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Fuzzy distinctions in morphology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 9 of 17 06 April 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Window cleaner" and "travel mug" are compound nouns -- that is unarguable. But what do you call the first noun in both cases? It needs some name. I argue "genitive" is correct -- feel free to propose an alternative. I think the problem here is that everyone talks about "genitive" as the Latin case denoting possession. This is true, but it is not the definition of the case. In fact, this is a side usage and the Romans themselves make this clear: the stem gen- does not relate to ownership. Gen- relates to origin or nature, and by extension to categorisation, giving us the modern words "genre" and "gender" (both meaning a category) and terms like "in general" (stating that something is true for all or most members of a category). In "window cleaner", "window" categorises the type of cleaner he is, it describes the nature of his cleaning. Gen-. "Travel" does the same to mug. Of course, I'm playing around because while there are people who call this noun an "adjective", there are others who call it a "classifier noun", which means the same thing as genitive really. But the people who call it a classifier noun normally insist it isn't genitive, and also usually follow the line that the possessive is the genitive. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 17 07 April 2010 at 12:02am | IP Logged | |||||
The answer to what type of cleaner he is, is not "window", it's "window cleaner". The reason I mentioned travel mug is that while the window cleaner cleans windows, the travel mug does not mug travels. In other words, if you claim that window is genitive here, even though the window is actually the direct object affected by the cleaning, then you can't say the same about travel because its relation to the mug is one of purpose. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 17 07 April 2010 at 9:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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The word genitive has maybe changed its original meaning, but in its modern usage it refers to a number of welldefined cases with endings and all that. I can't see any reason to extend its use to the "window cleaner" where the only possible marker is the order of the components. The semantic relation between the components in such constructions can probably be typecast, but in the absence of explicit markers this shouldn't lead to the establishment of spurious case definitions. Which unfortunately leaves us without a terminological consensus, but I would prefer that to using terms with other purposes.
In other languages similar notions would be covered by compound words, as for instance in German "Fensterputzer" or Danish: "vinduespudser" (where the 's' is seen as a neutral connector of sorts by our grammarians, not as a genitive marker). English is just a language that happens to prefer juxtaposed words to compounds, but ideally the analysis of such a combination of 'free' words should take the parallel to the single word model into account. Edited by Iversen on 07 April 2010 at 9:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 12 of 17 07 April 2010 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fair enough -- we'll have to agree to differ. I see the lack of plural marking as a form of marking in itself, you don't.
However, even if we don't call this the genitive case, I wish more course writers would use it as their main demonstration of genitives. Nothing has ever confused me as much in language learning as having the genitive first explained as equivalent to English 's and being left to work out why a wooden thing was a "wood's thing". Edit: tell a lie, they had either "X's Y" or "Y of X", but they never compared it to "X Y", which would have been a much better explanation, because it was for Gaelic which (like all Celtic languages) only allows one article per string of nouns, which is actually the same as the English noun string (although the rules for placement of the article are different). That's where this all came from -- nothing to do with Latin in the end. :-) Thanks for letting me sort that out in my head. Edited by Cainntear on 07 April 2010 at 9:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 13 of 17 07 April 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder if languages that have a genitive case always have verbs that require the genitive -- which is not the case in English anymore...
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| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5348 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 14 of 17 07 April 2010 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't necessarily think so... German has a genitive case, and I don't think there are any verbs that take the genitive case, but some do take dative as objects. I was consulting my grammars, and Latin and Ancient Greek certainly have some verbs that take objects in genitive. (remember and forget in both languages) Some Serbo-Croatian verbs, and probably those of other Slavic languages as well, have objects in the genitive case, like to fear/be fearful of (bojiti se) and remember (sjećati/sjetiti se). However, I don't think it'a a general rule in languages with a genitive case, just a charming feature. :) Edited by Danac on 07 April 2010 at 9:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 15 of 17 07 April 2010 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are a few German verbs that do require the genitive. Even if that weren't the case, many prepositions require the genitive.
Can someone come up with a language that definitely has cases, yet definitely has no verb that requires genitive? Edited by Arekkusu on 07 April 2010 at 9:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 16 of 17 09 April 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Scottish Gaelic, all or none, depending on your point of view. Gaelic has a nominative-accusative case, a genitive case and pseudo-dative prepositional case (although a few prepositions govern the genitive). When using a verb as a true verb, regardless of a verb, the subject and direct object will be in the nominative-accusative and any indirect objects will be in whatever case their preposition calls for. However, Celtic languages use verbal-nouns for most constructions, with "to be" or a verb of motion acting as an auxiliary, so it is what would in most languages be the "head" verb that is the direct object in the sentence. What most languages would consider the direct object is now demoted to being part of the same noun-phrase as the the verbal noun itself, so naturally falls into the genitive case. This usage is fading, with nom-acc case often following the verbal noun. Anyway, that's all by-the-by. The main point is that case is uniform and not dependent on specific verbs, so yes, there's at least one language that has a genitive but no verbs that rule the genitive. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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