# abusive possessive?



## Joca

We currently say: This is my school, this is my club, this is my doctor, etc. Yet, strictly speaking, this school, this club, this doctor, etc, doesn't belong to me. What we mean obviously is: This is the school I go to, this is the club where I play tennis, this is the doctor that treats me, etc... I suppose all European language employ possessive adjectives this way, but I am not sure. But what about non-European languages? Can you say the same in Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi...?


----------



## .   1

I disagree.
The school is the students.
Without students a school would just be a bunch of buildings.
With no tennis players would it really be a tennis club?
I consider that my family doctor is my doctor.  I see nothing strange in the construction.  If he wasn't my family doctor he would just be a kayak paddler that I know.  He is not my kayak paddler but he is my doctor.

.,,


----------



## Nanon

I see Joca's point pretty well - it is not only about the use of the same terms to express that you actually own something or that you belong to some place, it is about talking about places or people as if they were yours, as if you possessed them. 

Strictly speaking, this "possessive" may sound rather strange if taken literally - how can I reasonably be the "owner" of a doctor, a customer, a hairdresser, a secretary, a father, a friend..., a company of which I am just an employee, a town I just live in, a country where I was born, etc? Maybe Joca and I have the same feeling about this because our cultures are different or because our mother languages are Romance and the equivalents to "belong" do not have the same connotations as in English... I don't know. Do we have a less developed sense of property? A good cultural question here! Parabéns, Joca!

I learnt European languages only, so there is not much I can say, but I can bring the example of Russian that does not use the verb "to have" in this context. You cannot "have" a doctor or a son or a car or a rose, you must use a phrase which means literally "by me" (you, him, her...). Otherwise the possessive adjective works pretty much like in French or Portuguese, Joca  -- so let's go beyond European limits.


----------



## vachecow

Nanon said:


> Maybe Joca and I have the same feeling about this because our cultures are different or because our mother languages are Romance and the equivalents to "belong" do not have the same connotations as in English... I don't know. Do we have a less developed sense of property?



That may be true, because I completely agree with .,, 
If I say someone is my friend, they wouldn't be just any friend.


----------



## ireney

Well I can't quite see it, not even from a prescrivists' point of view. The fact that someone is "my doctor" doesn't mean that I own him/her but he is a doctor to me, _(s)he_ is the person that is doctoring me and not Dr. Dolittle (sp?). She/He can be a doctor to others too, since "my" doesn't preclude that. Since when I am paying him I own the time he spends to doctor me (s)he is my doctor, isn't (s)he? And since it is to him/her that I give the money and (s)he is responsible for my health (to the extent that a doctor is responsible) I am his/her patient.


----------



## karuna

I think you got it backwards. The term "possesive pronoun" does not suppose that the possession is egocentric. It may mean that something belongs to me or that I belong to someone/something, i.e., it simply indicates that I have certain relationships with object or person in question. My boss and my employee – the same grammatical structure but different relationships.

Baltic and Slavic languages often use reflexive pronoun instead of possesive or leave it out when it is clear from the context. In Latvian [_I went out] with my friend_ would be _...ar draugu_ (with friend), or if one really needs to specify then _...ar savu draugu_ (with one's own friend) but never "_...ar manu draugu" _(with my friend) because that would sound silly. I heard that Japanese has similar usage: _jibun no tomodachi_.


----------



## Flaminius

Karuna, pronouns of all kinds are shunned like plague in Japanese.   Well, in fact person is not a grammatical category in Japanese.

The Japanese version of your example would be;
(私は)友達と出かけた。
watashi-wa tomodachi-to dekaketa
I-TOPIC friend-WITH wentout.

By the way, number, gender and are not mandatory grammatical categories either.


----------



## Joca

Flaminius said:


> Karuna, pronouns of all kinds are shunned like plague in Japanese.  Well, in fact person is not a grammatical category in Japanese.
> 
> The Japanese version of your example would be;
> (私は)友達と出かけた。
> watashi-wa tomodachi-to dekaketa
> I-TOPIC friend-WITH wentout.
> 
> By the way, number, gender and are not mandatory grammatical categories either.


 
Flaminius:

Does it make sense in Japanese to say "my friend", "my doctor" or "my personal trainer" etc? If not, how can we ever convey the idea that I have a relationship with someone else, which in English often requires the possessive adjective? I know (or I suppose) you can correctly say: "watashi no hon" to mean "my books". But could you use the same structure to say "my friends": "watashi no tomodachi"?

