Garden path sentences are used in psycholinguistics to illustrate that human beings process language one word at a time. The name comes from the saying "to be led down the garden path" meaning "to be misled". An example is:
G01.htm
Compiled by U Kyaw Tun (UKT), M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), and staff of TIL (Tun Institute of Learning, http://www.tuninst.net ), from various sources. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, Myanmar. Not for sale.
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GramGloss-indx.htm
Contents of this page
Grammar Glossary - G
garden path sentence gender General American (English) general and specific generalization generic he generic noun genitive case gerund gerund phrase glossary grammar grapheme grounds
UKT Notes
English -'s endings (Saxon genitive)
General American (Standard Spoken American English)
Genitive case
Genitive is not always possessive
by Bob Cunningham
Excerpt from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence 080716
Garden path sentences are used in psycholinguistics to illustrate that
human beings process language one word at a time. The name comes from the saying
"to be led down the garden path" meaning "to be misled". An example is:
"The horse raced past the barn fell."
The reader usually starts to parse this as an ordinary active intransitive
sentence, but stumbles when reaching the word "fell." At this point,
the reader is forced to backtrack and look for other possible structures.
... ... ...
Garden path jokes : A number of jokes depend on the garden path effect,
often combined with more usual syntactic ambiguity. For instance, "Time flies
like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." The first sentence starts the hearer
firmly down the garden path, priming for a particular parsing of the second
sentence which would parallel the first. The joke hinges on the ambiguities of
"fruit" (independent noun or modifier of "flies"),
"flies" (singular verb or plural noun), and "like"
(preposition or plural verb). Unlike the above-cited sentences, however,
the expected reading of the second sentence ("A piece of fruit flies
through the air the same way a banana does") is grammatically possible, though silly.
What has four wheels and flies? (The answer, "a garbage truck", makes little sense until one realizes that "flies" is a noun referring to the insect rather than a verb indicating what the garbage truck does. "What has flies and four wheels?" resolves the ambiguity.)
From LBH
The classification of nouns or pronouns as:
masculine
he / boy / handyman feminine
she / woman / actress
neuter
it / typewriter / dog
From UseE
A grammatical category found in many languages in which a noun, pronoun,
article and adjective is masculine, feminine or neuter, although some languages
only distinguish between masculine and feminine.
This distinction does not occur in English.
The only times that gender is shown in English is when the noun refers
to a male or female animal, person, etc.:
lion (male) lioness (female)
waiter (male) waitress (female)
Many of these distinctions are being ignored by many speakers nowadays, who
use 'actor' for both men and women, rather than using 'actress' for women.
From AHTD
1. A grammatical category used in the analysis of nouns, pronouns, adjectives,
and, in some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics
such as sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers,
referents, or grammatical forms.
2. One category of such a set.
3. The classification of a word or grammatical form in such a category.
4. The distinguishing form or forms used.
Usage Note: Traditionally, gender has been used
primarily to refer to the grammatical categories of " masculine," " feminine,"
and " neuter"; but in recent years the word has become well established in its
use to refer to sex-based categories, as in phrases such as gender gap
and the politics of gender. This usage is supported by the practice of
many anthropologists, who reserve sex for reference to biological
categories, while using gender to refer to social or cultural categories.
According to this rule, one would say The effectiveness of the medication
appears to depend on the sex (not gender ) of the patient, but
In peasant societies, gender (not sex ) roles are likely to be
more clearly defined. This distinction is useful in principle, but it is by
no means widely observed, and considerable variation in usage occurs at all levels.
Contrast with RP (Received Pronunciation or British English)
See General American English in my notes.
From AHTD
General American n. 1. The speech of native English
speakers of the upper Midwestern United States, considered by some to be
representative of that of the majority of the country, excluding the Southeast,
New York City, and eastern New England.
From LBH
Terms designating the relative number of in-stances or objects included in a
group signified by a word. The following list moves from most general
(including the most objects) to most specific (including the fewest objects):
vehicle > four-wheeled vehicle > automobile > sedan > Ford Taurus
> blue
Ford Taurus > my sister's blue Ford Taurus named Hank.
See also abstract and concrete. (See p. 570.)
From LBH
A claim inferred from evidence. See also inductive reasoning.
