Abstract: This book examines the history of adnominal genitive phrases from Old to Early Modern English, focusing on the evidence provided by a systematic corpus study and the role of linguistic typology in diachronic syntax. It is argued that arguments based on typology should not outweigh the evidence presented by the texts. Particular attention is paid to the nature of the possessive marker in Middle English, since previous studies, which have concluded that the marker was a clitic at an early stage, suffer from an inadequate empirical base. Two chapters are devoted to establishing that the ‘his genitive’ found in many early texts is not to be equated with the possessor doubling construction found in many Germanic languages. The relationship between possessives and determiners in earlier English is also examined.

Keywords: diachronic syntax, genitive case, determiner, linguistic typology, history of English