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[Sashadroogie]

Too sunburnt and lazy to look this one up myself, so can any grammar gurus out there tell me what the proper term for the 'double-genitive' construction contained in the subject line is called again?

[johnslat]

Dear Sasha,

"Despite its apparent redundancy, the double genitive is a well-established idiom--a functional part of the language dating back to Middle English. But if the construction troubles you, just follow the example of grammarians Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum and call it something else: "The oblique genitive construction is commonly referred to as the 'double genitive.' . . . [H]owever, we do not regard of as a genitive case marker, and hence there is only one genitive here, not two" (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 2002)."

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ufVfq-0OLDwJ:grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/FAQdoublegenitive.htm+the+proper+term+for+the+double-genitive+construction&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Admittedly, I had to look it up. But thanks for asking a question that helped me learn something new.

[Sashadroogie]

Dear John

Thanks for the link. Thought there was a more impressive term for it though. Memory. Slipping. Oblique will have to do.

S

[killthebuddha]

Double genitive

* that hard heart of thine ("Venus and Adonis" line 500)
* this extreme exactness of his ("Tristram Shandy", chapter 1.IV)
* Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby�s is a Friend of Mine
* a picture of the king�s (that is, a picture owned by the king, as distinguished from a picture of the king, one in which the king is portrayed)

Some writers regard this as a questionable usage,[3] although it has a history in careful English."Moreover, in some sentences the double genitive offers the only way to express what is meant. There is no substitute for it in a sentence such as That�s the only friend of yours that I�ve ever met, since sentences such as That�s your only friend that I�ve ever met and That�s your only friend, whom I�ve ever met are not grammatical."[4] Some object to the name, as the "of" clause is not a genitive. Alternative names are "double possessive" and "oblique genitive"[5]. The Oxford English Dictionary says that this usage was "Originally partitive, but subseq. ... simple possessive ... or as equivalent to an appositive phrase ..."

--Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case

But they don't have a main page for the oblique/double generative

--ktb

[aske]

...

[johnslat]

Dear aske,

Genitive case (Latin) = Possessive case (English)

For something that "doesn't exist," the double genitive in English certainly gets a lot of press. I guess it'd be a pretty big bonfire (though I'm not a big fan of book-burning):

242,000 results:

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=English+grammar+double+genetive+doesn%3Bt+ecist&aq=f&aqi=m1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=CccPPlKhxTJqUJIP8pASF4pDeDwAAAKoEBU_Q0kdy#hl=en&q=double+genitive&aq=&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=double+genitive&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=728ef3750cf3a29c

Here are a couple:

http://home.uchicago.edu/~karlos/Arregi-geniap.pdf

http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/terms.html

HOME :: Writing-and-Speaking
What Does Case Mean in English Grammar and Why Does it Really Matter?

"What happened to all these cases in English? They still exist, but English as melded some of them into one.

The nominative case, also known as the Subjective Case, has as its members all words that are subjects, predicate nominatives, and predicate adjectives. However, just as rules are meant to be broken, there are exceptions. The subject of infinitives are in the Objective Case. Thus, in the sentence: I knew Heathrow to be the one to eat meat and potatoes, in Latin, Heathrow would be in the objective case (as subject of the infinitive, to be; and ONE would be in the objective case as the subject of the infinitive TO EAT.

The Genitive case is now known as the Possessive case and its indicators are either the word OF or the apostrophe ess ('s) added to a word or any such substantive.

All the other cases have been absorbed into one English catch all case called the OBJECTIVE case. It takes in all objects of prepositions, direct and indirect objects, and all functions of the ablative as well as the locative. The vocative has been renamed and called by its function: direct address."

http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Does-Case-Mean-in-English-Grammar-and-Why-Does-it-Really-Matter?&id=4531111

Regards,
John