From LBH
He used to mean he or she. For ways to avoid he
when you intend either or both genders, see pp. 344 and 565.
From LBH
A noun that refers to a typical member of a group rather
than to a specific person or thing:
Any person may come.
A student needs good work habits.
A school with financial problems may shortchange its students.
A singular generic noun takes a singular pronoun (he, she, or it ). (See pp. 34345.)
See case possessive case
Genitive case in my notes
Genitive is Not Always Possessive by Bob Cunningham in my notes
From LBH
Another term for possessive case. See case.
From AHTD
Grammar adj. Abbr. gen. genit. g. G. 1. Of,
relating to, or designating a case that expresses possession, measurement, or source.
2. Of or relating to an affix or a construction, such as a prepositional phrase,
characteristic of the genitive case. n. 1. The genitive case.
2. A form or construction in this case. [Middle English genetif
from Latin genetīvus from genitus, past participle of gignere to beget;
See gen
- in Indo-European Roots.]
See verbal noun.
From LBH
A verbal
that ends in -ing and functions as a noun:
Working is all right for killing time.
(working is the subject of the verb is; killing is the object of the preposition for.)
See also verbal verbal phrase. (See p. 271.)
From UseE
FORMATION: Base Form + ING
If a verb ends with -e, it loses the last letter
before adding the -ing suffix.
A Gerund is a verb when it acts as a noun; the gerund
can act as the subject or object of a main verb.
(UKT: To state that "a gerund is a verb"
is very misleading. A gerund is a noun derived from a verb.)
Studying is good for you.
Gerunds are used after prepositions, but not usually after 'to '. Gerunds look identical to the present participle, which is used after the auxiliary verb 'to be', but are not the same as they do not function as main verbs. The gerund is used after certain words and expressions, as is the infinitive, so it is useful to try to learn which form an adjective, etc., takes.
From AHTD
1. In Latin, a noun derived from a verb
and having all case forms except the nominative.
2. In other languages, a verbal noun analogous to the Latin gerund,
such as the English form ending in -ingwhen used as a noun,
as in singing in:
We admired the choir's singing.
From LBH
A word group consisting of a gerund plus any modifiers or objects.
See also verbal verbal phrase .
From UseE
A glossary is a list of words or phrases used in a particular field with their
definitions. Glossaries are often found at the back of a specialist or academic
book as an appendix to the text.
From LBH
A description of how a language works.
From UseE
A grammar is a description of the rules of the structure of a language; the way
words combine, the order they come in, the way they change according to their
relationship to other words, how they build up into units like a sentence etc.
A point to note: The word Grammar is often
misspelt as Grammer. Try not to confuse the spelling of the word
"Grammar" for "Grammer" as "Grammer" is incorrect.
See letter
From AHTD
n. 1. A letter of an alphabet. 2.
All of the letters and letter combinations that represent a phoneme, as
f, ph, and gh for the phoneme /f/.
UKT: Statements such as "A; E; I; O; U; & Y are the English vowels " are very misleading. "A E I O U" are graphemes. The vowels are sounds represented by IPA alphabets such as /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /ʌ/ /ʊ/. Refer to a pronouncing dictionary such as DJPD16.
From LBH
A term used for evidence in argument. See evidence.
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case 080610
Main article: Saxon genitive
Possessive marker
Some argue that it is a common misconception that English nouns have a genitive
case, marked by the possessive -'s ending (known as the saxon genitive).
Some linguists believe that English possessive is no longer a case at all, but
has become a clitic,
an independent particle that is always pronounced as part of the
preceding word. This is claimed on the basis of the following sort of example:
The king of Sparta's wife was called Helen."
If the English -'s were a genitive case mark, then the wife would belong to Sparta; but the -'s attaches not to the word Sparta, but to the entire phrase the king of Sparta.
Despite the above, the English possessive did originate in a
genitive case. In Old English, a common singular genitive ending was -es.
The apostrophe in the modern possessive marker is in fact an indicator of the
e that is "missing" from the Old English morphology.
The use of an independently written particle for the possessive can
be seen in the closely related Dutch language: de man z'n hand (the
man's hand, z'n, short for zijn, means his).
