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"Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

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User avatar
weerwater

"Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by weerwater »

This sentence (click) made me look for the reason for the '-s' at the end of 'år'.

I do not think its a possessive one (årstid). Neither does it seem to compound two parts of a word. It isn't the regular plural form (år/årene) of the noun either.

In what cases would such an '- s' be used. Are there other nouns where this construction is used too?

Image

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anamorphism

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by anamorphism »

genitive expressions aren't always about possession.

we can express this the same way in english: many years' research.

a couple other examples that aren't really about possession:

  • landets innbyggere: the country's inhabitants (describing where things are from)
  • Beethovens skjebnesymfoni: Beethoven's fifth (describing who or what created a thing)

you can search for "genitiv i norsk" to find out more. for example, https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitiv

Olav
Norway

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by Olav »

anamorphism wrote: Mon Apr 18, 2022 3:11 pm

genitive expressions aren't always about possession.

we can express this the same way in english: many years' research.

a couple other examples that aren't really about possession:

  • landets innbyggere: the country's inhabitants (describing where things are from)
  • Beethovens skjebnesymfoni: Beethoven's fifth (describing who or what created a thing)

you can search for "genitiv i norsk" to find out more. for example, https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitiv

I'd call all of this possession.

User avatar
Basler Biker
Switzerland

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by Basler Biker »

Indeed like Olaf said, ...allow me to place a reply, even if I am learning Swedish, not Norvegian.

It's the genitive by definition, right? to describe situations of "ownership" (not strict possession) and including "figurative ownership". Thus situations like "...X of Y", "...X from Y", "... X by Y" ... Which turns into "...Y+s X"

Like in

  • the inhabitants OF the country
  • the fifth OF/BY Beethoven
  • A research OF(lasting, which took) many years
  • the book FROM Paul

Now the question is on this one with 2x OF ... "the result OF (many years OF) research".
Which of the 2 OF's applies for the genitive? Not sure if there is a grammatical trick to find that out,
but of course it's "the result OF (whatever) research".

Hence a Swede would (probably) say

  • "(många år av) forskning+s+resultatet"
    (and Swedes would probably prefer to write the latter as one long compound word)

BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

User avatar
weerwater

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by weerwater »

Thank you all.

What I take home from this, is that 'års' is the genitive form of 'år'.
It has to be applied in this sentence.
To me, 'mange års' seems to be just a specification (like an adjective) of the 'forskning'.

The discussion on 'ownership / possession' I will have to skip.
I simply cannot decide: Is it the 'mange års' that belongs to the 'forskning' or is it the 'forskning' that belongs to the 'mange års'.

Image

Olav
Norway

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by Olav »

weerwater wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:03 pm

I simply cannot decide: Is it the 'mange års' that belongs to the 'forskning' or is it the 'forskning' that belongs to the 'mange års'.

The latter, but 'mange år', not 'års'. One could do fine without the genitive 's'.

liv
Norway

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by liv »

weerwater wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:03 pm

I simply cannot decide: Is it the 'mange års' that belongs to the 'forskning' or is it the 'forskning' that belongs to the 'mange års'.

that is exactly why some grammarians define this as non possessive genitives and have other words for it. I think this is classified as Genitivus qualitatis so the genitive is defining an aspect of the subject (like an adjective would)

There are many examples of this type of genitive in Norwegian like saying... Jeg har en toseters sofa .... Hun er en gammeldags dame....
...
Also, in my opinion, you cannot really learn the grammar of one language by using the translations of another languages... Cool thing about languages is that the grammar may be different

Olav
Norway

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by Olav »

The sentence to be translated was this: 'The report is a result of many years of research.' Imho, that should translate to: 'Rapporten er (et) resultat av mange år av/med forskning.'

"Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning." Imho, that should translate to:
'The report is a result of many years' research.' If that is proper English or not, I don't know.

User avatar
Basler Biker
Switzerland

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by Basler Biker »

liv wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 6:41 pm

Here of course gammaldags including the S is a real adjective. So the question is if one still speaks of a Genitive-S here ;-)
(Dutch NL: oubollig, ouderwets)


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

User avatar
anamorphism

Re: "Rapporten er et resultat av mange års forskning."

Post by anamorphism »

it's an adjective that was derived from a genitive construction. in english, we also have a similar genitive expression of old.

it's really not a very good idea to think of genitive constructions as only denoting possession or ownership. its uses have more to do with imparting some type of attribute of one noun onto another, generally.

from the wiki page i posted before:

Ikke-possesiv genitiv

I visse tilfeller angir genitiv ikke noe direkte eierforhold.

  • Genetivus qualitatis: En annenklasses bokser
  • Genetivus hebraicus (også kalt genetivus superlativus): Bøkenes bok, kongenes konge
  • Genetivus auctoris: Beethovens skjebnesymfoni
  • Genetivus explicativus eller definitivus: Husets eier, troens frelse, hvor genitivformen forklarer en gitt egenskap ved substantivet.

the first example of the last group there kind of drives the point home since we're expressing the opposite: the house's owner/the owner of the house.

the second group also has nothing to do with possession or ownership: the book of all books, the king of kings.

there's also this explanation from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case

Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be regarded as a subset of genitive construction. For example, the genitive construction "pack of dogs" is similar, but not identical in meaning to the possessive case "dogs' pack" (and neither of these is entirely interchangeable with "dog pack", which is neither genitive nor possessive).

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