Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010

We do not doubt you truly report your intuition -- but you suggested
no reasons (logic) or evidence (usage) why anyone else
should think one phrase (1) more majestic, (2) much more
majestic, than the other.

Yes.

Some would say the full of-genitive form is more sonorous, others would
feel it's needlessly wordy.  I incline to the former view, and don't see
how anyone could incline to the latter, but doubtless many do.

The Prize of Pulitzer? The Institution of Smithson?

I don't even think they mean the same thing to me.  I'd tak "the
Jewels of the Crown" to refer to jewels in some specific crown, while
"the Crown Jewels" are jewels belonging to the ruler, the "crown" by
metonymy.  Of course, it's possible that if people had been referring
to the latter as "the jewels of the crown" for centuries it would seem
natural.

And then there is bureaucratese.

You can say "The Department of Education" or "The education department", but
the bureaucrats like to say "the Department Education".

And it's not just a South African thing; cf. Statistics Canada.

Can you tell the difference between an apple pie and a pie apple?

The original Finnish name seems to be "Tuonelan joutsen" (or Tuonen
joutsen), and the Swedish name is "Tuonelas svan", so I fail to see why
it has to be "The Swan of Tuonela" in English. "Tuonela's swan" would be
a closer translation.

Neither.  They're two different constructions, out of many.
There's also, for instance "The Jewel(s) in the Crown" and
"The Crown's Jewel(s)".  English has any number of ways
to combine two nouns into proper names, idioms, and
specialized compounds.

Consider, for instance, "pony ride" and "snake bite".  They
both consist of an animal and an action; but in one the
pony is the thing that gets ridden, while in the other the
snake is the thing that does the biting.  Is there any way
to predict? No.  We learn them all individually and rarely
even notice the difference.

In the particular case of NP of NP phrases, there is in
fact an historical explanation. English has borrowed about
half its vocabulary from Latin and French, as a result of
about a millennium of contact with the cultures of the
Continent, and the linguistic result is that we have both
a Romance way of forming genitives ("X of Y") and
a Germanic way ("Y's X").  This is just the way it is,
and neither time, space, spit, or effort is involved.

Given this situation (which is a very common one in
English), we tend to find uses for the difference; so
it's normal, for instance, for the Germanic construction
to be used when the possessor is animate ("the dog's leg")
while the Romance one tends to be used when it's not
("the leg of the table").

That doesn't mean that it's *wrong* to use them the
other way, but it does mean that saying "the leg of
the dog" or "the table's leg" is what linguists call a
"marked usage" -- i.e, odd in some sense, not the norm,
emphasized -- and such usages invite further speculations.

This is one of the tools writers can use to shape the
experience for their readers, and another example of
the principle that careful readers pay careful attention
to what hasn't been said, but could have been.

-John Lawler      http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler
"A man does not know what he is saying until
 he knows what he is not saying."
 -- G.K. Chesterton, 1936, "As I Was Saying"