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Re: Possessive and Genitive

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 22:56
Quoting Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>:

> Is there any difference in meaning between the terms possessive an > genitive? The former tends to be used when referring to English, the latter > to other languages, but what they refer to doesn't seem to differ much (a > case of a noun or pronoun indicating that the marked noun or pronoun is the > owner of another).
Remember: all case names are no more than labels. The Latin derived name "genitive" originally implied source, but since one of its common functions is possession, it is frequently used for possessive affixes in other languages. In English, the clitic "possessive" also has vestigial uses of measurement: "a long day's journey into night". The fact that we call such a case possessive or genitive is essentially arbitrary. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637