# What is a Saxon Genitive?



## Stoggler

In another discussion, there is reference to the Saxon genitive - I'm assuming it is the standard possessive 's or s' in English.

But why "*Saxon*" genitive?  Is this correct?  Whenever I see the word Saxon, I think of Saxony in Germany (or the varieties of language spoken there, either today or in the past).  Is this a standard term for this form of possessive in English? (as a keen enthusiast of Anglo-Saxon English history and of the Old English language, I cannot abide the use of "Saxon" so willy-nilly!).


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## PaulQ

The Saxons were an invading tribe that came from North Germany (Saxony) to England from about the 5th century. They brought with them their language, also called Saxon, whose genitive was formed by adding 's' to nouns.  "The Saxon 's'/genitive" is a commonly used term.


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## Stoggler

PaulQ said:


> The Saxons were an invading tribe that came from North Germany (Saxony) to England from about the 5th century. They brought with them their language, also called Saxon, whose genitive was formed by adding 's' to nouns.  "The Saxon 's'/genitive" is a commonly used term.



I guess you didn't read the bit about me being very interested in Anglo-Saxon English history then...  

The Saxons were not the only people who invaded (what was to become) England, and that period of history is generally called Anglo-Saxon; to refer to that period as simply Saxon is incorrect as there was a contemporary polity on the continent called Saxony and the word Saxon refers to the various incarnations of that area.  

And Saxons may well have called their varieties Saxon, but what did the Angles call their languages?  Or the Jutes?  Or the Frisians?  Or anyone else who came along for the ride?  They all spoke Germanic varieties that came together to form what they called englisc.

I do not know of any university history department that specialises in pre-1066 English history that refers to the period or the people as "Saxon" (it's always "Anglo-Saxon"), and studies of the language from that period are called "Old English" or occasionally "Anglo-Saxon" - it's never Saxon history, never Saxon studies and never Saxon language.


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## PaulQ

I'm sorry. I am at a bit of a loss. You asked





> why "*Saxon" genitive?*


If you are asking about other languages and the origins of Modern English, you may be better off asking in the Etymology and History of Language forum.


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## Stoggler

PaulQ said:


> I'm sorry. I am at a bit of a loss. You askedIf you are asking about other languages and the origins of Modern English, you may be better off asking in the Etymology and History of Language forum.



I'm not asking about other languages, and I'm not asking about the origins of English, modern or otherwise.

I'm asking what a Saxon genitive is (which I think you've answered) and why it's so called - if the reason for its name is because of what you've suggested, it would appear to be erroneous.  If it is a term that is being used in the teaching of English grammar then it seems a very odd one.


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## Edinburgher

Now, now, children, behave.  To bicker about Saxon vs Anglo-Saxon is not germane here (excuse the pun).
What it might be more interesting to discuss is that if there is a "Saxon genitive", then what other kinds of genitive are there, from which it is useful to distinguish the Saxon one.
And, Paul, do you really mean just adding "s", as opposed to "'s"?


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## berndf

Stoggler said:


> The Saxons were not the only people who invaded (what was to become) England, and that period of history is generally called Anglo-Saxon; to refer to that period as simply Saxon is incorrect as there was a contemporary polity on the continent called Saxony and the word Saxon refers to the various incarnations of that area.


Paul is right. The people who invaded England where indeed the _Saxons _-- together with the _Angles_. The modern German state of Saxony belongs to a formerly Slavic area that was conquered and incorporated into the German kingdom in the 10th century as a march officially assigned to the duchy of Saxony and called the _Saxon Eastern March_. Though this entity existed only for a few decades, the name stayed and the the state covering most of the area of the _original _Duchy of Saxony is today called _Lower Saxony _to distinguish it from the area of its former _Eastern March_.


Stoggler said:


> I'm asking what a Saxon genitive is (which I  think you've answered) and why it's so called - if the reason for its  name is because of what you've suggested, it would appear to be  erroneous.


When one uses the adjective _Saxon_ in English, one obviously refers to the "real" Saxons; and that is certainly not _erroneous_.


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## Stoggler

berndf said:


> Paul is right. The people who invaded England where indeed the Saxons. The modern German state of Saxony belongs to a formerly Slavic area that was conquered and incorporated into the German kingdom in the 10th century as a march officially assigned to the duchy of Saxony and called the _Saxon Eastern March_. Though this entity existed only for a few decades, the name stayed and the the state covering most of the area of the _original _Duchy of Saxony is today called _Lower Saxony _to distinguish it from the area of its former _Eastern March_.



Then that is counter to everything ever written about Anglo-Saxon England and its history.

Getting seriously off topic for the forum, but as I mentioned previously, the Saxons were *not* the *only* invaders at that time.  There is a reason why the English took the name of their language from the Angles, and why Bede and other contemporaries refer to Angles as well as Saxons and why regions like East Anglia and Middle Anglia exist(ed).

Paul's probably right in that this should probably be best discussed on the Etymology forum.


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## PaulQ

Edinburgher said:


> And, Paul, do you really mean just adding "s", as opposed to "'s"?


Yes. I don't think that the Saxons/Anglo-Saxons used an apostrophe.

If you know when the apostrophe came into existence, I would be interested.


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## rhitagawr

I agree that _Saxon genitive _is an odd phrase. The genitive seems to have died out in Dutch and presumably Frisian (although someone more knowledgeable than I am might be able to correct me). But it exists in all the other Germanic languages. Perhaps it ought to be called the _Germanic genitive_. 
The United Kingdom and the former British colonies of the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are sometimes called the _Anglo-Saxon nations_. A silly phrase if you ask me, but there it is.


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## berndf

Stoggler said:


> Getting seriously off topic for the forum, but as I mentioned previously, the Saxons were *not* the *only* invaders at that time.


I didn't say they were the _only_ invaders. But the reason why it is called Saxon genitive is evident. One may find other names more appropriate but that is a different question.


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## berndf

PaulQ said:


> Yes. I don't think that the Saxons/Anglo-Saxons used an apostrophe.
> 
> If you know when the apostrophe came into existence, I would be interested.


The original West Germanic genitive ending was _-es_, not _-s_. The apostrophe indicates the elided <e>. In English, the <e> was lost in early modern English.


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## Edinburgher

OK, Paul, so the original Saxon genitive would not have used an apostrophe, but it seems that in the various discussions here about the SG all the examples did include the apostrophe, so the question really remains, what other genitives exist in today's English which would not be described as Saxon?  Or did the discussions use the term SG in error, and should it be reserved to discussions which compare various historical genitives?


