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The argument-modifier distinction is less clear in NPs than in VPs; nouns do not typically take arguments. The clearest cases of arguments in NPs are in certain kinds of nominalizations which retain some "verbal" properties (Grimshaw 1990). The status of apparent arguments of non-deverbal relational nouns like sister is more controversial.
Genitive constructions like 'John's teacher', 'team of John's' offer a challenging testing ground for the argument-modifier distinction in NPs, both in English and cross-linguistically. On the analyses of Partee (1983/97) and Barker (1995), the DP in a genitive phrase (i.e. 'John' in 'John's') is always an argument of some relation, but the relation does not always come from the head noun. On those "ambiguity" analyses, some genitives are argument-like and some are modifier-like. Recent proposals by Jensen and Vikner and by Borschev and Partee analyze all genitives as argument-like, a conclusion we are no longer sure of.
In this paper we explore a range of possible analyses: argument-only, modifier-only, and ambiguity analyses, and consider the kinds of semantic evidence that suggest that different analyses may be correct for different genitive or possessive constructions in different languages.
The unusual development of the PDE [present-day English] s-genitive can be historically motivated, if the 's form is supposed to be not a mere leftover of the Old English (henceforth OE) casemarking, but the outcome of the merging of two patterns: the inflectional genitive ending (levelled to -s) and the construction "John his book" (henceforth 'possessive-linked genitive') during the Middle and the Early Modem English phases.
As my corpus analysis will show, the semantic and syntactic constraints ruling the occurrence of the 's pattern in the time interval of the rise of the 's-pattern (1400 - 1650) are the same ones as those ruling the occurrence of the possessive-linked genitive.
This hypothesis is further confirmed by cross-language comparison (with the other West Germanic languages, especially Afrikaans).