The English Language english language

Phrases

modifier genitive allows indefinite determiners to modify the

head noun; compare the definite NP Oscar’s friend with the in-

definite NP a friend of Oscar’s.

While native speakers are not likely to have trouble with such complexi-
ties, non-native students may encounter serious difficulties with this con-
struction.
The second complexity is that genitive NPs themselves contain a NP.
When one structure contains another structure, we say that the second
structure is embedded in the first. The NP Harry’s wife’s paintings contains
a genitive NP within a genitive NP. In other words, Harry’s is embedded
within Harry’s wife’s, which in turn is embedded in Harry’s wife’s paintings.
This structure is represented in (38):

(38) NP-1

Premodifier-A Head-A
(GenNP)

NP-2 ’s

Premodifier-B Head-B
(GenNP)

NP-3 ’s

Head
N

Harry ’s wife ’s paintings

Embedding allows one function (or form) to contain other functions (or
forms). An understanding of embedding is critical to analysis of grammatical
structures with any significant degree of complexity. Let’s illustrate this fact
with diagram (38). NP-l (Harry’s wife’s paintings) consists of a premodifier of
the form GenNP (Harry’s wife’s) and a head noun (paintings). The GenNP
in turn consists of a full NP (NP-2), along with the genitive inflection ’s. In
other words, the form NP-2 is contained in the form NP-l. NP-2 contains a
premodifier (Harry’s) and a head noun (wife). Finally, premodifier-B contains
a single noun head (Harry), the ‘s, and no premodifiers.