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## Loob

Edinburgher said:


> ... so the question really remains, what other genitives exist in today's English which would not be described as Saxon?


It's often contrasted with the _'of_-genitive', Edinburgher, as in _the top of the hill_.


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## Ben Jamin

The word *Saxon* is a pure and sheer convention, as it only defines a type of genitive that it is older then the genitive using "of". One  could argue that other names would be more precise "Anglo- Saxon- Frisian genitive", "old Germanic genitive", "old English genitive" (maybe the last would be historically most correct), and many others. But why fighting a convention?


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## Stoggler

Having never heard the term before, I know what it is now.  

I shall just accept that although I myself would avoid calling it a Saxon Genitive, others will continue to do so and that it's a fairly standard term is use.  


Cross-post:


Ben Jamin said:


> But why fighting a convention?



Am accepting it now


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## Einstein

In English teaching I've always understood the term "Saxon genitive" as distinguishing a form such as "Henry's car",  from "the car of Henry", which would be the form in Romance languages. I assumed the term had been invented by language-teaching theoreticians for this purpose, rather than to distinguish particularly the English "apostrophe-s" from the German "s" without the apostrophe. In fact I don't know how much the term is used in teaching English to Germans.

That "Saxon" is a misnomer I heartily agree! There was a heated debate recently in the Italian-English forum about the indiscriminate use of "Anglo-Saxon" by Italian journalists.


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## berndf

Einstein said:


> In English teaching I've always understood the term "Saxon genitive" as distinguishing a form such as "Henry's car",  from "the car of Henry", which would be the form in Romance languages.


That is exactly how it is used and what motivates the term.


Einstein said:


> In fact I don't know how much the term is used in teaching English to Germans.


I've been familiar with the term ever since I learned English in school as a kid.


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## JustKate

The way I look at it is, you have to call it something, and you could do worse than "Saxon genitive." At least the name has some connection to the construction's history.


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## Resa Reader

I still know the term (either from my own days at school or from university) but it's no longer in use when it comes to teaching grammar to German learners of English nowadays. 

I've just had a look at one of the "newer" grammar books. They contrast "*the possessive form*" and the "*of-phrase*".


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## Edinburgher

The way I see it, what others call the Saxon genitive I would just call the genitive.  It is one of the inflected forms (declensions) of the noun, like what we come across in Germanic and Romance languages.
I would not view the of-form as a genuine genitive, it's just an ordinary prepositional phrase which happens to take on a role which is similar to the genitive.
The problem, I guess, is that English does not have (or no longer has) that strict kind of inflection, which has been largely displaced by the use of prepositions, typically "of" for the genitive and "to" for the dative and accusative, which two are at times difficult to tell apart.
The "genuine" genitive survives in some pronouns, e.g. _whose, my, our._


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## london calling

Edinburgher said:


> The way I see it, what others call the Saxon genitive I would just call the genitive.


Which is precisely what I do, when speaking English. On the other hand, when speaking Italian I say the equivalent of _Saxon Genitive_, which is what all Italians are taught to call it at school.


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## JulianStuart

Now I'm confused again.  Help me unravel the concern about calling it the Saxon genitive.

The Saxons came to Britain. (As did others)
They brought their language with them. (As did others)
The Saxons formed genitives by adding -es.
In modern day English, we use -'s to form a certain kind of genitive, and it is derived from the elision of the e that was present in the genitive that was present in the Saxon language it came from.

Which of those statements is incorrect?


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## Stoggler

JulianStuart said:


> Now I'm confused again.  Help me unravel the concern about calling it the Saxon genitive.
> 
> The Saxons came to Britain. (As did others)
> They brought their language with them. (As did others)
> The Saxons formed genitives by adding -es.
> In modern day English, we use -'s to form a certain kind of genitive, and it is derived from the elision of the e that was present in the genitive that was present in the Saxon language it came from.
> 
> Which of those statements is incorrect?



None of them, as far as I can tell.

But my original contention stems from the fact that we have no way of distinguishing what elements of Old English were of Saxon in origin or Angle or Frisian or of any other grouping.  The invaders probably spoke very similar varieties so it seemed (to me at least) a little odd that we would call a feature of Modern English after one out of a number of groups of invaders who possibly/probably *all* shared that feature.

Before today I hadn't even come across the term, but having now learnt that it's such a commonly used term in teaching English grammar to native and non-native speakers, I'm happy enough! 


Edit
I guess part of my original contention is that having been a  student of the Anglo-Saxon period of history, I dislike the lazy  shorthand use of "Saxon" as a catch-all term for the period and anything  related to it which seems to have caught on in recent times.  Seeing  "Saxon Genitive" stuck out like a sore thumb to me.


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## JulianStuart

So your answer seems to suggest that I should reformulate one of the statements to



> The Saxons formed genitives by adding -es.(As did other languages in use in Britain at the time)



Then your question becomes. "Why do we call it Saxon, if it wasn't _uniquely_ a Saxon construction?"  Is that what you meant at the beginning in your question?


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## natkretep

I would just talk about the use of the possessive form (and not even mention _genitive_) to students.

I assumed _Saxon_ was used in the term because the Old English that was becoming standardised was based the variety used in King Alfred's kingdom of Wessex - or West Saxon. The Angles settled in areas further north. The standard or the standardising variety is often taken to represent the language itself.


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## Stoggler

JulianStuart said:


> Then your question becomes. "Why do we call it Saxon, if it wasn't _uniquely_ a Saxon construction?"  Is that what you meant at the beginning in your question?



Yep, that sums it up.  In a much more efficient way then I've put it in all of my blustering posts!

Thank you


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## Stoggler

natkretep said:


> I assumed _Saxons_ was used because the Old English that was becoming standardised was based the variety used in King Alfred's kingdom of Wessex - or West Saxon. The Angles settled in areas further north. The standard or the standardising variety is often taken to represent the language itself.



True, although Alfred and his West Saxons didn't call the language that they wrote in Saxon - the language had been called englisc (or names similar to that) for some time before Alfred.

