Re: Possessive and Genitive
From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 12:18 |
Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
> Actually, I tend to see the term "possessive" as wider in use than
> "genitive". "Genitive" only refers to the noun case for possession.
> "Possessive" can be used in places where you can't talk about a case (like
> in French or Spanish which have possessive *adjectives* - agreeing in
> number and in gender with the noun possessed -, which are not the genitive
> case of personal pronouns - those don't even exist in French or Spanish
> -).
But it's also typical for genitive forms to be used in non-possessive
ways, as in the objective genitive and subjective genitive that
you and I discussed here some time back:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0111C&L=conlang&P=R754
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0111C&L=conlang&P=R1429
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0111C&L=conlang&P=R1633
--
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British
Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence
of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1. I doubt if
the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of
equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940
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