3.4.2 "Nouniness"

Another economy-related factor is “nouniness”. Similar to the type-token ratio, s-genitives tend to be used in passages which have more nouns, i.e. which are “nouny” (Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi 2007: 458). Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi (2007: 458-459) employ the same approach to gain the data as for the type-token ratio: they select those genitive constructions that have 50 words before and 50 words behind them.

The results show that s-genitives are associated with the passages that have more nouns (the average figure in the corpora is 28.4), while of-genitives appear in the less “nouny” passages (the corresponding figure is 27.6). Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi (2007: 463) also calculate that the odds of using s-genitive only increases by 9% when the passage has 10 more nouns. Compared to the figure in the case of type-token ratio, “nouniness”, however, seems to have less influence on genitive choice than the type-token ratio.

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