Where can I find a prescriptive English grammar book for British English?

[SW VandeCarr]

There is no noun case in the english language, that I know of, indicating fault.

However consider the following:

A sober man walking along the highway, is knocked down and killed by a drunken alcoholic driver.

They are both 'victims of drink', one directly , one indirectly. I would contend that only the direct victim is one of 'drink's victims'

You can read meanings into these constructions. However, my only intent was to show that the two ways of expressing the genitive in English can be employed to avoid repetition. The sentence could have been "The victims of drink are more than victims of drink;..." with no substantial change in meaning.

 

[loseyourname]

They are both 'victims of drink', one directly , one indirectly. I would contend that only the direct victim is one of 'drink's victims'

I'm not sure why you would read any specification of causal proximity in the construction chosen. They seem equivalent to me.

I think the confusion about personification above probably stems from a confusion between the possessive and the subjective genitive, the difference between "my wife's shoes" and "my wife's cooking." The first expresses a relationship of ownership but the second expresses a relationship of causal origination. An inanimate object like "drink" can't own something, but it can certainly be the subject of the verb "to victimize."

As for "John Smith's tale" and "the tale of John Smith," those are also identical. They were only made different in context by the additional stipulations that one was told by John Smith and the other was told by a biographer. There is nothing in the construction that tells you anything about who told the tale or even if the tale was ever told at all. These both seem to be instances of the objective genitive, indicating the tale is about John Smith, not the possessive indicating the tale belongs to him, although there is ambiguity again due to the fact that John Smith is a person who can own a tale. "The Tale of Two Cities" is quite unambiguously objective genitive because two cities can't own a tale.

 

[Studiot]

I did think about the ownership.

Why can't an inanimate object own another?

What about 'the book's covers'?

They are just as much part of the book as your own arms are part of you, so please explain further.

It seems to me that there are far more relationships and shades of relationships between linguistic objects than any language can show by declension alone.

So, in a language rich in alternative means of expression such as english, we are often left with custom and practice to determine which presentation we choose. This freedom is also, in my opinion, is why any attempt at formalisation is doomed to long term failure.

 

[loseyourname]

"The book's covers" is partitive genitive, that is, the covers are part of the book. They aren't owned by the book, though. A material whole object doesn't own its parts in the sense of a holding company and its subsidiaries. That might be more clear if we say "the book's words" or the "the book's story." The partitive genitive construction is more obvious in this case because we know that the words and story are owned by the copyright holder, not by the book. The covers of any particular book are owned by whoever owns the book, not by the book itself.

I'd guess the confusion stems from two sources. First, equivocation in the verb "to possess." This can express a relationship of owner to owned or a relationship of whole to part, but these are distinct relationships. Second, the genitive in English expresses so many different types of relationships, being that there is possessive, partitive, subjective, and objective all having identical formal construction. We can only distinguish between them in context.

 

[Studiot]

Thank you for sharing your more detailed knowledge.

How about 'the book's place on the shelf' ?

For those who may be interested the BBC are running a series of interesting investigative/discussion radio programs into english and its usage.

These are on Radio 4 at 9 am. Today's was about the difference in language as seen by different genders.
The programs can also be accessed via the BBC website in listen again mode.

 

[qspeechc]

Oh god, why isn't there a distinction, some inflexion or something, to distinguish the various shades of the genitive case! This discussion shows how ambiguous English is. Maybe it's not so bad; we get along fine with it, mostly. So then Fowler was wrong when he said there was a distinction?
I caught one program on BBC World News where they had an actor and the president of the http://www.queens-english-society.com/pageone.html" discussing English usage the other day, and it was a fatuous discussion, I think. I can't say much about the president of the QES since the questions he was given were quite silly. How often do you hear a BBC presenter with a half English and half American accent? Perhaps Radio 4 is better; I've never listened to it. Actually, the QES looks very interesting...

 

[loseyourname]

With "the book's place on the shelf," I'm pretty sure that's just called genitive, which can also express relationships of origin, description, and reference. In this case, it's a relationship of reference.

Some of these are a little confused, as with description. We'd expect to modify a noun in a descriptive sense using an adjective, right? Say George Washington was honorable. But, we could also say George Washington was a man of his word. The second phrase means the same thing but now we modified a noun with a noun, so the second noun is genitive.

Reference, or location, genitive cases are similar. The most common example I see is something like "the capital of Egypt" or Egypt's capital." This is considered genitive and capital is used as a noun but the same word can be used as an adjective. If we said "the capital city of Egypt," then we still have a genitive construction, but the genitive noun (city) is now being modified by the word "capital" which is straightforwardly an adjective.

By the way, I agree that English is an extremely frustrating and vague language. I think that makes it terrific for literary purposes, however.

 

[Studiot]

Seems to me that following this line of reasoning you could make a case for the construction

...firstnoun's secondnoun...

where there is some relationship between firstnoun and secondnoun and call it the

somerelationship case of the genetive.

A flower's colour
Jupiter's orbit
a shadow's penumbra
a father's son
all my previous examples.

 

[loseyourname]

Pretty much. Even though the genitive case often indicates possession, all it means strictly is that a genitive case noun is a noun acting to modify another noun.

 

[Studiot]

Learning something new every day is what keeps me young.

 

[Studiot]

You might like to chew on this example of multiple genitive from
W Stannard Allen's

Living English Structure

I am my aunt's friend's sister's second child's godmother.