Identify the semantic types of the following genitives (use the box).

SEMINAR 4

THE NOUN (II)

Theoretical comment

The problem of the category of case in English. Various approaches to the category of case in English language study: “the theory of positional cases”, “the theory of prepositional cases”, “the theory of limited case”, “the theory of possessive postposition” (“the theory of no case”); their critical assessment. Formal and functional properties of the common case and the genitive case. The structural types of genitive. The semantic types of the genitive. The correlation of the nounal case and the pronounal case. The synonymic encounter of the ‘s-genitive and the of-phrase in Modern English.

The article as a grammatical determiner of the noun. The system of articles in English: the definite article, the indefinite article, and the zero article (meaningful non-use of an article). The points of controversy on the problems of the place of article in the language system, on the number of articles.

Practice

Provide equivalents for the following terms.

declension	the genitive (possessive) case
the meaning of appurtenance	the category of article determination
“the theory of positional cases”	a noun determiner
“the theory of prepositional cases”	classifying function
“the limited case theory”	numerical function
“the postpositional theory”	generic function
the common case	specifying function

2. Explain the semantic distinctions in the contrastive use of the two cases:

Africa problem – Africa’s problem; family coach – family’s coach; earth radius – earth’s radius.

Comment on the structural types of the genitives.

1) The Prime Minister of England’s speech was a sensation. 2)...because of my age and the young man I go with’s age, it is the only right thing to do (Tarkington). 3) I am nobody’s servant, I’m my own boss. 4) He always prefers somebody else’s fireside (Maugham). 5) They stayed at Gran’s over the weekend. 6) Tom’s an old flame of Rita’s.

Identify the semantic types of the following genitives (use the box).

1. an old people’s home; 2. a king of considerable intelligence; 3. the city’s destruction; 4. the minister’s arrival; 5. a few of the candidates; 6. the city of Rome; 7. Ed’s telegram; 8. Ed’s stamp collection; 9. an hour’s walk; 10. yesterday’s newspaper; 11. the girl’s face of her fiancé; 12. the pleasure of meeting you.

1. genitive of possession/possessor	5. genitive of destination
2.1. genitive of integer (partitive genitive)	6.1. genitive of dispensed qualification
2.2. genitive of received qualification	6.2. genitive of comparison (descriptive genitive)
3.1. genitive of agent (subjective genitive)	7. genitive of adverbial
3.2. genitive of authorship	8. genitive of quantity
4. genitive of patient (objective genitive)	9. appositive genitive

5. Consider the relationship between structures like the prime minister’s son and the son of the prime minister. The two constructions are not, however, in anything like a one-to-one relationship: there are many cases where only one is acceptable. Thus we can have your nose but not *the nose of you and conversely the writing of letters but not *the letters’ writing. Some of the factors that contribute to the choice of the construction are as follows:

· complexity of the subordinate term (possessive case phrase);

· humanness and animacy of the subordinate term;

· nature of relationship between the subordinate and superordinate (the of-phrase) terms.

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