Anfang diesen Jahres und Menschen jeden Alters . Eine Korpusuntersuchung zur n -haltigen Determiniererflexion im Genitiv Singular Maskulinum und Neutrum

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Abstract This paper examines the variation between -n and -s in the genitive singular inflection of determiners for masculine and neuter nouns as can be observed in Herbst diesen Jahres vs. Herbst dieses Jahres ‘autumn of this year’. So far, the discussion of this phenomenon has focused on the demonstrative determiner dies-, where the -n inflection is regarded as a new, non-standard variant. The results of our corpus study of newspaper texts show that the -n inflection occurs across the entire determiner system and is supported by the decreasing prototypicality of individual determiners: the less prototypical a determiner is, the more frequently it exhibits the -n inflection. The least prototypical determiner class is formed by indefinite determiners such as jed-, which predominantly exhibit -n inflection (e. g., Menschen jeden Alters). The majority of demonstratives fulfil the prototypical features of determiners. Here, the -n inflection represents a rare variant of the -s inflection. Finally, possessive determiners are located in the prototypical centre of the determiners and consistently exhibit -s inflection with a few exceptions. Our study also shows that genitive noun phrases introduced by determiners exhibiting -n inflection have less paradigmatic depth and block adjectival attribution. Although the contexts in which -n occurs are restricted, it is always interchangeable with -s. We therefore classify these two forms as allomorphs.