I can't recall an example of the languages being called Saxon (or something similar) in Old English writing but it is possible.  It certainly wasn't the most-used term though (not by the English anyway: Celtic speakers called their Germanic neighbours Saxons)


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## Cenzontle

So far, I think JustKate is the only contributor who claims Am.Eng. as a first language.  
So my question for you, JustKate, is this: Is "Saxon genitive" a familiar term to you?  
I came into contact with it only very recently.  
When I was taught about English grammar in primary school, there were "possessive" adjectives and pronouns, and the "apostrophe-s" on a noun made it "possessive".  
I only heard terms like "genitive" when friends of mine started studying Latin.
JustKate, I deeply respect your contributions to the Forum, but when you say


> you could do worse than "Saxon genitive"


I have to voice a contrary opinion: You could *not *do worse than "Saxon genitive".
"Saxon" is a misnomer, for reasons cited by others.
"Saxon" has very little meaning for most English-speakers;
for most of those few who have heard the term, it means an "ancient" tribe that has nothing to do with today's experience.
"Genitive" has very little meaning for most English-speakers;
for those who have studied a foreign language with case inflections it means something foreign, un-English.  
So "Saxon genitive" is a doubly opaque term.
The term "apostrophe-s" is practical: it tells you what to do when writing.
The term "possessive" is meaningful to English-speakers because most of us know what "possess" means.
The term "Saxon genitive", according to the Google Books Ngram Viewer (GBNV), in today's American English, has a frequency of 0.6 parts per billion (ppb).  
It fares a little better in British English, with a frequency of about 2 ppb.


My suspicion is that the term "Saxon genitive" is not indigenous to the English-speaking world, but is a calque from one or more Romance languages 
(in which the fine distinctions between Angles, Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons are often blurred).  Hence...


> the indiscriminate use of "Anglo-Saxon" by Italian journalists



mentioned by Einstein.  
The GBNV puts the frequency of "genitivo sajón" in Spanish around 4 ppb, and of "genitivo sassone" in Italian at 30 ppb!


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## JulianStuart

I was _taught_ Latin from age 6 to "O"level (age 14 - ~grade 11 ish) (and even actually _learnt_ some Latin too, scraped through the O level) and know a little about genitives and ablatives etc.  I had not heard _this_ term until a while after joining the forum, a few, ahem, decades later.  It now seems I need to "learn" about the term (even if I don't have a strong opinion on the prohibition of its use for inanimate objects )

I'm still unclear on two things.
Did the Saxons have their "own language" or not? (Or bring one even if others call it something else)
Did they make genitives by adding -es?
If both are "Yes", then it would seem to be that it is a misnomer only because Saxon can mean other things to other people (or the language they brought can't be called Saxon, only they can be called Saxon and they are the ones who brought it, or something).
If either answer is no, case closed


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## JustKate

Cenzontle said:


> So far, I think JustKate is the only contributor who claims Am.Eng. as a first language.
> So my question for you, JustKate, is this: Is "Saxon genitive" a familiar term to you?



Yes. Well, it actually depends on how you define "familiar." I certainly knew the term before coming here to the WR forum. I am sure I heard about it in school, but it didn't really stick. I think I actually *learned* about it on another grammar forum made up of mostly AmE speakers, including a couple of AmE English teachers, and I'm sure that's who I learned it from.



> JustKate, I deeply respect your contributions to the Forum, but when you say
> I have to voice a contrary opinion: You could *not *do worse than "Saxon genitive".
> "Saxon" is a misnomer, for reasons cited by others.
> "Saxon" has very little meaning for most English-speakers;
> for most of those few who have heard the term, it means an "ancient" tribe that has nothing to do with today's experience.
> "Genitive" has very little meaning for most English-speakers;
> for those who have studied a foreign language with case inflections it means something foreign, un-English.
> So "Saxon genitive" is a doubly opaque term.
> The term "apostrophe-s" is practical: it tells you what to do when writing.
> The term "possessive" is meaningful to English-speakers because most of us know what "possess" means.
> The term "Saxon genitive", according to the Google Books Ngram Viewer (GBNV), in today's American English, has a frequency of 0.6 parts per billion (ppb).
> It fares a little better in British English, with a frequency of about 2 ppb.
> 
> 
> My suspicion is that the term "Saxon genitive" is not indigenous to the English-speaking world, but is a calque from one or more Romance languages
> (in which the fine distinctions between Angles, Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons are often blurred).  Hence...
> 
> mentioned by Einstein.
> The GBNV puts the frequency of "genitivo sajón" in Spanish around 4 ppb, and of "genitivo sassone" in Italian at 30 ppb!



The way I look at it, almost everything involving the history of English is convoluted, so why not "Saxon genitives"? I mean, it's called English after England...but it's called England after the Angles, and where does that leave the Jutes and Saxons? You can't be inclusive in your nomenclature when you're talking about anything as chaotic as the history of English.

I agree that _genitive_ is not the most descriptive term, but I don't know of a better. _Possessive_ works in many examples, but not all - e.g., "last year's drought" or "one month's pay," which look like possessives but really aren't. I tend to use _genitive_ only when _possessive_ doesn't work, but I don't know if any experts back me up on that. _Garner's Modern American Usage_ refers to examples such as "last year's drought" as "idiomatic possessives," but I can't say that I find that particularly descriptive.


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## Stoggler

JulianStuart said:


> I'm still unclear on two things.
> Did the Saxons have their "own language" or not? (Or bring one even if others call it something else)
> Did they make genitives by adding -es?
> If both are "Yes", then it would seem to be that it is a misnomer only because Saxon can mean other things to other people (or the language they brought can't be called Saxon, only they can be called Saxon and they are the ones who brought it, or something).
> If either answer is no, case closed



The simple answer to those questions is that we don't know for certain!

I've just been re-reading the relevant chapter on David Crystal's The Stories of English and to summarise, the linguistic situation would have been complicated and rather fluid initially.  It's now accepted that the terms Saxon, Angles, Jute etc are too simplistic and probably didn't represent the situation on the ground. "It is not possible to say how intelligible the [invaders] found each other.  There was a great deal to unify them culturally, of course.  They had a common oral heritage and a common set of religious beliefs.  Probably their dialects would have been mutually comprehensible, for the most part, though with some islands of difficulty ..." Taken from the above quoted book

So it is unlikely that the Saxons all spoke one dialect, but it is also probable that they would understand each other sufficiently.

as for how the genitive was formed back then, again it's not known for certain but with some variation, an -es ending would likely to have been used.


The above was all written on my mobile so typographical errors are to be expected!!


