Possessives

[Sean Crist]

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Larry Trask wrote:

> On Sun, 3 Oct 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> 'Black dog' can be represented logically as a small circle ('black')
>> within a larger circle ('dog').  [...] [Snip, and reordering -SC]

[...]
> For example, consider `Susie is a mere child.'  Here the adjective
> `mere' does not define a subclass of the class of children: children are
> not divided into mere and non-mere varieties.  Or consider this one:
> `Lisa is a heavy smoker'.  This time the adjective `heavy' does not
> perform any subclassification of the set of smokers.  In fact, it
> doesn't even apply semantically to smokers, or to Lisa: instead, it
> applies to Lisa's habit.

Just to amplify on this point, consider "a counterfeit dollar".  The whole
point here is that the item in question is _not_ a dollar; it doesn't
belong to some subset of dollars in the way that a black dog belongs to a
subset of the dogs.  Likewise with "a fake moustache", "an imposter
policeman", etc.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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