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English: What’s this called? Is it wrong? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5960 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 17 of 25 07 February 2012 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||
I believe what you describe is correct English. I do not know offhand whether there is any specific name for this use, which essentially is simply an instance of a noun phrase being treated as a grammatical unit. From that fount of all knowledge, wikipedia.org: "In English, for some purposes, noun phrases can be treated as single grammatical units. This is most noticeable in the syntax of the English genitive case. In a phrase such as The king of Sparta's wife, the possessive clitic "-'s" is not added to the king who actually has the wife, but instead to Sparta, as the end of the whole phrase. The clitic modifies the entire phrase the king of Sparta." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4692 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 18 of 25 07 February 2012 at 2:20am | IP Logged | |||||
Touche. OK, you win. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5960 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 19 of 25 07 February 2012 at 2:36am | IP Logged | |||||
I never get to hear anyone say this of me in real life, so even though I did not mean my comment as a challenge, I am starved enough that I will take the win here! The closest I usually get is “you whine...” (as in, “… a lot”). Even when I attempt things that should be easy, I invariably don’t wind up with a W in the win column. A couple of weeks ago, I challenged a neighbour dog to a thumb wrestle (figured even I could not blow that sure thing, she not having opposable thumbs and all), but the dog just got all weirded out and eventually fled. Edited by Spanky on 07 February 2012 at 2:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Northernlights Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 73 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 20 of 25 07 February 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanky, I guess this will make your day then, not only one but two people praising you ;-)
I didn't know the term "clitic", I've always called it the possessive apostrophe but I looked it up on wikipedia and found this under "English enclitics", supporting the "'s" position at the end of the noun phrase: The genitive case (or "possessive") marker, at least when used to mark an entire noun phrase: ’s in The Queen of England's crown 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 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 21 of 25 08 February 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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"Clitic" is not a name specifically for 's 's - it just means that something is tagged unto some else. The definite article which is put at the end of substantives in Nordic languages and Romanian is called "postclitic", and "enclitic" similarly means that some element is put somewhere in something else, typically a word. However the good thing about "clitics" is that the thing you attach them to don't have to be single words. Edited by Iversen on 08 February 2012 at 11:11am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6441 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 22 of 25 08 February 2012 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
"King of Sparta" is a title, though, so it makes sense there. Can I still say "the guy next door's book"? I would intuitively agree with geoffw who said that it's probably not technically correct, but it's colloquially acceptable. I wouldn't write it like that in an essay, however. Edited by IronFist on 08 February 2012 at 5:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5569 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 23 of 25 08 February 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As I understand it (and I am open to correction) as well as being a title, the 'king of
Sparta' is also a noun phrase, as is 'the guy next door' and the syntactical rule set out by Spanky above applies to noun phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5564 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 24 of 25 08 February 2012 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You hear "the guy next door's" a lot, but you don't see it written down much. Whatever the reason, it feels awkward if you have to think about it, and it just looks inelegant, and most writers will try and reformulate it.
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