Some considerations on the 's morpheme in English: Acquisition and Theory

This article starts from the discussion of some data concerning the acquisition of English as a second language, which suggest that genitival ’s and copular ’s are considered one and the same morpheme by the ex- perimental subjects. e ’s= is Hypothesis is then examined throughout some relevant linguistic literature. e examination of arguments in fa- vour and against it leads to the proposal that ’s is indeed one and the same morpheme whose content is (third) person, in turn a quanti cational feature which expresses denotation. In the nal part of the paper exten- sions to plural -s and third person singular -s of lexical verbs are sketched.