I wonder if "the wife" might be an odd case of inalienable possession.  This construction normally works in English with body parts and some articles of clothing being worn but not to anything else.  So we say

The snowball hit my arm.
The snowball hit me on the/my arm.

The rock hit my sleeve.
The rock hit me on the/my sleeve.

The bullet hit my briefcase.
*The bullet hit me on the/my briefcase.

The prepositional construction works only with inalienable possession.  While substituting "wife for any of these produces absurd results, the use of "wife"  with an article rather than a pronoun shares one of the properties of inalienable possession.  We do it regularly with "the children" and less frequently with "the parents", "the brother", etc.  So "the wife" might represent a marginal grammatical structure in English that, in the case of "wife" violates certain sensibilities.  "My", of course, is genitive but not necessarily possessive.  "My appointment" is not something that belongs to me but something of which I am the object (objective genitive.  I know, it can also have a subjective genitive meaning).  When as a child I said, "Come over to my house", I was clearly not talking about ownership.

Herb



Cc:	
Subject:        Re: Rule of Thumb
Yes.  Is it possession or attachment?  I may have missed some of this
exchange, but I take more exception to the phrase "the wife" than to "my
wife," as if the role rather than her name or the affectionate
connection were the important aspect.
Jane Saral
Westminster Schools
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