Re: Possession and genitivity

Carsten Becker wrote:

>On Saturday 30 April 2005 20:45 CEST, Joseph Bridwell wrote:
>
> > > One such language is spoken on this island - it's
> > > called Welsh   :)
> >
> > Ah, yes - possession through nouns being juxtaposition. I
> > believe Semitic languages do this too.
> >
> > And English, which uses "of" more often to mark false
> > possessive and partitive, than to mark real possession.
>
>German also differs:
>
>   1) a. In writing:
>
>         das           Buch  des           Jungen
>         ART.sg.n.NOM  book  ART.sg.m.GEN  boy
>
>         "the book of the boy."
>
>      b. Colloquial:
>
>         dem           Jungen   sein       Buch
>         ART.sg.m.DAT  boy      3sg.m.GEN  book
>
>         "the boy his book"
>
>   2)  ein              Blatt  Papier
>       INDEF-ART.n.NOM  sheet  paper
>
>       "a sheet paper"
>
>French has (1) le livre du garçon and (2) une pièce du
>papier, the same as in English actually.
French only has (1)...

"Une pièce du papier" isn't a good translation for "a sheet paper"

"Une pièce du papier" would be "one of the paper's pieces"

"A sheet paper" could be "un papier en feuille", wich is not even possession

(I use could "could" because that's not a sentence I've ever heard (neither
do I understand what that sentence really means), I'd have understand better
if it'd been "A paper sheet", what would've been "Une feuille de papier" but
that is no more of a possession than the other is)


French doesn't seems to share what y'all now call "false possession" since a
few days, a translation of one of your false possessive phrase is simply not
possessive in French. French uses the preposition "de"(of) to mark
possession but the next noun ought to have an article

"le chien du voisin" (du = "de" + "le") = the neightbour's dog
"la robe de ma soeur" = my sister's dress

The only situations when the possessor can't have an article is when it is a
proper name (so that carries its own definitness) or a pronoun (for which
the possessive articles are there to mean that kind of meaning)

>
>Carsten
- Max

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