Status of The Possessive As A Grammatical Case
English possessives are sometimes said to represent a grammatical case, called the "possessive case" or "genitive case". Historically, the possessive morpheme represented by -'s was a case marker, as noted in the previous section. In Modern English, however, many grammarians consider it to be a clitic rather than a case ending. This is evidenced by phrases like the king of England's horse – if the -'s were a true case ending, it would be expected on king rather than England (*the king's of England horse), since the horse belongs to the king and not to England. (Compare the German das Pferd des Königs von England, where König "king" takes the genitive case. Older English provides constructions like the King's dochter of Noroway, from the ballad "Sir Patrick Spens", meaning "the daughter of the King of Norway".)
Because the ending is in fact separable from the head noun (king) and attaches to the noun phrase as a whole, it is more likely to be analyzed as a clitic. It is claimed that traditional grammarians are uncomfortable with this analysis because they like to view English grammar through the lens of classical languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, which had well-developed case systems.
Read more about this topic: Saxon Genitive
Famous quotes containing the words status, possessive, grammatical and/or case:
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a “loving” mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.”
—Erich Fromm (20th century)
“Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;Mnot hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)