linguistics question
is "the two of us" a partitive construction or something else?
it seems to carry the implication that "the two" is equivalent to "us", which is not typical of partitives (some claim that a partitive must refer to a proper subset of a set of things)
linguistics question
@alyssa something else i think; it’s saying essentially “the two which form us”, “the two that we are”; in this sense i think the usage of “of” is more attributive (qualifying which two), like in “the united states of america”
linguistics question
@Lady yeah, i interpret it the same way, but i'm unsure of other cases where "the X of Y" has that function in english. i'm not sure your "united states of america" example fits; would you not consider that a genitive?
linguistics question
@alyssa “genitive” is a complicated term in english, but i think “united states of america” is grammatically more similar to “freedom of speech” than “america’s united states”
linguistics question
@Lady i agree that "freedom of speech" and "united states of america" are analogous,
but would be inclined to consider "freedom of speech" genitive (or, possessive), too (although it's true that the inflected possessive is not equivalent to the periphrastic one with "of").
it seems even clearer to me with "freedom of speech" that the "of" there isn't serving the same function as in "the two of us". it's not "freedom, which is speech" but "speech-related freedom" (compare "freedom of religion" = "religious freedom"). on the other hand "the us-related two" is close to (if maybe still a little distinct from) "our two", which doesn't even overlap in meaning with "the two of us", i think.
linguistics question
@alyssa the alternative form of “the two of us” is “we/us two”, not “our two”, agreed
but i think “we two” and “religious freedom” are in fact very similar; “we” (or “of us”) is specifying WHICH two just as “religious” (or “of religion”) is specifying WHICH freedom
“the two of us” for me is not meaningfully different from “the two who came first”; the equivalency between two and us just comes from implication because otherwise there is not enough information to identify among us which definite two are intended
but compare “of the many pokémon, i like the two of them” (nonsensical) and “of the many pokémon, i like the two of them who are Normal / Ghost type” (sensical, even though “two” and “them” (pokémon) are not equivalent)
and by the same metric, “the two of us who arrived last”