Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hela]

Dear teachers,

First, happy New Year to you all, and thank you for your kindness and dedication. I want to tell you that you've helped a lot throughout these years and I feel deeply endebted to you.

My question for today is: Can I use the indefinite article with the genitive? Is it correct to say: "It's A five kilometres' walk" ?

What's the difference between : "It's a five kilometres' walk" (genitive); and

"It's a five-kilometre walk" (compound noun) ?

What should I say: a) "He has two weeks delay" ; OR b) "He has a two weeks delay" ?

Many thanks,
Hela

[Anuradha Chepur]

In your examples, you are using compund nouns, as you know.
What you used there is a plural and not a genitive.
But, in compunds in English, we do not use plurals.
For example: toothpaste and not *teethpaste.
a two year old child and not *a two years old child
a six week course and not * a six weeks course
and so on.

Therefore:
A five kilometre walk.

He has two weeks delay.
He has a two weeks delay. (Both sound odd to me??)
You mean:
He is two weeks late. (here it is not a compound, so you can use the plural)
He has caused a delay of two weeks.
He has delayed it for two weeks.
etc.

[hela]

Hello,

But don't we need a hypen when we use a compound noun? = "A two-kilometre walk" ?

I'm sure that we can use a genitive with expressions of measurement though.

See you

[Anuradha Chepur]

About the hyphen - it's a good question.
The hypen in compounds is optional and not obligatory.

But I'm afraid, Hela, what you call a genitive in the kind of examples
you mentioned, is not a genitive. It's a plural.

Genitive case is about possession. One noun possesses another noun.
For example: John's house (John possesses the house)
Mary's book (Mary possesses the book), and so on.

If you say kilometres is a a possessive noun in "a three kilometres walk", then it means the walk belongs to the kilometers. Absurd, isn't it?

So kilometers there isn't genitive, as it pretends to be. It's a simple plural.

Some people might unknowingly use the plural in compounds, but it would be incorrect. For example, "x kilometers walk" gets about 500 hits on Google, while "x kilometer walk" gets about 40,000 hits.

[Mary W. Ng]

[hela]

Dear Mary and teachers,

I suppose that I can't say "He HAS a two week's delay" but can I say "There's a two weeks delay"?

Would you please give me more sample sentences where we can use either the genitive or a compound noun?

Thank you for your help.
Hela

[Mary W. Ng]

Dear Hela,

[hela]

Thank you Mary.