| 词组 | adverbial genitive |
| 释义 | adverbial genitive Bryant 1962 and Evans 1957 tell us that in Old English the genitive of some nouns could be used adverbially. For instance, the genitive of the Old English word for day could be used to mean "by day." Evans notes that many of our adverbs that end in an \\\\s\\\\ or \\\\z\\\\ sound—nowadays, always—are survivals of this form. But, says he, "Today there is no feeling that this is a genitive relationship and an apostrophe is never used in words of this kind." One survival of the old adverbial genitive is in certain adverbs of time: "He never works evenings or Sundays'" (test sentence from Leonard 1929). The propriety of this construction seems to have been questioned at some time in the past, although we have not encountered the questioning in our reading of the commentators. Utter 1916 calls these adverbs "sometimes condemned." He defends them as an "old idiomatic usage," as do most other commentators. Leonard's 1929 survey found the construction acceptable to about 75 percent of his respondents. Here are a few typical examples: • During his college days at Harvard he taught days and studied nights —Dictionary of American Biography, 1929 • ... he sold cars, mowed lawns, sang nights and weekends whenever he could get bookings —Current Biography, July 1967 • ... waking up mornings in my own vomit —Conrad Rooks, quoted in Evergreen, December 1967 • I got to thinking that I went to work nights and Saturdays in a paper mill when I was a boy —Bergen Evans, address at Marshall University, June 1968 Many commentators (Evans 1957, Fowler 1926, Mittins et al. 1970, Quirk et al. 1985, for example) observe that this adverbial genitive of time is better established in American English than in British English. It is not, however, dead in British English, as Evans thought in 1957. The new OED Supplement under nights lists Australian and Canadian examples. It may be rather more common in spoken than in written British English: • ... but I don't stay up nights worrying —John Lennon, quoted in Current Biography, December 1965 Bryant finds the use firmly established in informed standard speech and writing in the U.S. Jespersen 1909-49 (vol. 7) gives a few citations from American literature: • ... their cats were pretty sociable around her nights —Mark Twain, The Stolen White Elephant, 1882 • I've got to work evenings! —Sinclair Lewis, Arrow-smith, 1925 • Summers I used to cover Missouri —Thornton Wilder, Heaven's My Destination, 1934 • I went over there afternoons —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929 |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。