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## fdb

“Saxon genitive” is an established phrase, more, I think, in school books than in serious linguistic writing. The genitive in “s” is the only real genitive in English and there is really no reason to call it “Saxon”. The “of” construction is not a genitive, but a prepositional phrase.


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## berndf

Stoggler said:


> True, although Alfred and his West Saxons didn't call the language that they wrote in Saxon - the language had been called englisc (or names similar to that) for some time before Alfred.


It is obviously a pars pro toto denomination like _English_ is too. You might object to the word _English_ as a name of the language as well.

What I find more problematic is that the opposition Saxon genitive vs. of+objective case suggests that the _of_-construct is (A) of non-Germanic origin (B) is a genitive. Neither of these implications are quite right.


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## bibax

In the Czech Republic we use both terms:

- *saský genitiv* (the Saxon genitive)
- *přivlastňovací pád podstatných jmen* (the possessive case of nouns)


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## Loob

berndf said:


> It is obviously a pars pro toto denomination like _English_ is too. You might object to the word _English_ as a name of the language as well.
> 
> What I find more problematic is that the opposition Saxon genitive vs. of+objective case suggests that the _of_-construct is (A) of non-Germanic origin (B) is a genitive. Neither of these implications are quite right.


You can also argue that the "Saxon genitive" isn't really a genitive, since the apostrophe-_s_ can attach itself to phrases as well as single words: _the King of Spain's daughter._

That said, I do find it a helpful shorthand sometimes, especially as - as Kate says above - the apostrophe-_s_ often indicates something other than possession....


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## berndf

Stoggler said:


> as for how the genitive was formed back then, again it's not known for certain but with some variation, an -es ending would likely to have been used.


In Old-Saxon, as in other West Germanic languages of the time, the genitive singular ends in _-es/-as_ for strong masculine & neuter nouns (p55sqq).


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## fdb

In Old English, the genitive ending is -es both for masculine and for neuter strong nouns.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> In Old English, the genitive ending is -es both for masculine and for neuter strong nouns.


Of course. Same is true for Old Saxon.


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## NorwegianNYC

It is the same in Old Norse for M and N singular.


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## mplsray

From page 141 of _Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics_, edited by Dirk Geeraerts, et al.:



> As is well known, English has two grammatically overt means of expressing genitive relations, the _of_-genitive (also known as the 'Norman genitive', 'periphrastic genitive', or 'of-construction')...and the _s_-genitive (also known as the 'Saxon genitive')....


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## JustKate

That's really *pretty* cool, Mplsray - the contrast between Norman and Saxon genitive.


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## fdb

In my view this just shows how sloppy and inconsistent “cognitive sociolinguists” are in their use of grammatical terminology. “Genitive” is a grammatical case. “Of” is a preposition.


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## mplsray

fdb said:


> In my view this just shows how sloppy and inconsistent “cognitive sociolinguists” are in their use of grammatical terminology. “Genitive” is a grammatical case. “Of” is a preposition.



The reason I quoted from that work is because it used three terms for the "of-construction" rather than just the term "Norman genitive"—a term which can be seen via Google Books in many other works not limited to the field in question.

Some grammarians do not see the Saxon genitive as a case form. From the article "Saxon Genitive" in _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_, edited by Tom McArthur:



> This genitive is often described as a case form, but as it can be attached to phrases (_The King of Thailand's visit_; _somebody else's seat_), some grammarians argue against this view....


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## NorwegianNYC

fdb said:


> In my view this just shows how sloppy and inconsistent “cognitive sociolinguists” are in their use of grammatical terminology. “Genitive” is a grammatical case. “Of” is a preposition.


Whereas I agree that a grammatical case usually is an inflectional  ending (or prefix), I am not aware of a definition that says a  periphrastic case is not a proper grammatical case? If you consider "the  capital _of the Republic_" and "_the Republic's_ capital" - how do they differ as a case (yes, I am aware there is a preposition in the former)?


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## Ihsiin

mplsray said:


> Some grammarians do not see the Saxon genitive as a case form. From the article "Saxon Genitive" in _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_, edited by Tom McArthur:
> 
> 
> 
> This genitive is often described as a case form, but as it can be attached to phrases (_The King of Thailand's visit_; _somebody else's seat_), some grammarians argue against this view....
Click to expand...


I suppose you could say the same of the Old English genitive; the second line of Beowulf, for example, has: "þeod cyninga þrym", "(power of (the/those) people-kings/kings of people). Klaeber's Beowulf renders "þeod cyninga" as one word, "þeodcyninga", and the Penguin glossed text hyphanates it, "þeod-cyninga"; but in the manuscript they're presented as two seperate words: http://www2.washjeff.edu/users/ltroost/british/Beowulf manuscript.gif.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> I suppose you could say the same of the Old English genitive; the second line of Beowulf, for example, has: "þeod cyninga þrym", "(power of (the/those) people-kings/kings of people). Klaeber's Beowulf renders "þeod cyninga" as one word, "þeodcyninga", and the Penguin glossed text hyphanates it, "þeod-cyninga"; but in the manuscript they're presented as two seperate words: http://www2.washjeff.edu/users/ltroost/british/Beowulf%20manuscript.gif.


Germanic composite nouns behave morphologically as one word, irrespective of what spelling convention an author adheres to.


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## Ihsiin

This is true, but then again in "somebody else's seat", "somebody else" also behaves morphologically as one word, though we think of it as a phrase.
The point about "þeod cyninga" is that it seems that the native speaking Anglo-Saxon scribe thought of this as a two word phrase, rather than a single word, and who are we really to say he was wrong?
I have, however, since making that post, come to realise that "þeod" could be easily construed as operating as an adjective, the compound noun structure working on an adjective-noun model, so my point doesn't really work any more.
I thereby (wrong word, but what the hell) withdraw it.


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## berndf

Germanic composite nouns _always_ behave like one word, not only with respect to the genitive. Only the last constituent is ever inflected and only the last constituent determines the gender of the compound. This is very different to constructs like _the king of Spain's daughter_. In case-inflected Germanic languages, the constituent _king _would would be inflected for the genitve.


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## CapnPrep

NorwegianNYC said:


> Whereas I agree that a grammatical case usually is an inflectional  ending (or prefix), I am not aware of a definition that says a  periphrastic case is not a proper grammatical case?


You're right: it's just a terminological choice. There's no reason why the notion of "case" cannot be extended beyond its original morphological sense to include other types of relational marking of nominal expressions. It doesn't have to be sloppy or inconsistent.


