The Genitive in Cameroon English

This book describes the genitive in Cameroon English (CamE) specifically its syntactic and semantic features. It investigates both the features specific to the genitive in this variety of English and their proportion of occurrence. Facts from the data used to support the investigations attest that CamE is very close to the mother variety, British English, since both showcase the same main types of genitive: 's genitive and of-genitive. However, CamE tends to have developed specificities. Like the inexistence of double genitive with a noun as the head of the 's phrase, though the form with a pronoun is attested and holds a considerable proportion. Elsewhere, the form combining the demonstrative and the possessive pronoun also stands out. In some cases, relative that replaces whose with non-human antecedent (referred to as that-genitive). Alternation between of-genitive and 's genitive is very largely in favour of of-genitive. Exception made for newspaper headlines where the gap is rather tight though still in favour of of-genitive. With regard to meaning, partitive is the genitive meaning most expressed in CamE, while possessive and kinship are last but one and last respectively.