A challenge for expert nitpickers!

[birdeen's call]

You cannot have: '*a minutes'' or 'two minutes'' cf 'a minute' or 'two minutes.

I don't understand this sentence. What does "you cannot have A or B cf C or D" mean?

 

[BobK]

IF you accept, maybe. But why would you accept it? There are probably many definitions of adjectives, but to me it's a noun...

:up: I'm not sure whether anyone called 'minute' an adjective. I called 'ten-minute' a compound adjective. In another case, as a 'noun in apposition' - in, for example 'minute waltz' - it serves an adjectival function; but we're not talking about that. (I'm not convinced we're talking about anything much ;-))

b

 

[Pedroski]

There is a proper noun John.
Then there is a possessive determiner, John's. John is a noun. John's is not a noun. The same as minute is a noun, minute's and minutes' however are not nouns.
It seems to me, that the phrase ten minutes has been taken, and we have made a possessive of it --ten minutes' drive--. There is no such noun, you cannot have, --- ten minutes'--- that would be ten minutes.
Which is why I thought that we should have:

ten-minutes' This is apparently called the 'idiomatic possessive'.

"Two hours' drive" is a construction that Garner calls the idiomatic possessive; others refer to it as a peculiar kind of personification."

“The idiomatic possessive should be used with periods of time and statements of worth.” [example given: “six months’ confinement”]—Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 674 (Oxford 2d ed. 1995)"

More interesting is why anyone should say 'ten-minute'. If I said, 'Dinner is ready in ten minute' you would say 'you mean ten minutes'. Apparently this is connected to the genitive forms of Old English, and has standardized.

 

[birdeen's call]

I think we're using two different notions of noun. For you, and, as I infer from your posts, modern linguists, it's a function a word plays in the sentence. For me, noun is one of the traditional parts of speech. For languages that, like mine, retain all or many of the PIE grammatical cases, it's a common usage. No Polish linguist I know of would say that the Polish counterpart of "John's" is not a noun. Everybody knows it works like an adjective but it's a noun for us anyway. I understand you say it's different in the English-speaking countries? I didn't get this impression while reading things on the web. They seemed to distinguish between adjectives and possesive nouns.

 

[Pedroski]

I have no Polish. But if you take a noun, say elephant, then you can say the elephant, an elephant this elephant, ten elephants, because it is a noun. Now make of it a possessive: elephant's

the elephant's, an elephant's this elephant's, ten elephants', These phrases are meaningless, they need a noun which is described by the possessive adjective.

the elephant's trunk, an elephant's trunk, this elephant's trunk, ten elephants' trunks

(noun + 's or s') = possessive adjective/determiner. This is not a noun.

In German we say
Der Mann hat einen Elephanten.
The man has an elephant.
Des Mannes Elephanten ...Here you have what you call a possessive noun, but really it is an adjective
The man's elephant.... 'The man's' or 'Des Mannes' both describe elephant. Does it look like that in Polish?

 

[birdeen's call]

Des Mannes Elephanten ...Here you have what you call a possessive noun, but really it is an adjective
The man's elephant.... 'The man's' or 'Des Mannes' both describe elephant. Does it look like that in Polish?

Yes, it does (except we don't have articles in Polish), and in many IE languages.

You say, "it's really an adjective". I don't agree. It depends on the definition of an adjective and that of a noun. I use a different definition, but by no means worse. I understand perfectly what you're saying. Actually, I would do even if you hadn't said it so many times. But I still don't agree that your understanding of a noun is the only possible. Unless you want to convince me that nobody or only uneducated people call "John's" a noun, there's no point in discussing it any further.

PS: I must admit that I really dislike the word "really" in sentences like yours. When it comes to words and their meanings, "really" is rarely the word we should be looking for. I think there's little point in wondering what adjective (or noun) really is. "Adjective" is only a word and people understand it in different ways. Most linguists (and probably all of the other people) in Poland use the words "adjective" and "noun" ("przymiotnik" and "rzeczownik") the way I told you. I believe many people in the English-speaking countries do too. Am I wrong?

 

[Pedroski]

As I said, the possessive adjective describes a noun. It cannot sensibly take an article. If your language has no articles, the problem may not arise. But even your language will distinguish between nouns and adjectives.

An elephant walked over the tightrope.
*An elephant's walked over the tightrope. (An elephant's what??) elephant's is not a noun, and cannot be used as such. Nouns I define as names of things. There is no such thing 'elephant's' because it is a function word.

I'm really sure, that adjective and noun are well defined concepts, not open to different interpretations. Do you know of sentences where you are not certain whether a word is an adjective or a noun?