Search results for 'tag:Expressions tag:Genitives' matching tags 'Expressions' and 'Genitives'

On the saxon genitive ... again

Cla77 — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:37:36 GMT

Dear all,
this is my first post. I learned a lot reading this forum and, now, I dare to ask my own question :-) ! Since I am a physicist, I often read in scientific papers either Einstein's equations or Einstein equations. Although I realize that such kind of expressions appears in a rather limited context, I still wonder which is the correct one. My educated guess is that Einstein equations is the right one, but I would love to have a definitive answer from some experts. I hope that my question is appropriate for this forum; otherwise please accept my apologies.

Thanks a lot!

Re: sentence to a 3 year's imprisonment

Cool Breeze — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:48:48 GMT

Grammar Geek wrote:
What is the context for It's 10 minutes' meeting or It's a 10 minutes' meeting? Those don't sound normal at all! So I'm missing something.

It's a meeting of 10 minutes sounds grammatical, but not natural. But my mind doesn't rebel against it like the two above.

Hi GG

I was concentrating more on the genitive than the verb. However, if a goup of people has a 10-minute meeting every Monday morning, I might use the present tense to inform a new employee about the meeing and its duration: It's a 10 minutes' meeting. I didn't consider the tense to be the gist of the matter, and anyone can of course change it to whatever sounds better. I just wanted to give my opinion about the structures I think correct in such expressions:

It's a two-mile walk.
It's a two miles' walk.
It's two miles' walk.
It's a walk of two miles.

Cheers
CB

Re: evening (without preposition) / to start to doing

Cool Breeze — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:50:14 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
CB,

I hate to disagree, because your comments are always so very helpful and appropriate, and you are such a valuable resource on the forum.

Nevertheless, I don't think any poetic license whatever is involved here.

Thank you for your kind words, Jim. As English is not my mother tongue, I don't always succeed in choosing the best word for everything. Poetic licence may not be the right expression. What I meant is this basic grammatical fact: if the of-genitive is used, the usually precedes the noun before the of:

What's the name of this town?
I don't like the color of the floor.
This is the address of the man in question.

The is used in the above examples because "this town" has only one name, "the floor" has only one color and "the man in question" has only one address. Or that's what the sentences imply, anyway. Because "a hot day" has only one evening, English grammatical rules would require:

The evening of a hot day...

Yet Steinbeck omitted the article. To call that "poetic" may not be a good idea after all. I just couldn't think of a better word when I wrote my previous post. I meant that grammatical rules required an article but Steinbeck preferred not to have one, in other words, he violated a grammatical rule, which is fairly common in poems.

As you and all native speakers of English know, the is not used in similar of-structures when the noun before the of refers to one of many:

He was a representative of Portugal in the Sydney Olympics.

This time there were many other representatives, that's why a is used. But:

She was the representative of Portugal in the beauty contest. (= the only representative)

An evening of a hot day appears inconceivable to me because a day doesn't have many evenings. Therefore, the really should be used, but Steinbeck thought differently for reasons known only to him.

Cheers
CB

Re: Prepositions

Cool Breeze — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:27:47 GMT

Hi Kiitixay

The preposition is in or at in the basic expressions only:
He came in the morning / in the afternoon / in the evening.
You can see the stars at night.
Nothing exceptional happened at noon.
A plural is possible as well: It often rains in the mornings.

When you deviate from the basic expressions, the preposition is on:
I don't like to go out on cold nights. (adj.)
It happened on a foggy afternoon. (adj.)
He arrived on the morning of 7th June. (of-genitive)
It rained on Monday afternoon. (day of the week mentioned)
I don't want to go out on winter / December mornings. (season or month mentioned)
And so on.

No preposition is used with some words:
every morning. this afternoon

Cheers
CB

Re: future perfect

CalifJim — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 18:42:54 GMT

would you say "John calling" is a noun phrase almost identical to "his calling" where "calling" is a genitive functioning as a noun?

No. There is nothing genitive going on here. It's (among other things) a Whiz-Deletion. That will be John who is calling. So calling is part of the verb phrase is calling. The underlying relative clause seems to be used adjectivally to describe John, so it also seems possible to analyze calling as a present participle modifying John. But this is deceptive.

The structure is similar to, but not an exact match to, a cleft sentence like It is John who is calling, derived from the underlying John is calling. But here we have dummy It, whereas with That we have a referring expression. (Note the position of John in John is calling vs. That is John.) So this too is deceptive.

In fact, I think the best analysis is that the element That is being modified by (who is) calling. That (person) who is calling will be John. / That calling (person) will be John. So the noun phrase you may be looking for is the underlying That calling, which does not occur in that form at all in the surface structure of That will be John calling.

