Llawygath wrote:Continued from
here:
linguoboy wrote:Tikolm wrote:I believe I learned that you can't have a definite article in front of a genitive thingy. Are you asking me to unlearn that? What do you want me to do?
Well, yeah, I do want you to unlearn that because you learned it wrong. What you can't have with a genitive construction is
two definite articles. If both nouns are definite, the article will come between them. If only the first is, the article comes before that. If the second noun is definite but not the first, then you need to use an alternative construction.
I might believe you if not for this:
YngNghymru wrote:It [y cathod Cymru] should be cathod Cymru.
You had said that
y cathod Cymru meant 'the cats of Wales'. It follows from there that
the first noun (cathod) is definite, but not the second (Cymru); according to what you say above,
cathod ought to be preceded by
y, but according to Yng the resulting phrase is wrong.
As I understand Yng's argument, since
Cymru is a proper noun, it doesn't need an article to be considered definite. That is,
Cymru is the one and only country of that name, so you could say the definite article is implied. I don't remember being taught this explicitly, but it makes intuitive sense and so far I haven't been able to find any counterexamples.
So then your mistake would be taking a rule which applies only to proper nouns and generalising it to
all nouns.
Llawygath wrote:I continue to be confused.

Also, would you mind explaining the comment about Rhian Pierce-Jones? You never did tell me what that was about. I suppose you expected me to find out on my own?
I did consider it a possibility that you might attempt a rudimentary Google search, yes. And had you done that, you would've encountred
this page. Note the fourth and fifth titles in the list (second and third in "Sglods Blods" series). What can you tell me about the grammar of them?
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons