English “ Group Genitive ” is a Special Clitic

is paper discusses the analysis of some important features of the English possessive construction, a topic that has long interested linguists from many traditions. At least since the work of Jespersen , the properties of English possessives have served as examples and justification for a variety of theories of grammatical organization, and their analysis is certainly a matter of interest in its own right. It is also of interest more generally, because a correct account has implications for the treatment of a somewhat wider range of issues in linguistic theory. I will primarily be concerned here with the formal expression of possessive marking, a superficially simple matter that nonetheless can serve to distinguish theories that differ in rather subtle ways. In the course of the discussion, however, I will for some broader claims about the morphosyntactic context in which possessive marking occurs.