ERIC Number: ED044694
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1970-Jun
Pages: 7
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
English Genitives Derived from Predications: Implications for Teaching English as a Second Language.
MacLeish, Andrew
RELC Journal, A Journal of English Language Teaching in Southeast Asia, v1 n1 p50-56 Jun 1970
This paper attempts to demonstrate the concept and method of deriving various English "true possessives" by nominalizing sentences of the form "X has Y." First considered is the motivation for deriving genetives from underlying sentences rather than for treating only the surface form of such genitives: the use of auxiliary verbs for predicating possession is a universal not only among Indo-European languages but among other language groups such as American Indian and Northern Caucasian. Significant paraphrase relationships exist between the dative and genitive cases in almost all Indo-European languages. The expression of the genitive case is not to be considered as a morphological-affixual concept, but rather as a syntactic-semantic relationship in underlying structure. Morphological and syntactic case markers are merely surface reflexes of underlying structures expressing universal semantic relationships. It is suggested that parts of speech may be learned best by sequencing them in accordance with their semantic characteristics. Exercises may be constructed first to distinguish the properties of nouns and then, on the basis of these distinctions, to produce acceptable genitive constructions. (AMM)
Descriptors: Case (Grammar), Deep Structure, English (Second Language), Language Universals, Nouns, Phrase Structure, Transformational Generative Grammar
Oxford University Press, 875 Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 10 ($2.50 subscription, two issues yearly)
Publication Type: N/A
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: N/A
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A