Saturday, March 19, 2005, 19:23 GMT
"Question 2 : if so, do you agree with what Travis mentioned ? – that <the room’s door> and <the house’s roof> would be acceptable only if both phrases were considered semantically more expanded than <the door of the room> and <the roof of the house> due to stylistic variation ?"
Well, greg, I didn't really say anything about acceptability of the use of the genitive clitic being limited in use in such a fashion, I just said that it can't be used in cases in which one wants to use a determiner or like on that which is being possessed (hence why one has to say "a friend of mine" if one wants to use "a" with "friend" here), and that in pretty much all other cases it's more a matter of style, and certain phrases and phrase forms being in more common usage than others, rather than being particularly hard and fast allowed or not allowed in specific cases at a grammatical level. Trying to actually specify a particular set of rules as to when the genitive clitic is or is not allowed, besides the above thing with determiners, would probably be rather difficult, it seems. It's like trying to figure out why certain prepositions are used with some things, and others with other things, even though there is no apparent semantic differences between their usage in the give cases, in English.
Well, greg, I didn't really say anything about acceptability of the use of the genitive clitic being limited in use in such a fashion, I just said that it can't be used in cases in which one wants to use a determiner or like on that which is being possessed (hence why one has to say "a friend of mine" if one wants to use "a" with "friend" here), and that in pretty much all other cases it's more a matter of style, and certain phrases and phrase forms being in more common usage than others, rather than being particularly hard and fast allowed or not allowed in specific cases at a grammatical level. Trying to actually specify a particular set of rules as to when the genitive clitic is or is not allowed, besides the above thing with determiners, would probably be rather difficult, it seems. It's like trying to figure out why certain prepositions are used with some things, and others with other things, even though there is no apparent semantic differences between their usage in the give cases, in English.