(UKT: The above possessive should be compared to Burmese-Myanmar
{Bu.ring iΙ mring:} and
{Bu.ring. mring:}.)
The 18th century explanation that the apostrophe might replace a
genitive pronoun, as in "the king's horse" being a shortened form of "the king,
his horse", is debated. This his genitive appears in English only for a
relatively brief time. The construction occurs in southern German dialects and
has replaced the genitive there, together with the "of" construction that also
exists in English. While modern English speakers might expect that plurals and
feminine nouns would form possessives using '-r', such as "*The queen'r
children", in fact "his" or "hys" could be used for speakers and writers of
either gender throughout most of the mediaeval and Renaissance period.
Remnants of the genitive case remain in Modern English in a few pronouns, such as whose (the genitive form of who), my/mine, his/her/hers/its, our/ours, their/theirs, etc. See also declension in English.
Uses of the marker in English
The English construction in -'s has various uses other than a possessive
marker. Most of these uses overlap with a complement marked by 'of' (the
music of Beethoven or Beethoven's music), but the two constructions
are not equivalent. The use of -'s in a non-possessive sense is more
prevalent, and less restricted, in formal than informal language.
Genitive of origin: subjective genitive
[e.g.] Beethoven's music Fred Astaire's
dancing Confucius' teaching
In these constructions, the marker indicates the origin or source of the head
noun of the phrase, rather than possession per se. Most of these phrases,
however, can still be paraphrased with of : the music of Beethoven,
the teaching of Jesus.
Objective genitive: classifying genitive
[e.g.] the Hundred Years' War a dollar's worth two weeks'
notice speech of an appropriate tone A Midsummer Night's Dream
a man's world runner's high the Teachers' Lounge
In these constructions, the marker serves to specify, delimit, or describe the
head noun. The paraphrase with of is often un-idiomatic or ambiguous with
these genitives: the war of a Hundred Years the pay of a day
notice of two weeks
They introduce the likelihood of misunderstanding.
Genitive of purpose
[e.g.] women's shoes children's literature
Here, the marked noun identifies the purpose or intended recipient of the head
noun. Of cannot paraphrase them; they can be idiomatically paraphrased
with for : shoes for women.
Appositive genitive
[e.g.} Dublin's fair city
This is not a common usage. The more usual expression is the fair city of
Dublin (Wiki-fn01).
Double genitive
[e.g.] that hard heart of thine ("Venus
and Adonis" line 500)
this extreme exactness of his ("Tristram
Shandy", chapter 1.IV)
Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine
a picture of the king's (that is, a picture owned by the king, as
distinguished from a picture of the king, one in which the king is
portrayed) (Wiki-fn02)
Some writers regard this as a questionable usage, although it has a history in
careful English. Some object to the name, as the "of" clause is not a genitive.
Alternative names are "double possessive" and "oblique genitive"
(Wiki-fn03).
The
Oxford English Dictionary says that this usage was "Originally partitive,
but subseq. ... simple possessive ... or as equivalent to an appositive phrase
...". (Wiki-fn04).
Adverbial genitive (Main article: Adverbial genitive )
The ending "-s" without the apostrophe, to form an adverb of time, is considered
to be a remnant of an Old English genitive, and there is a "literary"
periphrastic form (Wiki-fn05).
closed Sundays
of a summer day
Wiki's references
Wiki-fn01 § 5.116 note [b], page 322, Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, London and New York: Longman, 1985. ISBN 0-582-51734-6 Wiki-fn01b
Wiki-fn02 double possessive, page 227 in H.W. Fowler and R. W. Burchfield, The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised third edition, 2000. ISBN 0-19-860263-4 Wiki-fn02b
Wiki-fn03 Chapter 5, § 16.3 Type III, pages 468-469, Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-43146-8 Wiki-fn03b
Wiki-fn04 of XIII.44, volume 10, page 715, The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1989, second edition ISBN 0-19-861186-2 Wiki-fn04b
Wiki-fn05 Entry adverbial genitive, pages 35-36 in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 1994 ISBN 0-87779-132-5. Also see entry of.3 page 680. Wiki-fn05b
Go back Engl-s-ending-note-b
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American 080706
General American (sometimes called Standard Midwestern, Standard Spoken American English or American Broadcast English) is one of the most homogeneous and widespread accents of Anglophone North America. It is the accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like African American Vernacular English.
