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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
These possessives OK in this normal context?
Hi. Please help.
Would you say the phrases like "the rock's hardness," "the current's waves," or "the wind's strength" belong to certain literary genres like poetry and generally should not be part of the writing that people usually involved in?
Would you say the phrases like "the rock's hardness," "the current's waves," or "the wind's strength" belong to certain literary genres like poetry and generally should not be part of the writing that people usually involved in?
Top answer
Anonymous belong to certain literary genres like poetry I don't sense anything particularly poetic about these phrases. Anonymous generally should not be part of the writing that people usually involved in the wind's strength strikes me as the least objectionable, but I would probably write the hardness of the rock , and the strength of the wind . The remaining example is odd semantically, in my opinion.
- Anonymous belong to certain literary genres like poetry I don't sense anything particularly poetic about these phrases.
- Anonymous generally should not be part of the writing that people usually involved in the wind's strength strikes me as the least objectionable, but I would probably write the hardness of the rock , and the strength of the wind .
- The remaining example is odd semantically, in my opinion.
- You can write it as the waves of the current , but current implies flowing water, for example, in a river, and I associate waves with large bodies of water like seas and oceans which don't flow in the same sense as a river would, so I don't think that waves and current go together naturally.
- Maybe others will have a different opinion.
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2 Answers
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Anonymousbelong to certain literary genres like poetryI don't sense anything particularly poetic about these phrases.
Anonymousgenerally should not be part of the writing that people usually involved inthe wind's strength strikes me as the least objectionable, but I would probably write the hardness of
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Well, they certainly aren't 'literary'. I would say that the prescription against using the Anglo-Saxon genitive for non-sentient entities is starting to lose its power, and that this sort of use is common anywhere now except in the most carefully formal of contexts.
The 1st and 3rd sound OK; the 2nd is odd unless you change it to 'the sea's waves'.
The 1st and 3rd sound OK; the 2nd is odd unless you change it to 'the sea's waves'.
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