Re: [tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 16:26:23 +0000, petegray
<petegray@...> wrote:

>> Greenberg's universal #2 is "in languages with prepositions,
>> the genitive almost always follows the governing noun, while
>> in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes".
>
>Greenberg's universals are not universals, but generalisations, some with
>few exceptions, some with more.

Sure, that's why it says "almost always". Prepositions are
however, as Greenberg showed, a better indicator of NG order
than SOV, as was originally claimed.

>For this particular universal, English is
>an exception.

English has two genitive constructions (one GN, the other
NG), so English is of little relevance in this matter.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...