[lit-ideas] Re: Ownership and the possessive case
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 07:40:44 EDT
In a message dated 5/6/2009 5:51:49 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
cblists@xxxxxxxx writes:
That (use of) the possessive case implies ownership may or may not be
contradicted by the following (counter)examples (taken from
Hegglewith's well-known short story, "Filibuster's Folly"):
Chris Bruce,
almost at his wit's end, in
Kiel, Germany
----
Well, first of all allow me to congratulate you for your stamina in
remaining in the list.
As Walter O. said, the list will be 'all the worse' if you left.
And as D. Ritchie commented, a shame.
I too want to be collegiate, but I can be carried away. I also would wish
to see more of P. Stone. The fact that someone overposts (as you may call
it) take it positively. I'm learning NOT to introduce new threads and be in
general more moderate. To me, to reply is a sign of courtesy, not because I
want to eat like a pike.
----- Etc.
---- In the case of the possessive, it's a very good point, motivated by
the title,
"Wittgenstein's Poker".
It is my idea (or was) that the author was going over the top. But
possibly there are _no_ other ways of expressing the thing. He did possess it
for
the time being. It's a functional thing in a public room (H3, King's), he
was fulfilling a social function (keeping a fire). Actions can be
misinterpreted (especially with pointed objects -- This is remarked in
"Memoirs of the
Duchess of Devonshire", 'The way that commoner holds the knife with the
venison makes you feel she is next going to stab you or something -- table
manners are a thing of the past. And she keeps saying stupid things
brandishing the knife on her left hand. Is she idiotic?").
I would lay the blame on grammarians. It was possible some
post-Aristotelian (all grammar is post-Aristotelian) for the use of
'possessive'. I
haven't analysed this. It is a pronoun or adjective. In Spanish,
mi nuestro
tu vuestro
su vuestra
with the confusion on non-native speakers on what to say if many feminine
people own many feminine things (gender affects the possessive form).
Agreement is with the object possessed, but some respect for the possessor has
to
be taken into account.
Then there's the _genitive_ really. The romance languages lost the
sophisticated (too sophisticated) Roman case:
Mariae virginitas
but at one point they did find it confusing enough
Dei amor
or
timor enemicorum
The "love of god" or the "fear of the enemies". Introducing, in a twink (if
that's the expression) to Chomsky ages later), the 'subjective' vs.
objective genitive. Which relies on logical form underlying the utterance. Who
does the ----ing?
Now, in the third declension of the Roman and the Greek (and indeed in
proto-Indoeuropean as a whole I believe) the mark of the genitive was a liquid.
"Socratis"
"Socratis amor"
"Socratis timor"
etc.
Sometime during the early Middle Ages, the Italians started to use 'de',
which they spelled 'di' for that,
amor di Socrates
timor di Socrates
-- and the rest is prepositional history. The Italians are subtle enough to
distinguish 'di' and 'da':
Francesca DA Rimini
--- I would think that was a 'de' but I fail to see where the vowel 'a'
originates. It would be in Latin, Francesca Riminiana, English Francesca OFF
Rimini. The use of 'of' in English derives indeed from 'off', so I try not
to use it since it can turn off a few of my interlocutors. Also it's rude.
(The fact that you pronounce it /ov/ and not /of/ is neither here nor there).
--- But the English did keep, like the German, and possibly Dutch, but I
forget) the genitive as a case, with the liquid:
Mary's lamb (----> Mary had a little lamb)
-- for breakfast?
-- she delivered it? "Miracles in
obstetricians")
-- or the lamb that owned Mary --
"That lamb has the virtue
of _possessing_ Mary in
all of Mary's respects".
--- So it's "Wittgenstein's Poker" with a GENITIVE, rather than a
POSSESSIVE, I would think. It's casus genitivus. Possibly in Greek some
reference
to 'genos', meaning 'origin', cfr. Genesis.
Why 'genitive'? How can Wittgenstein _generate_ the poker? This is
confusing. "My chillum" is not a genitive", it's a possessive. But if I say,
"Geary's son", one can say that Geary generated him (the son).
* Incidentally, Sarah Jessica Parker is having surrogate twins -- will they
be 'her' twins as in 'genitive'? The woman says, "I have no time to get a
belly and then spend 4 months losing it".
Will she _generate_ the twins?
---
Perhaps the idea is not 'origin' but 'kind', genos, genus. As if 'of a
kind'. So, perhaps what we could also expand on or analyse is the use of the
'genitive'.
Orthography here is misleading. The correct form would be
Wittgensteins poker
-- as it would be in German, or Dutch. The alternate spelling
"Wittgenstein's poker"
is confusing in that _sometimes_ a vowel, notably the schwa, which
dominates English speech, _is_ elided. But in this case I don't think is
necessary.
In proto-Indoeuropean, I believe it was always the vowel "i" plus the 's'
-- "-is". So if Somone were to translate Tractatus logico-philosophicus to
Latin complete with genitive of authorship it would go:
Wittgensteinis Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
-- I would think.
The excerpts from the short story very good. Worth analysing case by case.
And perhaps re-thinking them in terms of 'genitive' direct case or the
alternate clumsy 'of' construction which underlies the modern romance mark of
what used to be the genitive case.
The idea of 'ownership' is important philosophically too in that Strawson
denied it when it comes to the 'concept of a person', ('no-ownership' theory
I think his is called).
S. Johnson was I think fascinated with another misuse of the 'possessive'
situation:
Mary's got blue eyes
--- The implicature of this very bad English phrasing meaning that she
did obtained those artificial contact lenses in Miami.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
**************Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now.
(http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006)
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