Development of General American
General American developed gradually from the beginning of the American
colonies. A mixture of peoples from Great Britain as well as Germany, France,
and elsewhere, gave rise to the accent.
General American in the media
General American like British Received Pronunciation as well as most standard
language varieties of many other societies was never the accent of the entire
nation. Rather, it is most closely related to a generalized Midwestern accent
and is spoken particularly by many newscasters, in part because the national
broadcasters preferred to hire people who exhibited similar speech. The famous
news anchor
Walter Cronkite is a good example of a broadcaster using this accent.
General American is sometimes promoted as preferable to other regional accents;
in the United States, classes promising "accent reduction" generally attempt to
teach speech patterns similar to this accent. The well-known television
journalist
Linda Ellerbee, who worked hard early in her career to eliminate a Texas
accent, stated, "in television you are not supposed to sound like you're from
anywhere"; comedian
Stephen Colbert worked hard as a child to reduce his South Carolina accent
on account of the portrayal of Southerners as stupid on television of the day.
General American is also the accent generally taught to people learning English
as a second language in the United States, as well as outside the country to
anyone who wishes to learn "American English." In much of Asia, for example, ESL
teachers are strongly encouraged to teach American English, no matter their own
origins or accents.
Regional home of General American
General American originated in the dialect of the Inland North region.
One reason may be that, as long ago as the U. S. Civil War [1861-1865],
residents of areas such as Michigan and northern Ohio adopted a precise version
of their pronunciation to set themselves apart from nearby speakers of Southern
dialects. Particularly important in setting standards was northeastern Ohio, as
the home of
John Kenyon, the pronunciation editor of the second edition of
Webster's New International Dictionary. (ga-fn01)
However, since the 1960s northeastern Ohio and much of the rest of the Inland
North have been affected by the
Northern Cities Vowel Shift (ga-fn02)
and thus the pronunciation giving rise to General American is now far less
common there.
The Telsur Project (ga-fn03) of William Labov and others examines a number of phonetic properties by which regional accents of the U.S. may be identified. The area that is now most free of these regional properties is indicated on the map: eastern Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln), southern and central Iowa (including Des Moines), and western Illinois (including Peoria and the Quad Cities but not the Chicago area). It may therefore be the case that the accents spoken in this region are deemed the most "neutral" by Americans. This is borne out in an article in the November 1998 issue of National Geographic Magazine, in which the locals' "neutral accents" are cited as one of the reasons why Omaha is home to a large number of telemarketing companies.
Notable media personalities from this region include former talk show host Johnny Carson, and CNN Headline News personality Chuck Roberts, who was a local news anchor in Omaha.
The phoneme /ʍ/ is present only in varieties that have not undergone the wine-whine merger. /ʍ/ is often analyzed as a consonant cluster of /hw/. Also, many Americans realize the phoneme /ɹ/ (often transcribed as /r/) as a retroflex approximant [ɻ].
General American has sixteen or seventeen vowel sounds that can be used in stressed syllables as well as two that can be used only in unstressed syllables. Most of the vowel sounds are monophthongs.
Depending on one's analysis, people who merge the vowels of cot and caught to /ɑ/ either have no phoneme /ɔ/ at all or have the [ɔ] only before /r/. Words like north and horse are usually transcribed /nɔɹθ/ and /hɔɹs/, but since all accents with cot and caught merged to /kɑt/ have also undergone the horse-hoarse merger, it may be preferable to transcribe north and horse /noɹθ/ and /hoɹs/. (ga-fn06). Thus, in these cases, the [ɔ] before /ɹ/ can be analyzed as an allophone of /o/. Some speakers who have maintained the contrast between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ realize /ɔ/ phonetically lower, closer to [ɒ]. (ga-fn07).
[ɝ] and [ɚ] are often analyzed as sequences of /ʌr, ər/, respectively. [ə] is actually an indeterminate vowel that occurs only in unstressed syllables. Since the occurrence of [ə] is mostly predictable, it need not be considered a phoneme distinct from /ʌ/.
