3.1.3 Givenness

The term “givenness” could also go under the name “topicality” (Rosenbach 2013: 279) or “information status” (Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi 2007:451). It has the effect that, if the possessor head noun has appeared in context before, it is more likely that the writer will use this possessor head noun in an s-genitive construction.

Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi (2007: 451) set a condition to identify those possessor nouns: if the possessor head noun has occurred within 50 words before its genitive, this possessor head noun could be considered as “given”. It has been calculated that among all the s-genitive possessors, 26.9% are given, while 17.6% of all of-genitive possessors are given.

Rosenbach (2002) and Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi (2007) point out that givenness is hard to operationalize in empirical studies. Moreover, Rosenbach (2013) claims that the factor “givenness” might share some similarities with the factor “thematic genitives” (Osselton 1988)/text frequency of the possessor head. Both factors are based on the occurrence of the possessor head noun, yet “thematic genitives” (Osselton 1988)/text frequency of the possessor head emphasizes the overall occurrence of the possessor head noun, whereas “givenness” emphasizes the occurrence of the possessor head noun before its genitive.

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