quirks it exhibits should inspire further study. Weight, on the other hand, is a crucial factor which, however, likewise comes with measurement and modelling complications.

Research on the English genitive (e.g. Rosenbach 2007: 154) reports increasing use of the s-variant. This has been explained as extension to inanimate possessors, a semantic shift (e.g. Hundt 1998; Rosenbach 2002), or due to the pressures of economy in journalism, a register change (Hinrichs & Szmrecsanyi 2007; Szmrecsanyi & Hinrichs 2008). The present work reports on a large-scale sociolinguistic investigation of the genitive in vernacular Canadian English using socially stratified corpora and individuals of all ages. The results show that human, prototypical possessors are 96 per cent s-genitive and non-humans are 95 per cent of-genitive. Within the small envelope where both forms are possible, we discover that variation patterns quite differently depending on animacy. For humans, use of the s-genitive is stable in apparent time and correlates with whether or not the possessor ends in a sibilant. In contrast, non-human collectives/organizations reveal an increasing use of s-genitives in apparent time and a favouring effect of short possessors, persistence (when an s-genitive has occurred recently in the previous discourse) and when the individual has a blue-collar job. Groups comprising humans (collectives and organizations), such as our church's youth group, and places that are possible locations for humans (countries, cities, etc.), as in Toronto's best restaurant, are the prime conduit for this change. These findings from vernacular speech confirm the extension of the s-genitive in inanimates by semantic extension.

This article discusses the niche role that the oblique genitive of the type the friend of John’s occupies in the context of genitive variation. The article shows that the oblique genitive should be considered an independent construction which competes marginally in two syntactic contexts with the s-genitive (as in John's friend) and the of-genitive (as in the friend of John). The first context is one in which all three constructions function as the predicative complement of the clause (e.g. He is a friend of John's / John's friend / a friend of John). Note that in this context the definiteness effect of the s-genitive is downplayed, so that competition is possible with indefiniteness of the other two constructions. The second context is one where the oblique genitive and the of-genitive are introduced by the determiner the. Contrary to the claim that oblique genitive constructions introduced by the definite article must receive restrictive modification of the head (see e.g. Barker 1998; Lyons 1986), the quantitative data presented in this article reveal that oblique genitives introduced by the determiner the are not confined to pre- or postmodification of the head but can occur, albeit rarely, without any modification as in the example the executor of Sir Ralph’s.

The article further compares the oblique genitive, s-genitive and of-genitive with respect to the following five features: noun-headed vs pronoun dependent; animacy of the dependent; length of the noun-headed dependent; determiner of the head; and the semantic relations that can hold between head (e.g. friend) and dependent (e.g. John). The most intriguing theoretical conclusion is that the semantic relations available to head and dependent in the oblique genitive are a subset of those found in the s-genitive, which, again constitute a subset of those that exist in the of-genitive. This means that variation between all three constructions is not only restricted to the two syntactic contexts outlined above but also to a shared set of semantic relations.