Characteristics
While there is not any single formal definition of General American, various
features are considered to be part of it, including rhotic pronunciation, which
maintains the
coda
[ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and court. Unlike RP,
General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like
father and bother,
flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before
[ɹ]. General American also generally has
yod-dropping after
alveolar consonants. Other phonemic mergers, including the
cot-caught merger, the
pin-pen merger, the
Mary-marry-merry merger and the
wine-whine merger, may be found optionally at least in informal and
semiformal varieties.
UKT: The English pronunciation of Myanmars (derisively known as "Burglish") has been my interest since my visit to US in the late 1950. In general, we (I am an ethnic Burmese who had learned English in Myanmar-country in the 1930s and 40s) tend to speak more like GA than RP even though the first English teachers in Myanmar (in the late 19th century) were British and British-trained Anglo's (Anglo-Burmese and Anglo-Indians). However, we tend to pronounce most the examples given in the inset-box with the vowel {au:} than with {o} where the Burglish {au:} and {o} are similar to /ɒ/ and /ɔ/, e.g. <orange>
{au:ring~g} (approximate pronunciation).
One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the behavior of words that in RP have [ɒɹV] where [V] stands for any vowel. These words are treated differently in different North American accents: in New York-New Jersey English they are all pronounced with [-ɑɹ-] and in Canadian English they are all pronounced with [-ɔɹ-] (thus "sorry" is pronounced by Canadians as "sore-ee"). But in General American there is a split: the majority of these words have [-ɔɹ-], like Canadian English, but the last four words of the list below have [-ɑɹ-], like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers. (ga-fn08). Words of this class include, among others:
Wikipedia notes
ga-fn01 Seabrook (2005) ga-fn01b
ga-fn02
Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:187208) ga-fn02b
ga-fn03
Telsur Project home page ga-fn03b
ga-fn04 For most
speakers, what is often transcribed as /e/ is realized as [eɪ], especially in
open syllables. The off-glide [ɪ] is predictable by phonological rule.
ga-fn04b
ga-fn05
For many speakers, what is often transcribed as /o/ is realized as [oʊ],
especially in open syllables. The off-glide [ʊ] is predictable by phonological rule.
ga-fn05b
ga-fn06
Wells (1982:479) ga-fn06b
ga-fn07
Wells (1982:476) ga-fn07b
ga-fn08
Shitara (1993:?) ga-fn08b
Wikipedia references
Labov, William; Sharon Ash & Charles Boberg (2006), The Atlas of North
American English, Mouton-de Gruyter, 187208,
ISBN 3-11-016746-8
Roca, Iggy & Wyn Johnson (1999),
Course in Phonology, Blackwell Publishing
Seabrook, John (May 19, 2005), "The
Academy: Talking the Tawk ", The New Yorker,
<
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/14/051114ta_talk_seabrook> .
Retrieved on 2008-05-14
Shitara, Yuko (1993), "A survey of American
pronunciation preferences", Speech Hearing and Language 7: 20132
Silverstein, Bernard (1994), NTC's Dictionary of American English Pronunciation,
NTC Publishing Group, ISBN 0-8442-0726-8
Wells, John C. (1982a), Accents of English, vol. 1,
Cambridge University Psres, ISBN 0-521-22919-7
Wells, John C. (1982b), Accents of English, vol. 2,
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-24224-X
Wells, John C. (1982c), Accents of English, vol. 3,
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-24225-8
Wells, John C. (2000), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (2nd ed.),
Longman, ISBN 0-582-36468-X
End of Wikipedia article.
Go back Gen-Am-Engl-note-b
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case 080610
In grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun but it can also indicate various relationships other than possession; certain verbs may take arguments in the genitive case; and it may have adverbial uses (see Adverbial genitive). Modern English does not typically mark nouns for a genitive case morphologically rather, it uses the clitic 's or a preposition (usually of ) but the personal pronouns do have distinct possessive forms.
