Re: Antigenetive case?

 --- Christophe Grandsire
>
> Me too. At first that's what I thought when I saw
> the title. And it's also
> something natural languages often have, although
> it's mostly marked by using
> convolutions or stretching the meaning of some case.
> Basically it's the other
> end of the opposition ownership-belonging. The
> genitive case marks ownership
> (it marks the owner) while the "antigenitive" would
> mark belonging (it marks
> the thing owned). In Latin, the "antigenitive" was
> marked with the ablative
> case: vir magno animo: a man who has a great spirit.
> But in Latin, like in many
> other languages, those constructions often evolve
> into adjectives, since
> this "antigenitive" is mostly used for
> qualification. So "vir magno animo"
> became "vir magnanimus". Hence French "magnanime"
> and English "magnanimous".
>
and of course in english you can use the, hmmhmm,
genitive ( or rather, 'of' construction) :

a man of great spirit.

another case of english being none too fussed about
direction of meaning maybe ( cf, the food's cooking,
this needs doing, grapes sell at £1.40 a kilo, his
discovery vs its discovery ( him disovering it ) &c )
? or just a natural result of the english 'of'
construction giving a very weak sense of possession,
and a rather stronger sense of association.

bn

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