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## Ihsiin

berndf said:


> Germanic composite nouns _always_ behave like one word, not only with respect to the genitive. Only the last constituent is ever inflected and only the last constituent determines the gender of the compound. This is very different to constructs like _the king of Spain's daughter_. In case-inflected Germanic languages, the constituent _king _would would be inflected for the genitve.



Quite right, quite right, this is what I was driving at with my vague thoughts about the noun acting as an adjective; "cyninga" is genitive, and the fact that "þeod" is not is neither here nor there.
My instinct would still be, though, to suggest that "the king of Spain" also behaves like one word in all cases; it's just that in modern English we only have the genitive to inflect it with, so this one-word-ness can't manifest itself in other way. To all intents and purposes, though, it seems to me that it operates just like the traditional Germanic compound word. I would say that "the king of Spain" connotes a single conceptual body (if that makes sense), as opposed to something like "Spain's king", which to my ears emphasises the Spanishness of the king in question and is therefore unsuitable for additional genitive endings ("Spain's king's daughter" is a very cumbersome phrase).
I hope I've made sense.


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## berndf

So what you are saying is that in modern English noun phrases like _king of Spain _can be interpreted as single words just like compound nouns and therefore the application of the morpheme _-'s_ to the entire noun phrase does not mean the morpheme cannot be understood as a case ending any more as those grammarians claim who call it a possessive suffix rather than a genitive ending.

Yes, it makes sense to me, because the distinction between noun phrases and compound nouns has been blurred in modern English by the loss of declensions. A good example of this is your intuition of understanding _þeod _as adjective-like. This makes sense from a modern English perspective. From an Old English perspective (and also from a modern German perspective, by the way) this wouldn't even cross your mind because the appropriate adjective declensional ending, strong genitive masculine plural, is missing: *_þeod*ra*_ _cyninga_. Compare _godra cyninga = good kings'_.


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## fdb

English has retained one of the features of Indo-European compounds, namely the fact that they have only one stress. There is a difference between a "green house" (two stresses) and a "greenhouse" (one stress). For this reason I do not think "king of Spain" can be analysed as a compound. As besides: unlike compounds, it is liable to internal morphological change ("kings of Spain").


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## CapnPrep

Ihsiin said:


> My instinct would still be, though, to suggest that "the king of Spain" also behaves like one word in all cases


You could possibly make a case for _king of Spain_, but the genitive _'s_ gets added to all kinds of phrases that are definitely multi-word sequences that are freely constructed syntactically. First of all, you can coordinate a bunch of nouns and then stick _'s_ at the end of the whole thing: _*Ihsiin, berndf, and fdb's* latest posts_. Here are some examples containing a relative clause after the noun:


If you're a real mother, you'd teach your daughters not to have affairs [with] their sister's -- *anyone that they know's* boyfriends. (Geraldo, 1993)
I'm living in *this guy I work with's* basement. (July, SOMETHING THAT NEEDS NOTHING, _New Yorker_, 2006)
You can find many examples like these by searching for "group genitive". You will also find advice saying that this is grammatically  incorrect or at least stylistically inelegant and should be avoided in English, but this just proves that they are part of many speakers' spontaneous usage.


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## myšlenka

NorwegianNYC said:


> Whereas I agree that a grammatical case usually is an inflectional ending (or prefix), I am not aware of a definition that says a periphrastic case is not a proper grammatical case? If you consider “the capital _of the Republic_” and “_the Republic’s_ capital” - how do they differ as a case (yes, I am aware there is a preposition in the former)?





CapnPrep said:


> You’re right: it’s just a terminological choice. There’s no reason why the notion of “case” cannot be extended beyond its original morphological sense to include other types of relational marking of nominal expressions. It doesn’t have to be sloppy or inconsistent.


 Grammatical case is by definition a morphological category which applies mostly to nouns (but also adjectives, determiners, pronouns etc) and there are several reasons to limit the definition to morphology. Prepositions can be conjoined (behind and under) and they can take coordinated structures as their complements (the king of Spain and France). Morphological case doesn’t work this way.

Another issue would be the labelling of periphrastic case, especially in languages where a certain set of prepositions can take complements with different cases. Would German _an_ or _hinter_ be accusative or dative? They both take accusative and dative complements, so the only way to figure out whether we have _hinter_(acc) or _hinter_(dat) would be to look at the noun itself. Labelling cases without a morphological reflex would just be giving case names to each and every preposition you find in a given language.


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## Ben Jamin

CapnPrep said:


> You're right: it's just a terminological choice. There's no reason why the notion of "case" cannot be extended beyond its original morphological sense to include other types of relational marking of nominal expressions. It doesn't have to be sloppy or inconsistent.


I am not a linguist, but I have always interpreted the inflection cases of substantives and the like as a function or relation of one word to another, and not as a morfological variety, as for example an ending (or umlaut, or lenition). The morfological features are just the markers of the function, not the function itself, like the epaulettes of an officer are not his commanding function itself.


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## CapnPrep

myšlenka said:


> Grammatical case is by definition a morphological category which applies mostly to nouns (but also adjectives, determiners, pronouns etc) and there are several reasons to limit the definition to morphology. Prepositions can be conjoined (behind and under) and they can take coordinated structures as their complements (the king of Spain and France). Morphological case doesn’t work this way.


No one is suggesting that there are no differences between morphological and prepositional case-marking. And I don't think you are suggesting that there are no similarities. I am sure we all agree more or less about how case endings and prepositions work. People who decide that the functional similarities are strong enough that it makes sense to have a common term for both still have to explain how and why they are similar, and they still have to recognize and account for the differences. People who consider them too different to imagine having a common term still have to recognize and account for the similarities. It is important in both cases not to let one's choice of terminology pre-determine the analysis.


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## Cenzontle

> That's really *pretty cool, Mplsray - the contrast between Norman and Saxon genitive.*


I secretly agree that it's cool to have this symmetry of ethnicities, Norman and Saxon, 
and in general to have such concise terms (among us cognoscenti) for these language phenomena.
I also enjoy knowing about the "Oxford comma" and its American synonym, the "Harvard comma".
But I still maintain that these terms seem designed to keep their meanings secret from the uninitiated, and that's what I meant by "opaque".

