shminux comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: David_Gerard 29 July 2013 10:26PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (381)
Tags: open open_thread

Comments (381)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: shminux 30 July 2013 04:47:06PM -1 points [-]

Thanks. This sounds plausible (if irrelevant), but I could not find an authoritative reference confirming it. Any links?

Comment author: arundelo 30 July 2013 05:54:39PM 5 points [-]

A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, p. 90:

The determiner position in an NP [noun phrase] is usually filled by one of two kinds of expression.

  • In all the examples so far it has been a determinative [a word like the, a, this, some, or three], and some of these can be accompanied by their own modifiers, making a determinative phrase, abbreviated DP.

  • In addition, the determiner may have the form of a genitive NP.

Examples, with the determiners underlined [bolded], are given [below]:

DETERMINATIVE
  the city
  some rotten eggs

DP
  almost all politicians
  very few new books

GENITIVE NP
  her income
  the senator's young son

p. 109:

As a determiner, the genitive is always definite. Note, for example, that [one patient's father] corresponds to the father of one patient, not a father of one patient.

See also the Wikipedia determiner and genitive case articles.

Comment author: shminux 30 July 2013 06:48:24PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks! Now, if only someone linked that Egan story :)

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 14 August 2013 04:53:59PM 3 points [-]

"Crystal Nights"

Comment author: pragmatist 31 July 2013 04:33:51AM *  3 points [-]

This story is not by Egan, but it might be what you're looking for.

Comment author: shminux 31 July 2013 07:26:51AM 0 points [-]

Ah, yes, thanks. I wondered why I couldn't find it :) Hmm, I thought it was longer...

Comment author: Lumifer 30 July 2013 08:33:27PM 0 points [-]

Note, for example, that [one patient's father] corresponds to the father of one patient, not a father of one patient.

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?

Comment author: Randy_M 30 July 2013 09:12:48PM 2 points [-]

Didn't you just?

Comment author: Lumifer 30 July 2013 09:26:05PM *  0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: komponisto 30 July 2013 11:41:07PM *  3 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: komponisto 30 July 2013 05:43:12PM *  3 points [-]

(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:

In English and some other languages, the use of such a word implies the definite article. For example, my car implies the car that belongs to me/is used by me; it is not correct to precede possessives with an article (* the my car) or other definite determiner such as a demonstrative (* this my car)

One should indeed think of " 's " in this context as the equivalent for nouns of what "my" is for the pronoun "I".

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit