Peter, There's a long tradition of using ellipsis arguments for structures that sound awful when the ellipsis is filled in ("Bjorn bought Edwina more books than I [bought Edwina books]"). The phrase "Craig's everything" in your example strikes me as awful in exactly that way -- it fills in something a native speaker would never expect to be filled in the first place, so it flops. As a side note, the phrase "your everything" has been used in song lyrics, so there's at least one attestation of something analogous (found that as part of a Google search; the actual lyrics are at http://www.lyrics007.com/print.php?id=TWpnek5USXc, but I only got past the first few lines before I started needing insulin, and I'm not even diabetic). Of course, "shananana-nanana" is also used as a song lyric, so I'm not sure how far that gets me.... Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 4:02 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Possessive Noun Determiners 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 > > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web > interface at: > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html > and select "Join or leave the list" > > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ > > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web > interface at: > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html > and select "Join or leave the list" > > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/