Genitive: invariant meaning
clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Wed, 20 May 1998 12:37:35 +0000
Silva*, in his chapter on Syntax is moving toward but has not arrived at an
invariant meaning for the genitive case. How does he accomplish this? By
dividing the sense of the grammatical form and the semantic function the
genitive adopts in a given context. He focuses on the "nominal" genitive,
i.e., the genitive case used with nouns. He states that genitive form has a
grammatical meaning that is quite vague; it indicates that there is some sort
of relationship between two nouns. He claims that all the rest of the meaning
comes from the context and should not be confused with the grammatical meaning
of the genitive.
If we accept this scheme of analysis (we need not accept it) we would no
longer give long lists of the types of genitives. I see a parallel here
between Sila's syntax model and his model for lexical semantics. What he is
doing with the genitive case is similar to distinguishing between sense and
referent in lexical semantics.
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
*Silva, Moises, Explorations in Exegetical Method: Galatians as a Test Case,
Baker, 1996.