More about the "genitive" in English:
Linguists—grammarians too, I should hope—look for general phenomena that can be summed up economically in a rule.
But the "Saxon genitive" (hereinafter "SG") seems to be the only instance of a noun "changing its form" to match its case function.
So I see very little "economy" to be gained by the term.  Why trouble an English-learner with terms like "genitive" and "case" when there's only one place to use them?
It smells suspiciously like the same notorious imposition of Latin grammar upon English that dictates "It is I" in place of "It's me."


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## berndf

Cenzontle said:


> So I see very little "economy" to be gained by the term.  Why trouble an English-learner with terms like "genitive" and "case" when there's only one place to use them?


I don't think this discussion is primarily about didactics of EFL teaching. And since pronouns retain the nominative-objective distinction also morphologically, there would be at least three cases to distinguish in modern English, if we maintained this concept, and not just two. 


Cenzontle said:


> It smells suspiciously like the same notorious imposition of Latin grammar upon English that dictates "It is I" in place of "It's me."


English developed out of a fully case inflected language. So, the use of the term genitive is completely natural in diachronic analysis which seems to be the focus of this discussion, if I understand the OP correctly. We don't need Latin for that.


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## myšlenka

CapnPrep said:


> No one is suggesting that there are no differences between morphological and prepositional case-marking. And I don't think you are suggesting that there are no similarities. I am sure we all agree more or less about how case endings and prepositions work. People who decide that the functional similarities are strong enough that it makes sense to have a common term for both still have to explain how and why they are similar, and they still have to recognize and account for the differences. People who consider them too different to imagine having a common term still have to recognize and account for the similarities. It is important in both cases not to let one's choice of terminology pre-determine the analysis.


The similarities are of course numerous as languages tend to deploy one strategy or the other in various contexts. English _to_ and _of_ represent dative and genitive respectively. However, the term "periphrastic case" suggests that morphological case and "periphrastic case" should be treated on a par as they both are types of cases. Functionally speaking they are but we don't want to posit that every preposition in English has its own case. That would lead to possibly more than a 100 "periphrastic cases" in English which would outnumber the cases found in _real_ case languages.


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## CapnPrep

It is not necessary to posit a distinct case for every preposition, only those with grammaticalized function. And the function is not necessarily specific to a particular preposition, but there could be some more general cases; for example for the German prepositions you mentioned it could be useful to posit a static locative case vs a dynamic directional case. Most prepositions will not correspond to a specific case, perhaps just a general "indirect" case if this is motivated syntactically.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> for example for the German prepositions you mentioned it could be useful to posit a static locative case vs a dynamic directional case.


You could, but it seems rather unnecessary. A locative meaning of the dative is quite common (and etymological) as is the accusative expressing goal, target, end or destination. So, explaining _preposition+dative_ vs. _the-same-__preposition+accusative_ by general properties of those cases appears sufficient.





CapnPrep said:


> Most prepositions will not correspond to a specific case, perhaps just a general "indirect" case if this is motivated syntactically.


My response to the question which Hungarian postpositions constitute cases and which not in a different thread by have some relevance here (NB.: I am just reporting this view, it is not mine):





berndf said:


> I know next to nothing about Hungarian, so I can only report what I've read: Some grammarians seems to distinguish between "proper cases" and other postpositions. "Proper cases" are produced by postpositions (including the null-marker for nominative) that play a role in marking arguments of the preducate as distinct from its adjuncts in a valence-theoretical context.
> To give you an example in English: _He waited for me in a bar._ Here _for me_ is a prepositional object, i.e. an argument, and _in a bar_ is an adjunct. This is so, because the verb of valence one, the intransitive _to wait_, is considered to constitute a different predicate than the verb _to wait for somebody_ of valence two, while _in a bar_ is additional information added to the predicate that does not modify the predicate itself.
> 
> I don't know, if this makes sense to you, if you try to apply it to Hungarian.


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## NorwegianNYC

myšlenka said:


> The similarities are of course numerous as languages tend to deploy one strategy or the other in various contexts. English _to_ and _of_ represent dative and genitive respectively. However, the term "periphrastic case" suggests that morphological case and "periphrastic case" should be treated on a par as they both are types of cases. Functionally speaking they are but we don't want to posit that every preposition in English has its own case. That would lead to possibly more than a 100 "periphrastic cases" in English which would outnumber the cases found in _real_ case languages.


Not every preposition will require a separate "case"! Of course not. "The king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" conveys the same meaning, so they do indeed represent the same case. This whole thing is a bit normative vs. descriptive in the sense that whereas the text book example is a morphological case, a periphrastic case conveys the exact same meaning.


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## myšlenka

NorwegianNYC said:


> Not every preposition will require a separate "case"! Of course not. "The king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" conveys the same meaning, so they do indeed represent the same case. This whole thing is a bit normative vs. descriptive in the sense that whereas the text book example is a morphological case, a periphrastic case conveys the exact same meaning.


Ok, so there will only be need for the term "periphrastic case" when you have two ways of phrasing a structure. In English it would apply to the genitive and the dative. I am not sure I see the usefulness.


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## NorwegianNYC

Myslenka - my point is that "the king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" convey the same meaning, so why should they not be considered the same "case"? What is the rationale behind treating one as a grammatical case, and the other merely as "something with a preposition in it"? Whence came the definition it had to be morphological to be considered a "case"?


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> Myslenka - my point is that "the king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" convey the same meaning, so why should they not be considered the same "case"? What is the rationale behind treating one as a grammatical case, and the other merely as "something with a preposition in it"? Whence came the definition it had to be morphological to be considered a "case"?


Maybe because case is in essence a morphological concept? It is a dimension in a declension matrix. If you reduce genitive to a mere semantic category, I'd prefer to give up the notion of a case altogether.


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## myšlenka

NorwegianNYC said:


> Myslenka - my point is that "the king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" convey the same meaning, so why should they not be considered the same "case"? What is the rationale behind treating one as a grammatical case, and the other merely as "something with a preposition in it"? Whence came the definition it had to be morphological to be considered a "case"?


Case refers to the basic observation that a noun phrase changes according to its syntactic environments. This was observed by the Romans, the Greeks, the Indians and the Arabs. Thus, the definition of case is morphological. You can't possibly criticize a morphological notion for being morphological?


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## Ben Jamin

myšlenka said:


> Case refers to the basic observation that a noun phrase changes according to its syntactic environments. This was observed by the Romans, the Greeks, the Indians and the Arabs. Thus, the definition of case is morphological. You can't possibly criticize a morphological notion for being morphological?



