Possessives

[Larry Trask]

Pat Ryan writes:

[LT]

>> 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.

> 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.

More traditionally, the slot-and-filler approach.  This is one kind of
distributional approach.  More generally, distribution is arguably the single
most important general criterion for setting up parts of speech -- especially
for morphologically impoverished languages, or for items in any language which
exhibit little or no morphology.  Inflectional and derivational possibilities
are also valuable criteria, where these exist, but distribution is, so to
speak, the bottom line.

> 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.

Not sure what "broad-minded" means here.  Parts of speech are grammatical
categories, and they can only be identified by grammatical criteria.
And non-grammatical criteria like meaning are out of order.

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

Didn't know I belonged to any school.  All contemporary work on parts of speech
I have ever seen operates with essentially the same criteria.  Couldn't name a
single linguist working today with significantly different criteria.

> 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."

Yep.  And words like 'my' do not fit this definition.

Think I'm weird?  Look at Peter Matthews's dictionary, or at David Crystal's
dictionary.  Look at the work of such linguists as Paul Schachter or
Hans-Juergen Sasse.  Hell, even a good modern desk dictionary of English
usually gets this right.  I have the Collins here (British; maybe not available
in the US); it defines 'pronoun' correctly, and it labels 'my' a determiner.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk