Why "*Geography's test was difficult." is ungrammatical?

Question

Hello! I've been working on this minimal pair:a. Today's test was difficult.b. *Geography's test was difficult.I don't know why sentence B is ungrammatical. Can someone help me? Thank you in advance.

Rover_KE · Accepted Answer

It should be 'The geography test was difficult',

Anonymous · Answer

anonymousI don't know why sentence B is ungrammatical.

Only because we don't put it that way. The geography test was difficult. Today's test in geography was difficult.

CalifJim · Answer

anonymousI don't know why sentence B is ungrammatical.

This is an advanced topic in linguistics. I think you may need a very technical academic paper on this subject to get an accurate fix on this problem.

And, by the way, in case you even care about it, that academic article, if you can even find it, will not help you any sooner or better than just memorizing that "today" can take an "apostrophe s" in that context and "geography" (and the names of other fields of study) cannot.

"geography's" is possible, but not with "test":

What is geography's place in the curriculum?
The text introduces geography's modes of analysis and critique.
... further debates concerning geography's spirit and purpose ...
... development of themes based on geography's links with society ...

These suggest that the word with the "'s" connotes, in some way, "having" the following noun. Take a look at the example sentences. The underlying "having" goes like this:

Geography has a place in the curriculum.
Geography has modes of analysis, etc.
Geography has a spirit, and it has a purpose.
Geography has links with society.

But in your target sentence, does geography have a test? No.

I won't even bother to mention the more obvious cases in which, for example, my brother's friend implies that my brother has a friend.

The real difficulty may be to explain how "today" can have a test. Here I suppose we need to change "have" to "hold". A test is being held today, so it's today's test. Today 'has' or 'holds' a test, in some way. In any case, English accepts 's after adverbs of time (today, this week, yesterday, last week, ...) when the following noun represents or alludes to an event that happens at that time. this week's shopping, last month's car payment, last night's party.

CJ

It surprises me that you found that minimal pair, and the source book where you found it says nothing that answers your question about the grammaticality of the second example. Why is that? Do you know?

AlpheccaStars · Answer

anonymousI don't know why sentence B is ungrammatical. Can someone help me? Thank you in advance.

There is one situation where it can be grammatical.

I have a professor where I attend university who has a strange name. The students call him Mr. Geography, or "Geography" for short. He teaches advanced thermodynamics. Geography's tests are always very difficult.

Why "*Geography's test was difficult." is ungrammatical?

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