0 INTRODUCTION

3. NOMINAL COMPLEMENTATION AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
N[oun]G[enitive] order, which have a class of prenominal possessive forms.” The
possessive slot is usually occupied by possessive determiners, but in English possessive
phrases are also allowed. As is the case with most languages having possessive
determiners, English has two genitive positions within the NP, namely pre- and postnominal
genitive positions. The pre-nominal genitive position is very restrictive in the
class of words it contains: they can be the possessive determiners, also called possessive
modifiers (cf. Ihsane 2003) (e.g. my, his, her), the relativizer whose and genitive NPs (e.g.
Peter’s).
As noted by Ihsane (2003: 23), possessives are structurally parallel to clausal
subjects. Take, for instance, the examples in (57) below. The genitive NP the enemy’s in
(57b) and the possessive determiner their in (57c) correspond to the NP the enemy, which
is the subject of the sentence in (57a).
(57) a. The enemy destroyed the city.
b. The enemy’s destruction of the city
c. Their destruction of the city
Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993: 201-202) proposes that there are at least two respects
in which these prenominal possessive forms are reminiscent of the subject of a clause.
First, the position they occupy in relation to the head is similar to the position that the
subject occupies in English. Furthermore, they have high referentiality, and in Keenan’s
(1976: 319) words, “‘Highly Referential’ NPs, e.g. personal pronouns, proper nouns, and
demonstratives can always occur as subjects.” However, it must be conceded that genitive,
or possessive, NPs can also correspond to objects at times, 7 as in (58) (Quirk et al. 1985:
321-322).
7 Quirk et al. (1985: 321-322) list a total of eight genitive meanings, namely, the possessive genitive (e.g. the
earth’s gravity/ the gravity of the earth); the subjective genitive (e.g. her parents’ consent/ the decline of
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