English possessive ’s: clitic and affix

Abstract

The English possessive marker displays properties of both clitic and affix. I argue that synchronically it is, in fact, both, rather than only one or the other or something halfway between. I show that it is possible to model the dual clitic/affix status of the possessive in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar, and that this model is capable of accounting for the full range of constructions in which the possessive marker appears. This also has consequences for questions of English noun phrase syntax, and issues of categoriality and degrammaticalization.