JC


----------



## Brioche

Joca said:


> We currently say: This is my school, this is my club, this is my doctor, etc. Yet, strictly speaking, this school, this club, this doctor, etc, doesn't belong to me. What we mean obviously is: This is the school I go to, this is the club where I play tennis, this is the doctor that treats me, etc... I suppose all European language employ possessive adjectives this way, but I am not sure. But what about non-European languages? Can you say the same in Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi...?



What's in a designation?
Some grammarian saw that in "my bicycle" I possess the bicycle, called it _possessive_ and decided to extend the categorization for all uses of _my_

I don't own my street, or my state, or my country, or my planet - and I don't pretend to.


----------



## karuna

Flaminius said:


> Karuna, pronouns of all kinds are shunned like plague in Japanese.   Well, in fact person is not a grammatical category in Japanese.



That's certainly so. The reason why I mentioned the Japanese word _jibun _is that I find it interesting that it can mean "my", "yours", "his" etc. depending on the context. The same thing with the impersonal reflexive pronoun _savs _in Latvian or _svoi _in Russian.


----------



## maxiogee

Joca said:


> We currently say: This is my school, this is my club, this is my doctor, etc. Yet, strictly speaking, this school, this club, this doctor, etc, doesn't belong to me. What we mean obviously is: This is the school I go to, this is the club where I play tennis, this is the doctor that treats me, etc...



Because it is the one which applies to us?

"My name is Anthony" is not the same as "Anthony is my name" - I don't own the name, there are oodles (a very scientific term ) of people called Anthony who all share the name with me.
When we say "My name is" we are saying that it is the one which applies to us.
My doctor is the one which applies to me. Other doctors are still doctors and other schools are still schools, but they do not have a relationship to me - they are not 'mine'. Like the name, they are not exclusively mine, like something I create would be, a piece of poetry or a painting.

I think there is a difference in the two senses, one of ownership and one of pertinence.


----------



## Flaminius

karuna said:


> That's certainly so. The reason why I mentioned the Japanese word _jibun _is that I find it interesting that it can mean "my", "yours", "his" etc. depending on the context. The same thing with the impersonal reflexive pronoun _savs _in Latvian or _svoi _in Russian.


Oh, I thought Latvian would have it, "Es gāju ar manu draugu".  But I reread your post and found "if one *really needs to specify* then _...ar savu draugu_" (emphasis mine). Now I see that both Latvian _savs_ and Japanese _jibun_ are reflexive anaphors; a pronominal lexis that refers back to the sentential subject.



Joca said:


> Flaminius:
> 
> Does it make sense in Japanese to say "my friend", "my doctor" or "my personal trainer" etc? If not, how can we ever convey the idea that I have a relationship with someone else, which in English often requires the possessive adjective? I know (or I suppose) you can correctly say: "watashi no hon" to mean "my books". But could you use the same structure to say "my friends": "watashi no tomodachi"?
> 
> JC


Joca, at a phrase level grammar, both _watashi-no hon_ and _watashi-no tomodachi _are okay.  Yet, _watashi-no_ usually means possession _in sensu stricto_.  Possessing a doctor is, well, a very strange habit in a modern society.  Also, as I implied above, Japanese do not use pronouns when ambiguity can be avoided by context or other devices.  In contrast, a sentence full of pronouns are interpreted as having implications: if "I" is overused, this would signify unabashed assertion of ego; if the second person is overused, it is taken as a sign of the speaker's indifference for the hearer; in case of the third person, the hearer might read in the sentence a bitter attitude of disdain.

Nonetheless, of course, Japanese can communicate the connotation you mentioned. A doctor with whom one has a continued relationship that English expresses by "one's doctor" is in Japanese;
kakaritsuke-no isha
(aDoctor)whomOneIsAccustomedToConsulting doctor.

To my dismay, other instances of English possessives require other replacements, which I am afraid I cannot fully explore in one thread.


----------



## LV4-26

This thread started as a cultural one but isn't it merely a linguistic one, after all? I will repeat, with different words, what has already been said by a few others.

_My doctor_ is in fact _*the doctor of me_, as you would say _the leg of the chair
_or_ the time of departure.
_While it could be argued that the chair "posesses"(?) its legs, it is totally impossible to conceive that the departure might own the time.


----------



## Etcetera

Yes, it's a curious construction, but I see nothing strange or "offensive" in it. We all know what is meant, so where's the problem?


----------



## LV4-26

Etcetera said:


> Yes, it's a curious construction, but I see nothing strange or "offensive" in it. We all know what is meant, so where's the problem?


As  you're answering right after my post, I thought that maybe you were addressing me. So I want to make it clear that I see nothing strange or offensive either. Quite the opposite. My point is that "_my doctor_" doesn't suggest ownership any more than _the time of departure_ does. Or not much more, at least.
Just another way of saying what Tony said : my doctor is the doctor that "applies" to me.


