Re: THEORY: Deriving adjectives from nouns

Tom Wier wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
> > But those are very different meanings.  *Logically* they should be
> > rendered differently.  After all, I don't own "my school", I merely
> > attend it.
>
> Right -- it's just a historical accident that those meanings have
> gotten cramped up in one case ending.
But not at all a random thing.  'Genitive' relationships tend to be
relationships between two nouns, and the nature of the relationship is
inferred from the nature of the two nouns and the relationships they
are likely to enter into.  (This phenomenon, where the precise meaning
of a construction varies according to context, is pervasive in
language -- cf. Adele Goldberg's _Constructions_ and Ronald
Langacker's _Cognitive Grammar_ works.)

The most likely relationship that a student and a school are going to
enter into is enrollment; hence, "it is my school" spoken by a student
means "I am enrolled in this school."  "It is my school" spoken by a
principle means, of course, "I administrate this school."  Unless the
context is such that it is clear that he is talking about a school he
is or was enrolled in.

The most likely relationship that a human and an object have is
possession; hence "it is my book" means "I possess this book" --
unless the human is an author talking about his work, in which of
course it means "I wrote this book!"

And of course if one of the nouns is deverbal, the two most likely
relationships between them are subject-of-verb and object-of-verb;
hence, "the providence of God" and "love of cheesecake" respectively!
"Love of God" is notorious for being ambiguous between these two
meanings.

I just wanted to point out that this "historical accident" is a
matter of _accomodation_ -- a deep and too-little-recognized part of
the very structure of language.  It is indeed a historical accident
that there do not happen to be more precise words for the situations
you mentioned, but the fact is there are not very precise words for
the vast, vast overwhelming majority of the things one expresses by
language, and that is why we are so good at unconsciously and
automatically adjusting the meanings of the words and constructions we
have to suit the occasion.

Ed Heil ------ edheil@postmark.net
--- http://purl.org/net/edheil ---