Depending on the language, specific varieties of genitive-nounmain-noun relationships may include:
possession (see Possessive case):
€ inalienable possession ("Janet's height", "Janet's existence", "Janet's long fingers")
€ alienable possession ("Janet's jacket", "Janet's drink")
€ relationship indicated by the noun being modified ("Janet's husband") composition (see Partitive case):
€ substance ("a wheel of cheese")
€ elements ("a group of men")
€ source ("a portion of the food") participation in an action:
€ as an agent ("my leaving") this is called the subjective genitive
€ as a patient ("the archduke's murder") this is called the objective genitive origin ("men of Rome")
description ("man of honour", "day of reckoning")
compounds (Scottish Gaelic "ball coise" = "football", where "coise" = gen. of "cas", "foot")
Depending on the language, some of the relationships mentioned above have their own distinct cases different from the genitive.
Possessive pronouns are distinct pronouns, found in Indo-European languages such as English, that function like pronouns inflected in the genitive. They are considered separate pronouns if contrasting to languages where pronouns are regularly inflected in the genitive. For example, English my is either a separate possessive adjective or an irregular genitive of I, while in Finnish, for example, minun is regularly agglutinated from minu- "I" and -n (genitive).
In some languages, nouns in the genitive case also agree in case with the nouns they modify (that is, it is marked for two cases). This phenomenon is called suffixaufnahme.
In some languages, nouns in the genitive case may be found in inclusio that is, between the main noun's article and the noun itself.
Many languages have a genitive case, including Arabic, Armenian, Czech, Finnish, Georgian, German, Greek, Icelandic, Irish, Latin, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbo Croatian, Slovenian and Turkish. English does not have a proper genitive case, but a possessive ending, -'s (see English -s' endings in UKT notes), although pronouns do have a genitive case.
UKT: more on the Wiki page
Go back Genitive-case-note-b
by Bob Cunningham The alt.usage.english ("AUE") newsgroup http://www.alt-usage-english.org/
Over the years there have been postings to AUE that were based upon the misconception that the genitive case always indicates possession. This fallacy leads to people saying things like 'It can't be right to say "the room's furnishings" because a room can't possess something.'
The genitive case is in fact used for several things besides possession. Bergen and Cornelia Evans, in A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, discuss seven genitive types:
1. Classifying or descriptive genitive
the room's furnishings2. Possessive genitive
Irene's coat3. Subjective and objective genitive
God's creation4. Genitive of purpose
He has written many children's books.5. Measures and other adverbial genitives
("At one time the genitive form of certain words could be used as an adverb.
Most of our adverbs that end in an 's' (or 'z') sound, such as "nowadays," "since," "sometimes," "upwards,"
are survivals from this period.)6. Survivals of "an old genitive of source"
hen's eggs7. Partitive and appositive genitives
(don't exist in English, but we express them with an "of" phrase, as in "some of us," "the state of Ohio," "the title of president")
(The Evanses give a detailed discussion of each type; I've only hinted at their discussions, mostly by giving a few examples.)
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says, in part:
Bishop Lowth in 1762 used the word possessive in place of the older term genitive; so then did other 18th-century grammarians, and many grammarians since have used it. This change in terminology has led to a few minor usage problems based on the erroneous supposition that the only function of the genitive is to show possession. [...] Fries found that the possessive genitive was the most common, but that it accounted for only 40-percent of all genitives.
They discuss a number of uses of the genitive and give examples of each. Under 'descriptive genitive or classifying genitive', with the comment 'Fries adds the genitive of measure to this', they list: the room's furnishings the airplane's speed the building's foundation one day's leave a dollar's worth a year's wages the Eighty Years' War
A comment in MWDEU concerns the rephrasing of the genitive with apostrophe to a structure with a prepositional phrase, as in:
'the airplane's speed' => 'the speed of the airplane'.
They point out that in what one grammarian (Evans) has called the genitive of purpose the prepositional phrase must use the preposition 'for' rather than 'of', as in:
'men's shirts' => 'shirts for men', and
'a girls' school' => 'a school for girls'.
Mark Israel's AUE FAQ doesn't cover the genitive-equals-possessive fallacy per se, but he does skirt the perimeter of it with:
The Latin plural of "curriculum vitae" is "curricula vitae".
[ . . . ]
This is a feature of the Latin genitive of content, which differs in this regard
from the more common Latin genitive of possession.
A classic story in linguistics lore tells of the grammarian who tried to classify all of the ways the genitive can be used. He eventually threw up his hands and said that the genitive is the case that shows any relationship between two substantives.
Go back gen-not-alw-poss-note-b
End of TIL file
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