Re: Never violate a universal unless it seems like a good idea at the time
| From: | Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, September 6, 2003, 12:23 |
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In a message dated 9/5/2003 11:38:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
joe@WANTAGE.COM writes:
>It seems to me that a lot of Germanic languages violate #2. English,
>Swedish, and at least bits of German.
English is mixed: The genitive "X's" precedes the head noun, but the genitive
"of X" follows. Since "of X" is more common overall (or so I've read),
English is mostly in conformity with #2.
(Greenberg explicitly calls both of these "genitive" in his discussion.)
Doug