0 INTRODUCTION

3. NOMINAL COMPLEMENTATION AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
Historically, Fries (1940: 206) shows that the relative frequency of what he calls
the ‘periphrastic’ genitive (of-PP) in genitive expressions dramatically increased (from
6.3% to 84.5%) between the years 1200 to 1300. Raumolin-Brunberg (1991), in turn,
speaks of a heavy reliance on of-PPs in sixteenth-century English. This statement is
confirmed by Biber and Clark’s (2002: 59) analysis which shows that PPs are common
over the history of English, although they are particularly frequent in PDE. As for medical
English, of-PPs are the overwhelmingly dominant type of nominal postmodifier in the 18 th
century. Not surprisingly, Biber and Clark (2002: 46) note that PPs are the most common
type of postmodification, reaching up to 80% of all kinds of postmodifiers in news and
academic prose.
Raumolin-Brunberg (1991: 263-264) puts forward a number of structural reasons
favouring the use of the of-PP type in the 16 th century. The first reason is when the head
noun has more than one determiner/modifier of its own, as in (83) below. The second
reason is to avoid the use of several PossPs in a row. Moreover, Raumolin-Brunberg points
out that, in general, of-PPs are found to a greater extent than PossPs in long NPs occurring
clause finally, due to end-weight and end-focus. See, for instance, (84) below in Raumolin-
Brunberg (1991: 264):
(83) (…)/ was there in the sight// of many worshypfull people so
greuously tourmented/ (…) (Heresies 93:22)
(84) (…), in that the Lord Dacres so little estemede the minde and
opinion// of the Kingis sister// werof he had by his seruant so
parfait knowledge. (Lettoff 117: 30)
In addition, her data show that half of the NPs with of-PPs and one third with
genitives are nominalizations. It is usually the case that human complements are almost
always subjects, yet the normal tendency of placing subjects before the head and objects
after it does not always hold at the language stage examined by Raumolin-Brunberg:
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