Compare:
That's Mary standing by the bench. / That person standing by the bench is Mary.
That's Mary beside the bench. / That person (who is) beside the bench is Mary.
[Here we see quite clearly that Mary beside the bench is not a constituent, so it cannot be a noun phrase. In the same way, John calling is not a constituent of the original sentence you asked about.]
______________

And note the ambiguity that can occur with this structure:
Those are the children in the water. / Those children (who are) in the water are the children (you are looking for). [Answers a question like Where are the children?]
Those are the children in the water. / Those children are those particular children who are in the water -- not the other children who are on the beach. [Answers a question like Which children are those?]
[In the first of these, there is no constituent of the form the children in the water. In the second version, the noun phrase the children in the water does occur.]

CJ

Re: a/an + saxon genitive

Anxiety — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:11:28 GMT

Hi, Yankee and thank you for your !

Well, the fact is that before asking something here, I check it on the web. I found so many pages with that expression, I gave it for granted.... "Team USA needs a God's Gift to defeat Ghana" was one of the many examples I found on the web (... nothing personal!)

I've just checked it again and the pages that appear are not really reliable, actually... Next time I'll be more careful!

Bye, and thanx again

ps. the link you gave me is very interesting. It will take time to me to have a clear idea on the double genitive but I'm sure I'll work it out... someday!

Re: Decades, numbers and apostrophes

Cool Breeze — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:15:00 GMT

Hi Rosalama

No answer to your question will please everybody. Many people think no apostrophe should be used in your expressions:
in the 1980s

The plural genitive is formed by adding an apostrophe after the plural s, so the genitive should be:
I don't like the 1980s' music.

However, many people write:
I don't like the 1980s music.

Choose yourself. There will always be some who think you have made a mistake.

Then there are people who think it's all right to use an apostophe before the plural s if the s is added to something other than a word:
in the 1980's

With any logic, that would give us:
I don't like the 1980's' music.

I may never have seen it, though. As far as I am concerned, it is correct. English is a mess in this respect, which pretty much gives you a free hand to write it in any way you choose. You'll get complaints whatever you do. It is very common not to use an apostrophe even when the decade is written in full:
I don't like the eighties music.

That's OK with me as well. The eighties can be interpreted to be a noun used adjectivally even though it is in the plural. We can say:
the U.S. Air Force,

so why not:
the United States Air Force as well?
(If anyone wants to add an apostrophe, by all means, do!)

Cheers
CB

Re: Do you need "the" there?

Cool Breeze — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 12:40:01 GMT

Believer wrote:
Thank you, Marius and Milky.

Tell me if my understanding is wrong. When you have some phrase in genitive??, then almost always the article the is for the noun in genitive and not the noun that comes/follows after the noun in genitive.

the president's cup (here the is for "president" and not for "cup.")

Jane's cup (here the cup is called "Jane's cup" and should be called "the Jane's cup.)

So, the in both cases the belongs to the "Schools" and not not to the "cup."

Final of the Non-Government Schools' Cup

THE INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS' CUP

(I found those phrases in print form in the internet.)

Believer, you are right. The article does refer to the words in the genitive, not cup. There are some cases in which the article is associated with the noun following an s-genitive, chiefly expressions of time or distance:

a two miles' walk
a two hours' walk

You may prefer to say: a two-mile walk and you can actually also say a walk of two miles.

Cheers
CB

Re: "question and answer" or "question-and-answer"

Cool Breeze — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 07:36:42 GMT

J Lewis: Thank you for the explanation of 'soccer'. I knew it had been coined from 'association', but didn't know it had been done by the British.

Words like 'clothesline' are in dictionaries, so it's understandable that the plural s is there. A United Nations assembly is not in dictionaries and since nations does not denote time or distance, the apostrophe can be omitted, in my opinion anyway.

Grammar Geek: According to all the grammar books I have seen, the s-genitive can be used to denote time and distance and thus expressions like a two hours' walk are correct English. It may not sound natural to some but is certainly used by distinguished, native writers. A two hours' walk is from Otto Jespersen's Essentials of English Grammar. Perhaps the grammarians dislike the idea of English being too restricted in usage and have included examples of usage that may not be very common in everyday conversation.

Cheers
CB

Re: 20 minutes' break

Teo — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 05:24:11 GMT

However, in quantitative expressions of the following type there is possible variation:

a ten day absence [singular]

a ten-day absence [hyphen + singular]

a ten days absence [plural]

a ten days' absence [genitive plural]

With temporal nouns in the plural, the apostrophe is sometimes omitted: several weeks'/weeks vacation

Pages 325 &1333, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk et al. 1985