Peter,
I think "everything" is legitimately a sinbgle word, but I wonder oif
the "every" part of the compound might still work as a determiner. If
tha't the case, then "Craig's" more or less replaces it, so that
"thing" (rather than "everything" is now the understood noun head.
"Everything that was Craig's [thing] was piled in the middle of the floor."
Determiners aren't the only tool for it, but they function in a noun
phrase to ground it in discourse ocntext. The notion of "possession" it
helps us understand which of the kind we are speaking of. It has no
meaning apart from that. The notion of implieed head helps keep that
intact.
Craig
Hmmm. Mulling it over. How about this:
>
> Everything that was Craig's was piled in the middle of the floor.
>
> This time, I don't think there is an ellipsis, for these two are
> surely not grammatical:
>
> *Everything that was Craig's everything was piled in the middle of the
> floor.
> *Everything that was Craig's that was piled in the middle of the floor.
>
> So if "Craig's" is a determiner, that mean it is possible to have a
> determiner that does not have a head noun following?
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> On Apr 25, 2008, at 1:48 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>
>> Herb's response:
>>
>> Let me start with a little morphology. The genitive marker spelled
>> <'s>
>> is not a suffix but a clitic. That means that it's a form that cannot
>> stand on its own but attaches to a phrasal constituent rather than
>> to a
>> stem. It's like a suffix in that it must attach to something but
>> unlike
>> a suffix in that it doesn't attach to a stem. Contrast this with the
>> plural or third singular suffixes that are identical in pronunciation
>> but attach to word stems. These are inflectional affixes. The fact
>> that we can say, "the chairman of the board's opinion" and we're not
>> talking about the board's opinion demonstrates that the genitive is a
>> clitic, not a suffix.
>>
>> That said, what the genitive does syntactically is turn a noun phrase
>> into a determiner phrase headed by 's, the genitive clitic. Because
>> it's a determiner phrase, it can have quite a complex internal
>> structure
>> while at the same time functioning as a determiner. As a determiner
>> it's distinct from adjectives. Adjectives cannot come before
>> determiners and number words. Adjectives in a string before a noun
>> have
>> some freedom of order. Determiners don't. Adjectives can be
>> inflected
>> for comparison be compared syntactically using more/most, less/least,
>> etc. Determiners can't be compared at all.
>>
>> So it has to be a determiner, not an adjective.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams
>> Sent: 2008-04-25 07:01
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Possessive Noun Determiners
>>
>> I'm wondering about the word class of possessive nouns when they
>> appear in the subject complement position:
>>
>> The car parked in front of my house is Herb's.
>>
>> Is "Herb's" still a determiner with, perhaps, an understood head noun
>> "car"? Or is it an adjective?
>>
>> Peter Adams
>>
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