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komponisto comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong
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The most you can say is that all reflectively consistent ancestors would behave the same way you do. Wasn't there a Greg Egan's story about it?
English tip: the possessive ending " 's " carries an implicit "the". Thus "Greg Egan's story" means "the story of Greg Egan", not just "story of Greg Egan". (This is unlike the corresponding construction in, for example, German.) Instead of the above, you wanted to write:
(This particular mistake occurs often among non-native-speakers, and indeed is a dead giveaway of one's status as such, so it's worth saying something about.)
(Except in constructs like “girls' school” or “a ten minutes' walk”.)
You're right about "girls' school", but "a ten minutes' walk" is wrong (should be "a ten-minute walk" or "ten minutes' walk").
Thanks. I myself am a non-native speaker.
[Note to self: I should re-read the relevant chapter in my English grammar when I get back home. Meanwhile, I'll look at the overview here.]
(Semantically, “ten minutes' walk” still means ‘a ten-minute walk’ rather than ‘the ten-minute walk’, but your point in reply to shminux was about syntax not semantics anyway.)
The "proof of synonymy" looks like this:
ten minutes' walk = (the walk) of (ten minutes) = a (walk of ten minutes) = a ten-minute walk
...the second "equality" being where semantics is invoked.
Thanks. This sounds plausible (if irrelevant), but I could not find an authoritative reference confirming it. Any links?
A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, p. 90:
p. 109:
See also the Wikipedia determiner and genitive case articles.
Thanks! Now, if only someone linked that Egan story :)
"Crystal Nights"
This story is not by Egan, but it might be what you're looking for.
Ah, yes, thanks. I wondered why I couldn't find it :) Hmm, I thought it was longer...
Hm. So how do you express the concept of an undetermined relative of some patient? The text you quoted would say that [one patient's relative] means the relative of one patient -- how do I express a relative of one patient?
Didn't you just?
Well, of course there are ways to rephrase most anything. I am, however, interested in whether there's a way to express the "a relative of one patient" notion through the possessive 's.
A related question is whether a native speaker would be sure that one patient's relative necessarily means the relative, or he would be ambiguous whether it means the relative or a relative.
In a specialized context (such as among people who work at a hospital), "patient's relative" could conceivably become a set phrase, in which case sentences such as "there are some patient's relatives waiting outside" would become possible (contrast * "there are some Greg Egan's stories on the shelf").
This is presumably what happened with "girls' school". Very rarely, it can even happen with proper nouns, as in the mathematical term Green's function. But this is not part of the syntax of the possessive ; it is the result of the whole possessive phrase being treated as a unit. (When you hear "the Green's function for this operator" for the first time, you immediately know that "Green's function" is a jargon phrase, because of the irregular syntax.)
(My comment was generated by the spontaneous reaction and reflection of a native speaker rather than memory of any deliberately learned rule.) Wikipedia has this to say:
One should indeed think of " 's " in this context as the equivalent for nouns of what "my" is for the pronoun "I".