By Nouns, Genitives

Hello Hela Sorry, I missed that! You might possibly hear a phrase such as "Asian immigrants' numbers" in terse journalistic reporting; but on the whole, "the number of" isn't "genitivised" in this way. I'm not quite sure why this is, or why phrases such as "the day's time" aren't used...

Some of it is guesswork or familiarity with the different usages. But I think the rule would be: try to determine if the first noun defines the second one (a brick house), or if it merely indicates possession (the Smiths' house). In some cases either will work: George Bush's administration, or...

Kennedy and Bush are here used as defining adjectives. Other examples:a calculus booka cancer specialistan asphalt drivewayFor more on defining adjectives, see http://www.fortunecity.com/bally/durrus/153/gramch21.html#2a6There are four ways in which nouns indicate possession:'ss' of ...two...

Hello KhoffIt's really kind of you to console me that way. I don't think English is chaotic as a whole, but as far as the noun phrase formation is concerned, it looks as if chaotic at least to me. Anyway, I like your attitude towards non-native speakers' English. It would be the best if we could...

Paco -- I'm sorry English is so frustrating! A few comments come to mind: First, I can see how it seems to you that the current chaotic state of English is a result of generations of laziness regarding grammatical rules, but I would prefer to think of it this way: the current flexibility of...

Hello MaraThis is not an answer to your question. This is just a comment on the question you raised. All of what you are asking is exactly the things that have annoyed me long time since I began studying English. Some native speakers grudge that we ESLs are bad in using compound noun phrases. In...

Riglos wrote:1. How can we distinguish between a descriptive genitive and a compound noun? The descriptive Genative will be an inflected Genative using the apostrophe, just like the possessive. This appears to be an argument of semantics; the foundation of which rests in whether...

None of these names for cases applies much to Modern English; we have neither an accusative nor a dative case and many linguists might argue we do not even have a true genitive (just a "clitic s"). Nouns have an all-purpose "base case" and a possessive form. My dog is big/I see a dog. ...

Hi, Here are a few comments, drawn mostly from recollections of my Latin studies many years ago. My apologies if you know this stuff already. To understand cases, you need to look not only at Old English but, further back, at Latin and then Greek. Latin Cases are: Nominative, Vocative (used to...

Hi people! This sentence was taken from one of David Crystal's (well-known linguist) books on the English Language: "The design's asymmetries well represent the irregularities and erratic research paths which are so much a part of English language study." Here, we see an inanimate object being...