Language desk
< July 9	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 11 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 10

Most-plagiarized poems

What are the most frequently plagiarized poems? Not the biggest plagiarism scandals (eg: proposed list at lithub) but poems which are repeatedly plagiarized?

I'm writing drafts on a couple poems which went viral on the internet in the mid-1990s (A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer a.k.a. If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer and Candidate for a Pullet Surprise a.k.a. Owed to a Spell Chequer) and are said to be the most-plagiarized poems from the sheer scale (counting each website that hosted an improperly attributed version). Sorry to ask you to do my referencing for me, but I'm hoping for a high-quality source that might verify this (particularly for DYK). It is said that the plagiarism of the poems is discussed in books on publishing ethics, but I haven't found anything.

Thanks for any help, nostalgic reminiscences, or witticisms. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:54, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting question, for which I don't have an answer. But this news story might give you some clues, especially if you could track down and contact Ira Lightman; I bet he'd know. Mathglot (talk) 17:09, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nested possessive forms

As it says on the article Kongen af Danmark, the candies were originally known in Swedish as Kungens av Danmark bröstkarameller, literally "The King's of Denmark breast sweets", which was later changed to Kungen av Danmarks bröstkarameller, literally "The King of Denmark's breast sweets".

The Swedish and English names illustrate the same problem. There are two nested possessive forms, but with different orders. One has the owner first and the other has the other last. If this were Danmarks kungs bröstkarameller ("Denmark's kings breast sweets") or Bröstkarameller av kungen av Danmark ("Breast sweets of the king of Denmark") there would be no problem.

Is Kungens av Danmark bröstkarameller, literally "The King's of Denmark breast sweets", really the most natural way to say this, even though it is logically wrong? JIP | Talk 21:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Nested" is not a word which linguists would use in this case; they would more likely call it a "phrasal possessive" or "clitic possessive" -- i.e. the ending attaches to a whole noun phrase, not just a noun. In English, we have examples such as "That's the woman I can't stand's car" (though some prescriptivists dislike them). We don't seem to have a separate article on this (not even a separate subsection in English possessive). AnonMoos (talk) 23:32, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Another term which seems to be sometimes used is "group genitive"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:45, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to get more unclear when the phrase contains another possessive, though I think a way of sorting is preferred if not obligatory. Names for relatives would give quite a lot of examples (my uncle's daughter's nephew or whatever), mixing with "of" or "av" surely complicates things, but may serve as a way of disambiguation at least in some cases. Just giving some ideas, can't really tell much about English or Swedish use. Personuser (talk) 00:13, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To me, "The King's of Denmark breast sweets" sounds wrong (and thus not natural), just as wrong as ^✽"my mother's brother wife". --Lambiam 07:33, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On a side point, "chest sweets" would be more usual in English for a throat remedy like this for instance, and a whole lot better than "breast sweets" which suggest something like this. Alansplodge (talk) 10:45, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see that JIP has changed it already. Alansplodge (talk) 13:55, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

JIP, It's not The King's of Denmark breast sweets, that's grammatically wrong; it should be either:

The King of Denmark's breast sweets, or
Denmark's king's breast sweets.

Of the two, most native speakers would strongly prefer the first imho; probably partly because of 'King of Denmark' being a fixed noun phrase which takes the possessive indicator suffixed to the phrase, and partly due to the association/possession distinction rather than the nesting. See for example, this explanation. Mathglot (talk) 17:01, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The source you cited doesn't exactly talk about the same problem. In this case, Denmark has a king, and that king has breast (or chest) sweets. In "this dream of Mabel's", there's just Mabel, and Mabel has a dream. Furthermore, I agree that "The King of Denmark's breast sweets" reads naturally, but if I set my mind to it, I can just as easily see it meaning that there are "Denmark's breast sweets" and someone is the king of these sweets. JIP | Talk 17:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a nice source (in Swedish) that discusses the problem: Bengt Sigurd (1995), "Konungens av Danmark bröstkarameller och genitivreglerna", Språkvård (31/1), p. 9–15. Quite interestingly, the construction with the s on the logically dependent noun (= Kungens av Danmark bröstkarameller) is generally considered elevated/bureaucratic style, while the one with genitive s on the complete phrase (= Kungen av Danmarks bröstkarameller) belongs to a more natural speech style. –Austronesier (talk) 17:58, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Add: The English equivalent of Kungens av Danmark bröstkarameller is considered wrong, since genitive s is strictly a phrase-level case marker in English. Historically, it was a word-level case marker as in German. In German, the genitive of der Kaiser von China is des Kaisers von China. Using such a heavy possessive phrase in front of the head (des Kaisers von China neue Kleider) is considered stylistically highly marked in German (if not incorrect), but adding -s to the end of the phrase is totally impossible (**des Kaiser von Chinas neue Kleider). Swedish apparently lies halfway in the shift of genitive s from word-level to phrase-level case marker. –Austronesier (talk) 18:26, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To me, des Kaiser von Chinas neue Kleider looks like it's supposed to say der Kaiser von Chinas neue Kleider (I hope I got the spelling right), meaning that there are "China's new clothes" and then there is an emperor of these clothes. JIP | Talk 23:24, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would say “my mother’s brother’s wife” is the “wife of my mother’s brother”, rather than the “brother of my mother’s wife”. Probably no native English speaker would use either, because the two options aren’t always interchangeable, but I hope this gets the idea. Guess in the case of the king of Denmark, the context is clear enough and the phrase common enough to make a "phrasal possessive" more acceptable (that’s still not acceptable in other related languages where the word based case system is stronger). Relatives examples may be common, but surely make things harder to follow (the fact that there are riddles based on this should have given me a clue). Purely case based or preposition based languages seem to still be vulnerable to some ambiguity and naturally have some ways to avoid it. Ancient Greek article/word “sandwiches” seem to be a powerful tool for this, not sure if they are still used in modern Greek or how much they were used for this particular purpose. Personuser (talk) 02:37, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The His genitive may also be relevant here. At one time, it would have been perfectly normal (although not the only possible way) to write this in English as "The King of Denmark his Breast Sweets." Apparently this type of construction still exists in Norwegian, but I don't know about Swedish. The his genitive and your example are both part of a long history of uncertainty in various Germanic languages about how this kind of possessive actually does work or logically ought to work. Perhaps it has to do with keeping the possessive determiner immediately adjacent to the rest of the noun phrase. --Amble (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't speak Swedish natively but I had to study it for six years in school (pakkoruotsi, tvångsvenskan), after which I have used it extensively on trips to Sweden. I have never heard of a "His genitive" in Swedish, but I am quite sure there is one in Norwegian. JIP | Talk 19:19, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]