Jerry's the comedian wife

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:08 AM, Ron Butters wrote (about the choice
between the -s possessive and the of-possessive when the possessor NP
is long and/or complex):

> The most important issue seems to be what else is going on in the
> discourse.

i just wanted to pull that out and stress it.  a lot of my academic
writing these days is taken up with criticizing judgments on isolated
phrases and sentences (by linguists, by usage advisers, by ordinary
people with an interest in language), when the phenomena at issue are
sensitive (often exquisitely so) to aspects of the discourse context,
the speaker's/writer's intentions, etc.  i have about two dozen
Language Log pieces in preparation in which these matters figure
prominently.  i find it especially vexing that advice for *writers*
should be so heavily focused on material examined out of context.

i think i understand how the problem arises.  a great many people
think of discourse as just sentences strung together; you produce a
well-formed sentence and then follow it with another one and then
another, and so on.  it's all very much a "bottom-up" process.  if
you think of discourse this way, you'll concentrate very much on
individual sentences, without context, and you're likely to attribute
problems you see to the syntax or style of those sentences.

but discourse is organized so as to create coherence for stretches of
text, to pursue various goals, and so one.  these factors figure
significantly in the choices you make in framing individual sentences.

ah, well, i need to get back to the specific cases...

arnold

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