Re: Diffrent possessions

On Wednesday, April 27, 2005, at 04:16 , Muke Tever wrote:
> J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...> wrote:
>> However, in phrases like "his arrival" I wouldn't speak of possession.
>> It's
>> a peculiarity of the English language that the actor may be expressed by
>> a
>> possessive pronoun. He does not own the arrival, but it's him who
>> arrives.
I agree.

> and JS Bangs wrote:
[snip]
>> subject, but with the equivalent noun we need another way. English
>> uses the possessive. Yivrian uses the ablative as the subject of
>> verbal nouns. Greek uses the genitive as the subject and object of
>> verbal nouns, but uses the accusative as the subject of the infinitive.
Quite so - and in Welsh a possessive with the verbnoun will be the 'object'
  if the verb is transitive, but subject if the verb is intransitive (sort
of 'ergative'   :)

>
> I think possession, or at least genitivity,
... which are _not_ the same thing. 'Possession' is a fairly well-defined
concept which, on occasion, may be tested in a court of law (indeed, in
natlangs with a case system, possession is not always denoted by the
genitive). In contrast, 'genitivity' is much less easy to define

> actually does apply:
....which makes it easy to apply 'genitivity' to a whole variety of quite
different situations.

The word is derived from Latin _genetiuus_ (the spellings _genitiuus_ &
_genitivus_ are post-Classical) = 'of or pertaining to generation', 'of or
pertaining to birth', 'of or pertaining to a family or clan'. It would
seem that the last meaning was the one intended, as the grammarian Varro
calls the case 'patricius' which can, inter_alia, also mean 'of or
pertaining to a family or clan'. It was of course a (mis)translation of a
Greek term: genike: (pto:sis). The adjective _genikos_ could mean 'of or
pertaining to a family', but was probably originally coined in this usage
with the meaning 'of or pertaining to a class/type', 'generic'.

Not exactly much to do specifically with possession. In "The Latin
Language", L.R. Palmer lists the following uses of the genitive case:
1. Possessive genitive - ager agricolae "the farmer's field"
2. Partitive genitive - granum salis "a grain of salt"
3. Defining genitive - urbs Romae "the city of Rome" (the two nouns could
also br place 'in apposition': urbs Roma - both constructions are found,
despite the strictures of later schoolmasters)
4. Genitive of sphere (respect/ reference) - genitive you with _verbs_ of
accusing, summoning & condemining_ (cf I accuse you _of_ theft), and its
use with various impersonal verbs.
5. Genitive of rubric - dotis dare "to give _by way of dowry_"

After considering all these uses, he attempts to derive a general
formulation for the genitive thus:
"a noun in the genitive defines and delimits the range of reference of
another noun or verb."

That IMO is probably as good a definition of 'genitivity' as any. But the
'range of reference' may include all sorts of other concepts besides
possession. Indeed, in languages with case systems, possession is not
exclusively shown by the genitive. In Latin, for example, possession was
often shown by the _dative_ case; this is especially common in all periods
of Latin with the verb 'to be'.

If I were to expand the list above to ancient Greek, there would be even
more uses. That is partly because the Greek genitive also included the PIE
ablative uses. However, it is worth noting that Greek made greater use
than Classical Latin of the 'partitive genitive', in that the direct
object of verbs of eating & drinking were more often in the genitive. This
was probably also the case in spoken Latin, i.e. where written CL had
_uinum bibit_, spoken Latin probably more often had _uini bibit_/ _bibit
uinum_ or, in VL *bebe(t) de 'lo vino cf. French 'il a bu _du vin_'.  It
is very difficult to see how any idea of 'possession' can attributed to
this fairly common use of the genitive.

> the
> difficulty is in the fact that "arrival" is an abstract noun and not
> a concrete one (which can be more easily "owned").
Not so difficult per_se, I think. There is much currently in the news
about "identity theft". If something can be stolen, then someone must have
owned it. The thing is that 'arrival' is not something that can be stolen!

FWIW Palmer lists "aduentus hostium" (the arrival of the enemy) under the
category of _defining genitive_, i.e. _hostium_ defines or delimits who it
is that arrived.

> The same difficulty
> should surely exist for abstract nouns that, unlike "arrival", are not
> easily associated [in English] with a verb or agent:  his happiness,
> his solitude, his quirks.
No - but "his", if indeed this is a genitive and not, as we were taught at
school, a possessive adjective (French 'son, sa, ses' is assuredly an
adjective), it defines or delimits 'happiness', 'solitude' and 'quirks'
respectively.

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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