double genitive

Question

A sister of George's is coming to stay with us. (double genitive)  A sister of George is coming to stay with us.  Both sentences are correct grammatically.  Is there any difference between them?

Dj Bueno · Accepted Answer

A sister of George's is coming to stay with us. ->> this is the correct form.

Inchoateknowledge · Answer

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=54973&dict=CALD
Granted what you say is true, should not then the following sentence be incorrect:
"The complete plays of Federico Garcia Lorca"?

The complete plays of Federico Garcia Lorca..
A sister of Federico Garcia Lorca.

Feathers · Answer

InchoateknowledgeA sister of George's is coming to stay with us. (double genitive)
A sister of George is coming to stay with us.

Both sentences are correct grammatically.
Is there any difference between them?

Dj Bueno A sister of George's is coming to stay with us. ->> this is the correct form.

How about:

A descendant of Beethoven's is coming to stay with us.
A descendant of Beethoven is coming to stay with us.

??

Inchoateknowledge · Answer

Konitsiva Feathers,

Did you find it somewhere?

Feathers · Answer

Szia, IK,

Did you find it somewhere?

No, I asked, just out of curiosity.

Let me quote Dr. Noonan's explanation on this topic. (Note: as you can see, he uses a different terminology.)

..... a friend of Bertha's is certainly preferable to a friend of Bertha {just as Dj Bueno says}. The situation looks less clear when the associative noun is not proper: a friend of the family seems not to differ in acceptability from a friend of the family's, though the latter is probably more idiomatic. In some cases, however, a meaning difference seems to emerge between the periphrastic associative and the combined associative with proper noun associatives:

(a) several students of Chomsky PERIPHRASTIC ASSOCIATIVE
(b) several students of Chomsky's COMBINED ASSOCIATIVE

(b) seems to imply that the students actually study with Chomsky in his department, while (a) seems to imply that they study Chomsky's works but do not study with him personally. Said of people now living, several students of Aristotle is quite acceptable, but several students of Aristotle's sound distinctly odd. This difference seems to follow from the requirement that the associative noun in the combined associative be a human noun. As a result we interpret Chomsky's in (b) as referring to the man himself, but no such requirement holds for the periphrastic associative, so in opposition to (b), (a) is interpreted as referring to Chomsky's works.
[See 9.1.2 for more discussion of this problem.]

After reading this passage I thought I got the general picture, but I don't know yet how to apply it to the two sentences mentioned above.

Anonymous · Answer

Excuse me, but it is not "the correct form". Both forms are correct. Take, for example:
a) A picture of my father, and
b) A picture of my father's.

These both obviously say very different things, and both are correct in different circumstances.

Anonymous · Answer

A picture of my father - one picture of my father

A picture of my father's. - one picture from many pictures

Mister Micawber · Answer

A picture of my father - one picture of my father-- Yes

A picture of my father's. - one picture from many pictures-- No. A picture which my father possesses.

MashaPavlovna · Answer

The first is better. When you say someone's name it is much more natural to use the possessive 's.

Second one is not natural, but essentially also correct.

Other possibilities:

George's sister is coming (this implies George has one sister).

One of George's sisters is coming (this implies George has more than one sister).

"A sister of George's is coming" also implies he has more than one sister.

This is a really grey area, as when you exchange "George" (someone you clearly know quite well) for, for example, "David Cameron" (whom you probably don't know personally), it suddenly seems more natural to use the second option "The sister of David Cameron..."

double genitive

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