----------



## Etcetera

LV4-26 said:


> As  you're answering right after my post, I thought that maybe you were addressing me. So I want to make it clear that I see nothing strange or offensive either. Quite the opposite. My point is that "_my doctor_" doesn't suggest ownership any more than _the time of departure_ does. Or not much more, at least.
> Just another way of saying what Tony said : my doctor is the doctor that "applies" to me.


To say the truth, I was answering to Joca's original post, but my reply seems to be quite appropriate after your post.
That's to the question of using (or abusing) the quote option.


----------



## Lugubert

I know almost no Latin, but an example that has (at least, partially) stuck is the uses of genetive. That should be sufficiently close to a discussion on possessives. (In Sanskrit, you can argue about if the "possessive pronouns" should be more aptly be named the "genetive case of the personal pronouns".)

_Statua Myronis_ (i.e. genetive of the name) could mean a statue belonging to Myron, one depicting him or one he made. I might have forgotten even more meanings.

So, grammatical cases or similar features shouldn't be overinterpreted. 

On the other hand, I react when somebody says "my wife" when it is obvious that he treats her like property...

There are also cat lovers who never say "my cat", but refer to "the cat who [sic] owns me".

I'm fine with for example my neurologist.


----------



## LV4-26

I've come to the conclusion that there's indeed something _abusive_ here, and only one : it's the use that is made  of the word "_possessive_" in grammar.  When used to refer to a particular part of speech, its scope is much much broader than its standard definition.

So long for now. *My* boss is calling me.


----------



## Chaska Ñawi

So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?  The concept of possession gives rise to the linguistic equivalent, or vice versa?


----------



## LV4-26

Chaska Ñawi said:


> So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?  The concept of possession gives rise to the linguistic equivalent, or vice versa?


The words _possess_ and _possession_ seem to predate the word _possessive_ (grammatical sense). See here.

My theory is that the word "possessive" (grammatical sense) was chosen by default. They couldn't find a suitable word to cover the whole range of potential values of the "genitive" (be it the "possessive" adjective/pronoun or "of-constructions"). So they went for _possessive_, as the one that seemed to make the most obvious sense.

EDIT
Having made a quick check, my assumption is basically confirmed by this article (which, incidentally, seems to contradict the introduction date of "possessive" as a grammatical term, as per the etymological dictionary (1762 instead of 1530))


> Bishop Lowth in 1762 used the word _possessive_ in place of the older term _genitive_; so then did other 18th-century                             grammarians, and many grammarians since have used it. This change in terminology has led to a few minor usage problems        based on the erroneous supposition that the only function of the genitive is to show possession.  [...] Fries found that        the possessive genitive was *the most common, but that it accounted for only 40-percent of all genitives.*


(my emphasis)
Please read the rest as well, it's interesting.

All this only applies to Enlgish, of course. But I'm confident it must be more or less the same in other languages.
(it's really thrilling to see your intuitions confirmed  )


----------



## linguist786

Joca said:


> Can you say the same in Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, *Hindi*...?


Most definitely!

Example:

_Meri gaarii, meraa ghar, meri dukaan - sab kuch "meraa" kyuN??_
(stress on underlined words)

[In English: _My car, my house, my shop - why everything "mine"??]_


----------



## modus.irrealis

LV4-26 said:


> I've come to the conclusion that there's indeed something _abusive_ here, and only one : it's the use that is made  of the word "_possessive_" in grammar.  When used to refer to a particular part of speech, its scope is much much broader than its standard definition.



I think you're right that it's abusive in some sense, but to be fair to the grammarians, it's common in any science for words to have different, more specific, meanings than they do in everyday language -- physics is full of them, with its specialized meanings for words like "work" or "momentum." Then again, maybe there's more room for confusion when it comes to language (the idea that masculine and feminine gender in nouns is virtually the same as masculine and feminine sex seems to pop up all the time), so maybe grammarians should be more careful.


----------



## LV4-26

modus.irrealis said:


> I think you're right that it's abusive in some sense, but to be fair to the grammarians, it's common in any science for words to have different, more specific, meanings than they do in everyday language --


I agree. I meant the word "abusive" in the most neutral sense possible. The "abusive" use of a word is not necessarily to be blamed on someone in particular. But it might be important to be aware (as in this case) that the word used doesn't always fully reflect the reality it's supposed to describe.

And, to be perfectly honest, I thought it clever to "recycle" the word _abusive _that was in the title.


----------

