Re: More natural language questions

David Peterson wrote:

>     I'm having some translation problems with French and German.  First,
> German:
>
>     When you say "a pair of socks" and "a lot of socks", my girlfriend
> (minoring in German) said you say "ein Paar Socken" and "eine Menge Socken".
> I thought you'd have to insert "der" in between there to get that "of", but
> she says it's idiomatic.  Is this true?
Yes, but no more so than when anglophones say "a couple socks" --
some quantifiers require the preposition, others don't.  IIRC, English
tends to require use of "of" more frequently than many other European
languages.  In German again, for example, you also don't say *"die Stadt
von Berlin" ["the city of Berlin"], but rather "die Stadt Berlin".

One thing though:  if a partitive construction is being used in German,
"von" is more likely to be used than the genitive nowadays.

===================================
Thomas Wier | AIM: trwier

"Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi
  entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn;
autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê
  erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos