최근 영어에서의 속격 구문에 대하여

On the Genitive Construction in Recent English

This article is concerned with frequency changes between the so-called s-genitive and the of-genitive. The frequency (change) is examined through the search of on-line corpora like COHA and COCA. The results of the search are as follows. First, the frequency of the s-genitive has been increasing since the early part of the 19th century, which is the cover period of COHA. Especially, the percentage of inanimate possessors has been risen among the whole s-genitives. This means that the s-genitive has encroached on the territory of the of-genitive. Second, the increasing use of the s-genitive with inanimate possessor is not limited to particular groups of inanimate possessors. Truly concrete inanimate nouns are also more frequently used with the s-genitive these days, not to mention other inanimate nouns like geographical/temporal nouns and collective nouns. And the increase of collective noun possessors in the s-genitive is noticeable. According to Quirk et al.(1985: 324) and others, collective nouns in the s-genitive are interpreted as animate nouns because the group is conceived as the collection of composing individuals. But the frequency of plural agreement with collective nouns have been decreasing, contrary to the expectation of such authoritative grammar as Quirk et al.(1985). This finding leads us to the final and most important conclusion of this article that the increase of the s-genitive is irrelevant to the meaning and function of the genitive construction. The increase is due to the simple and dense structure of the s-genitive.