And what about nouns that have the same case suffix or no suffix at all in many cases, but despite this are treated as separate cases. Doesn't it contradict the concept of the case as purely morphological? Moreover, does there exist an international convention that states what a case is?


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## myšlenka

Ben Jamin said:


> And what about nouns that have the same case suffix or no suffix at all in many cases, but despite this are treated as separate cases. Doesn't it contradict the concept of the case as purely morphological? Moreover, does there exist an international convention that states what a case is?


When you say "nouns that have have same case suffix", do you mean coordinated nouns sharing a single case suffix (a case clitic in other words) or do you mean case syncretism? If there is no suffix at all, we would call it nominative in some languages, ergative in others and the term oblique case could also be appplicable. Maybe I am missing something but I don't see how this contraditcs the concept of case as something morphological.

I am not aware of any international convention stating what a case is, and there are certainly phenomena in various languages we don't know how to classify but common for them all is that there is a _morphological_ means of marking nouns and noun phrases.


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## CapnPrep

myšlenka said:


> Case refers to the basic observation that a noun phrase changes according to its syntactic environments.


Yes, the syntactic environment can impose requirements on the form of the noun phrase. These requirements can involve morphological marking (case endings) or syntactic marking (preposition/postposition). The overarching phenomenon here is "contextually-determined grammatical marking of noun phrases"; a shorter way to say this could be "grammatical case" or "abstract case" or "Case"/"Kasus"/"K", and many authors who write about this topic use such terminology. You don't have to like it or use it, but it is useful to understand it, at least.


myšlenka said:


> This was observed by the Romans, the Greeks, the Indians and the Arabs.


Does human knowledge stop at the wisdom of the Ancients, or are we allowed to try to build upon and update their ideas?


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## NorwegianNYC

In Latin, _audivero_ is future perfect, and the corresponding English future perfect is “I will have listened”. Yes, I am fully aware that verbs and nouns are not the same beast, but if “I will have listened” is perfectly fine as future perfect, but “the daughter of the king” is not acceptable as a genitive, there seems to be a discrepancy in the system! I am not arguing against morphological cases. I like morphological cases, and I wholeheartedly agree that “the daughter of the king” is not such. However – if one is to invoke Latin and Greek in defense of genitive, then “I will have listened” is little more than “a pronoun, an auxiliary, a present and a preterit” lumped together.

When Robert Lowth et al. decided that since Latin did not end a sentence in a preposition, English should not do it either, and instituted it as a “rule”; the map and the terrain did not match at all, since English had ended sentences with prepositions for its entire existence. It was a most peculiar effort, since it was directed at making English adhere to a principle, and not to reality.

That being said – I have no problem with genitive as a morphological case alone, but I am curious to learn where that definition comes from. (Said with a preposition at the end!)


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## myšlenka

CapnPrep said:


> Yes, the syntactic environment can impose requirements on the form of the noun phrase. These requirements can involve morphological marking (case endings) or syntactic marking (preposition/postposition). The overarching phenomenon here is "contextually-determined grammatical marking of noun phrases"; a shorter way to say this could be "grammatical case" or "abstract case" or "Case"/"Kasus"/"K", and many authors who write about this topic use such terminology. You don't have to like it or use it, but it is useful to understand it, at least.


 In a way, you could say there are two definitions of case here. You have the everyday use of case to denote the fact that some languages change the shape of nouns, determiners etc according to the syntactic environment. This is a morphological definition which entails that it's only relevant for languages with morphological case marking. 

The other use would be abstract case which is used in syntactic theories to explain why some verbal arguments are pronounced and others not, even though both are part of the verb's argument structure. This definition would be valid for all languages. In this framework, overt morphological case markings on the noun are considered secondary effects and are not central to the theory itself.

I understand the terminology very well, but I don't see how "periphrastic case" would be useful for any of these definitions.


> Does human knowledge stop at the wisdom of the Ancients, or are we allowed to try to build upon and update their ideas?


 No, we are of course allowed to build upon their ideas, I was just saying that they made the definition which is morphological in essence. If there is no extra morphology, there is no case. If you and NorwegianNYC were thinking about _abstract case_ which is a syntactic notion, we have a different discussion.


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## francisgranada

The "the king's daughter"/ "the daughter of the king" is expressed in Hungarian differently, i.e. the "possessed object" is provided with a marker/ending: 

a király lány*a *(lit. approx. "the king daughter-his", *-a* is the possessive ending, 3.pers.sg.)

Could this construction still be called genitive? (not Saxon, of course )


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## NorwegianNYC

francisgranada said:


> Could this construction still be called genitive?


This is my point, as well. I am not criticizing a morphological notion of genitive, but does that make it a definition?


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## myšlenka

NorwegianNYC said:


> In Latin, _audivero_ is future perfect, and the corresponding English future perfect is “I will have listened”. Yes, I am fully aware that verbs and nouns are not the same beast, but if “I will have listened” is perfectly fine as future perfect, but “the daughter of the king” is not acceptable as a genitive, there seems to be a discrepancy in the system! I am not arguing against morphological cases. I like morphological cases, and I wholeheartedly agree that “the daughter of the king” is not such. However – if one is to invoke Latin and Greek in defense of genitive, then “I will have listened” is little more than “a pronoun, an auxiliary, a present and a preterit” lumped together.


I am not sure if this is a parallel case, but the verbal equivalent to morphological case is not _tense_ but _conjugation_. Are you saying that since Latin _audivero_ is a part of a conjugation paradigm, then English "I will have listened" should be the same?


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## NorwegianNYC

My point is that there are voices here that will argue "the daughter of the king" is NOT genitive, because it is not a morphological case. To the extent of my knowledge, the only real description of genitive is that it is a grammatical case, and all I have been asking for is if "Saxon genitive" is not real genitive, then this is based on what? Believe me - I not here to bash the notion of morphology as a foundation of grammar. The reason I dragged _audivero_ into it, is not that I do not know the difference between a tense and a conjugation, but in the spirit of inflectional morphology, how can _audivero_ and "I will have listened" both be future perfect, but "the king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" cannot both be genitive? If there is a sound principle or definition out there, I will be happy to go with it, but if "it is, because it is", that sounds an awfully lot like the "rule" for not ending a sentence in a preposition.

Trust me - this is not adversity on my part. I am here to be enlightened just as much as the next guy!


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## Ёж!

