---
title: "The Shift from Affix to Clitic in the History of the English Genitive:"
description: "The author examines John of Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (c. 56 references."
authors: ["Rodrigo Pérez Lorido"]
year: 2025
venue: "SELIM 30"
source: "https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/SELIM/article/view/22218"
licence: "CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; SELIM)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lorido-2025-shift-affix-clitic-history-english/"
---
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# The Shift from Affix to Clitic in the History of the English Genitive: Evidence from John of Trevisa’s Polychronicon

**Authors:** [Rodrigo Pérez Lorido](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/rodrigo-perez-lorido/) · **Year:** 2025 · **Venue:** [SELIM 30](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/selim-journal-of-the-spanish-society-for-medieval-english-language-and/) ([SELIM Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/selim-journal-of-the-spanish-society-for-medieval-english-language-and/2025/)) · **Publisher:** [University of Oviedo](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-of-oviedo/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; SELIM)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.30.2025.125-60) · [PDF](https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/SELIM/article/download/22218/17176) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4413083200)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper asks when and how the English possessive marker turned from a noun inflection into a clitic that attaches to the end of a whole phrase. The diagnostic is the group genitive, where the marker sits on the last word of a complex possessor rather than on its head noun. The author examines John of Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (c. 1387), the main late‑fourteenth‑century source of such structures. Earlier studies used only the small digitised extract in the PPCME, but this study analyses the complete text and also checks variant manuscripts.

The finding is that group genitives clearly prefer the detached "his genitive" (as in *the king his name*). Split genitives, by contrast, mostly use the attached -(e)s ending. This points to the his genitive as a bridge to clitic status. The evidence goes against Allen's claim that group genitives followed the spread of -(e)s to all noun classes. It also goes against Janda's view that loss of inflection triggered the reanalysis.

## Key points
- The text is Trevisa's Polychronicon (c. 1387). Earlier research used only the PPCME portion, which is less than one eighth of the work.
- Group genitives marked with *his* outnumber those marked with -(e)s by about 4:1. In split genitives, the attached -(e)s is preferred about 8:1 over *his*.
- Group genitives with -(e)s are almost all limited to "title of place" patterns. *His* group genitives occur even with heavy postmodifiers, including relative clauses.
- Where MS (J) has a split genitive with -(e)s, other manuscripts that turn it into a group genitive consistently use *his*.
- Many irregular or zero genitive forms survive in the text. This undercuts the idea that -(e)s had generalised before group genitives arose.

## Interesting ideas
- The way the two markers almost split their contexts between them is used as a test of grammatical status: head attachment signals an affix, and phrase‑edge attachment signals a clitic.
- In split genitives, the possessor's modifier appears after the possessed noun, so linear adjacency misleads about attachment.
- A detached possessive pronoun (*the king his name*) can serve as an alternative marker of possession.
- Comparing several manuscripts of one text reveals which variants the language allowed in the same slot, treating copyists as independent witnesses.
- The paper shows that conclusions drawn from a small digitised sample can be wrong when the full text says otherwise.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (tokens): Always split possessive 's off as its own token, and record whether its host is the head noun or a phrase‑final word, so later stages know where possession really points.
- **I2** (tree): Add tests where a postmodifier like "of England" or a relative clause must attach to the possessor rather than the possessum, and check that the parser gets this right.
- **I3** (frames): Normalise "X his Y" patterns, as found in archaic texts or fables, into the same possession frame as "X's Y" so the holder relation stays correct.
- **I4** (learn): Treat disagreements between witness parsers on parallel or paraphrased sentences as evidence, not just noise, much as variant readings expose the allowed options.
- **I5** (learn): Run evaluations on complete documents alongside sampled sentences, and flag any metric that shifts sharply between the two as possible sampling bias.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Universidad de Oviedo](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/universidad-de-oviedo/) — University, Oviedo, Spain · 5 works · 2,016 citations

📚 Shelves (2): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 16,039 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 15,891 works

🧭 Topics (1): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,263 works

## Cite

Cite as: Rodrigo Pérez Lorido. 2025. The Shift from Affix to Clitic in the History of the English Genitive: Evidence from John of Trevisa’s Polychronicon. SELIM 30.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{lorido2025shift,
  title = {{The Shift from Affix to Clitic in the History of the English Genitive: Evidence from John of Trevisa’s Polychronicon}},
  author = {Rodrigo Pérez Lorido},
  booktitle = {SELIM 30},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.17811/selim.30.2025.125-60},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.30.2025.125-60}
}
```

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56 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 1 November 2026*