Possessives

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Larry and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 5:12 PM

[PR previously]

<snip>

>> One of the principal benefits of terming this class of words
>> "possessive pronouns" is that it enables us to identify comparable
>> classes of words in IE, English, and Basque --- even though the
>> details of their employment may differ.

[LT]
> Well, this reminds me of Abe Lincoln's little joke.  "How many legs does
> a sheep have if you call the tail a leg?"  "Five?"  "No, four: calling
> the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

> Possessive items, in general, are "comparable" among languages only
> insofar as they are translation equivalents.  Syntactically, they can
> and do exhibit many different kinds of behavior, requiring them to be
> assigned to various parts of speech, or sometimes to no part of speech.

> The English possessives like `my' are determiners because they behave
> like determiners.  They do not behave like pronouns, and so they are not
> pronouns.  And they certainly don't behave like adjectives.

[PR]
It seems to be the rationale of the approach Larry espouses to assign words
to classes based on their ability to occur in certain positions within
grammatically well-formed sentences --- what I would call the slot-theory.

That is certainly one method of analysis; and, in certain cases, I would
admit it may be useful.

But, it is not the only useful rationale that may be used, a broad-minded
position that I have not seen Larry espouse in any context.

His preference is a direct outgrowth of the school to which he subscribes,
and the definitions that school generates.

His definition of 'pronoun' (as contained in his dictionary) is: "The
lexical category, or a member of this category, whose members typically
function as noun phrases in isolation, not normally requiring or permitting
the presence of determiners or other adnominals, and whose members typically
have little or no intrinsic meaning or reference."

[ moderator snip ]

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
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at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)