NorwegianNYC said:


> The reason I dragged _audivero_ into it, is not that I do not know the difference between a tense and a conjugation, but in the spirit of inflectional morphology, how can _audivero_ and "I will have listened" both be future perfect, but "the king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" cannot both be genitive?


While it looks all right to generalise the notion of case in any way that's useful for any given context, I'm not sure it is really a great idea to imply that the only possible cases are those of Latin or Finnish! So, if English has a lot of prepositions, and someone wishes to treat them as case markers of nominal phrases they are attached to, then he has to come up with a different case name for each preposition, and yet another name for the construction with _'s_. And reusing case names of Latin cases naturally looks dubious for a reader, because there can be a lot of different behaviour both in meanings and grammar. The world of convention!


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## francisgranada

My post (#73) was a question, not an opinion. I wanted to ask your opinion about the (standard or whatever …) definition of the term _genitive_. I.e. _when _a grammatical case (whatever be it’s formal realization) can be called _genitive_?

In those IE languages where the nominal inflection (declension) exists, there are also prepositional constructions that require the noun to be in _genitive case_, eventhough the resulting expression has nothing do with "possession’, “belonging to" etc. 

From this point of view, the Saxon genitive today seems to serve mostly to express "possession/belonging to …", so it is not a "full" equivalent of the _genitive_ _case_ of the IE "declining" languages (probably including the Proto-Germanic and/or the German as well). On the other hand, the preposition "of" can be used also for other purposes than “possession” (I suppose that the usage/function of prepositions is an other, probably much wider, topic/question …)

So my question (#73) is, whether a formally different (Hungarian-like) construction that semantically corresponds to the English (especially the Saxon) genitive, could be also called _genitive_? 

Of course, the meaning of any term depends on it’s definition (i.e. convenience), however I don’t think that it is _practical _to have different interpretations for the same term depending on the concrete language (or other cirumstances). And vice versa, to call the same “situation” expressed with different means by the same term. By the way, for example, the Saxon genitive could be called _possessive_ (from the point of view of it’s functionality) …


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## Ёж!

francisgranada said:


> [...] however I don’t think that it is plausible to have different interpretations for the same term depending on the concrete language (or other cirumstances). And vice versa, to call the same “situation” expressed with different means by the same term.


Why do you think so? My rationale is that we should not take for granted that our words reflect the nature faithfully. In fact, the succes of precise (mathematics, physics) and natural (biology) sciences is, in my opinion, due to the fact that they rely on things and not on words in their description of the world, unlike humanistic disciplines seem to do very often and fail; the physical sciences don't describe terms, they describe the world. So, it is the world that cannot change, but terms can (although usually they do not, with this I agree).

So, it is not very good to choose words well before the subject of our speech is selected and examined. Terms are no more than tools for communication, it is better to choose them when we already know what we want to say, so that the choice is most effective. And in the case of linguistics, there is even more suspicion in respect to terms, because it still seems to be a mostly descriptive science, there is no all-embracing system that dictates what languages are possible and why. When a term is a generalisation of a special case (as it happens with the name of the genitive case), we cannot know _a priori_ when the generalisation is nice and when it is less so — both situations are possible.


> For example, the Saxon genitive could be called _possessive_  (from the point of view of it’s functionality) …


To my mind, this a very nice name. The dangerous kind of problem is unlikely with it.


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## Loob

Ёж! said:


> For example, the Saxon genitive could be called _possessive_  (from the point of view of it’s functionality) …
> 
> 
> 
> To my mind, this a very nice name. Dangerous problems are unlikely with it.
Click to expand...

I've probably lost track of this thread.  But I think there *are* problems with the use of the term "possessive" to refer to the apostrophe-_s_.  Signalling possession is one of its uses, but it's by no means the only one.


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## myšlenka

NorwegianNYC said:


> My point is that there are voices here that will argue "the daughter of the king" is NOT genitive, because it is not a morphological case. To the extent of my knowledge, the only real description of genitive is that it is a grammatical case, and all I have been asking for is if "Saxon genitive" is not real genitive, then this is based on what? Believe me - I not here to bash the notion of morphology as a foundation of grammar. The reason I dragged _audivero_ into it, is not that I do not know the difference between a tense and a conjugation, but in the spirit of inflectional morphology, how can _audivero_ and "I will have listened" both be future perfect, but "the king's daughter" and "the daughter of the king" cannot both be genitive? If there is a sound principle or definition out there, I will be happy to go with it, but if "it is, because it is", that sounds an awfully lot like the "rule" for not ending a sentence in a preposition.


 The definition is simple enough. Case is nominal affixation according to the syntactic environments of the nominal in question. If you can't see any changes in the nominal in question in various syntactic positions, then you have no case. It's a very descriptive definition and I can't see the normative side of it. Nor can I see how it can be unsound. The genitive case has various uses depending on the language, but possession seems to be a common one.

"The daughter of the king" - there are no nominal affixes in this construction. Consequently this can't be an instance of the genitive.

"The king's daughter" - there is an affix *'s* attached to the first noun, so this might be an instance of the genitive case. However, CapnPrep points out in #54 that the *'s* attaches to all kinds of phrases, not just nominal stems. Unfortunately, the definition states that case is nominal affixation so this isn't either an instance of the genitive. In the literature it is called a case clitic.

And it doesnt' help that the two phrases are semantically equivalent because case and semantics aren't two sides of the same coin.


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## Hulalessar

Cases are the different forms nouns etc take. The cases have names. The names allocated describe the main function of each case. The problem is that (a) the function which the name describes may be achieved by some other means than using the case which has the name and (b) that each case may have functions other than its main function. The same thing happens in respect of the "tenses" of verbs. It is all liable to lead to confusion.


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> My point is that there are voices here that will argue "the daughter of the king" is NOT genitive...


Mainly because there is already a contradicting syntactic analysis (preposition + NP) and because "king" already has a case assigned to it, the objective case, not for (dodgy) semantic reasons but because it is clearly morphologically marked, only in pronouns, but it is (_the daughter of *him*_).


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## NorwegianNYC

> The genitive case has various uses depending on the language, but possession seems to be a common one.





> Mainly because there is already a contradicting syntactic analysis  (preposition + NP) and because "king" already has a case assigned to it,  the objective case, not for (dodgy) semantic reasons but because it is  clearly morphologically marked, only in pronouns, but it is (_the daughter of *him*_).


Thank you myslenka and berndf.


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