From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jul 21 2001 - 11:58:24 EDT
At 8:18 AM -0700 7/21/01, c stirling bartholomew wrote:
>Greetings Iver,
>
>
>on 7/21/01 2:33 AM, Iver Larsen wrote:
>
>> Rather than inventing labels for the genitives, I find it more helpful to
>> look at the genitive as a grammatical way of connecting two nouns or nominal
>> forms together. Languages vary greatly in how they connect such nominals,
>> but I have not yet heard of a language that does not have some way of
>> associating two nouns. The intended meaning behind the association is not a
>> grammatical, but semantic issue, and there are very many different
>> associations possible. The meaning of the relationship is always derived
>> from context.
>
>Hurray! Now lets gather up all the grammars published in the last decade
>which still have 20-30 types of genitives and burn them. The only grammar
>that I own that even comes close, not close enough, to what Iver is saying
>here is Richard Young's. So we can spare him from the flames but all the
>rest of them must burn. We could start the blase with Wallace and Mounce
>being perhaps the worst offenders. If we can get enough people together for
>our grammar burning perhaps we could get Leni Reifenstahl to film it for us.
Let's not go overboard here: there are ablatival genitives that are
semantic and distinct from the adnominal genitive that is structural, and
there are some partitives as well--and a whole mass of genitives with
prepositions as well. I'm not for multiplying categories and subcategories
of anything, but I'm not for throwing everything in the same pot without
good reasons either.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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