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

----- Original Message -----

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 3:45 AM

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

On 05-02-14 01:12, elmeras2000 wrote:

> I do not find it problematic if a thing can be classified in more
> than one way at the same time. To me, it appears fully adequate to
> say that -'s is still a case ending, and that not only nouns but
> also some noun phrases can be inflected for genitive case.

An inflected phrase is something of an oxymoron. To be sure, affixations
can be derived from a phrase in English, e.g. <South American> <--
[[South America] -an], or <do-gooder> <-- [[do good] -er] provided that
the phrase itself is a sufficiently fixed one (a stable collocation, and
arguably a lexical item). The "Saxon genitive" <'s>, by contrast, can
follow just any kind of noun phrase, not only a set one, as in <the
Queen of England's> but also an arbitrary one, like <my poor deceased
uncle Jerome's>. In my opinion, it's preferable to regard <'s> as an
enclitic postposition, and the Modern English genitive as an analytic
construction. The whole question is mainly a terminological one, but I'm
opposed to using the term "inflection" too loosely, since if we do so,
some important typological distinctions become blurred.

Piotr

 

PCR:

 

I feel that distinctions are also being blurred by characterizing <'s> as either an enclitic or a postposition.

Let us remember that this discussion had its origin in looking at a phrase like:

 

<James is the friend of my husband's.>

 

We were taught that such a construction was ignorant. It conveys no more than the simpler:

 

<James is the friend of my husband.>

 

It is like a 'double negative' in English: an unnecessary repetition of possessive markers.

 

 

Patrick 
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