Possessives

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Sean and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Sean Crist <kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 1999 2:39 PM

> 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.

[SC]
> 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.

[PR]
One of the most challenging things about interpretation of any language is
that words, spelled and pronounced the same, do not always mean the same
things.

In the phrase, "a counterfeit dollar", the "dollar" cannot mean a 'real
dollar', obviously that would be self-contradictory. It means, in this
phrase, rather 'something that looks, feels, etc.  like a dollar'. In that
category, there are the 'real' ones and, another circle for the
'counterfeit' ones.

But, for the sake of discussion, let us pretend to assume that it means
'real, genuine dollar'. Then what part of speech is 'counterfeit', and how
would you say it is used syntactically?

Pat

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