Function of genitive

What is the function of the genitive case in the sentence below? More precisely, what type of relationship between the two nouns does it imply?

The man’s tale was interesting.

Solution 1:

The grammatical relationship is attributive and determinative. The noun man’s functions as an attributive modifier of the noun tale, which is the head noun of the entire noun phrase. The phrase the man’s is itself determinative, just like the or a or this or that or Captain Stewart’s would be.

This is no longer the genitive case of a noun or pronoun as could be found in the Old English of a millennium ago. Today it is instead a phrasal clitic. This is easily proven by noting how in phrases like someone else’s ideas, the clitic attaches to else not to someone.

It notably does not here function as a “possessive” in the classical sense of that term in which physical ownership (by some animate agent, usually human) is required. A tale is not a possession. It is a tale told by the man or even a tale about the man, etc. (as John Lawler observes in a comment below), not something he owns. The sentence as written does not lock down which particular functional relation the two nouns have; there just isn’t enough context for that.

You would not say that with a dog’s breakfast that the dog “owns” or “possesses” said mess, or that in a storm’s approach that the storm “possesses” an approach nor that the storm is human. It is merely an attribute of the storm, and the storm is no animate being. The same applies with time’s passing. It is attributive. It is not possessive.

Similarly, a department store’s children’s coloring book section is a section containing coloring books for children, books that are for coloring by children. In noun phrases like his wife’s pictures, it can sometimes mean that the photographs depict his wife, not that she owns them.

In most ways, an apostrophe-s noun phrase acts like any other noun used attributively to modify another noun, including for purposes of ordering within the noun phrase. A dog’s kennel may be in someone’s own backyard, and a dog kennel is a kennel where dogs are kept. The two forms are quite similar grammatically. If you add adjectives to those noun phrases, they go in the same place with respect to dog’s or dog: a dilapidated dog’s kennel; a racing dog kennel; a dilapidated racing dog kennel (with common sense telling us that the kennel does not race and that the dog is not dilapidated).

Solution 2:

The man’s tale was interesting.

The grammatical function of "man's" is head of the genitive NP "the man's". "Tale" is head of the matrix NP "the man's tale". Thus we have one NP functioning in the structure of another.

Strictly speaking, the genitive NP "the man's" combines the functions of determiner and complement, cf. "the tale of the man".

As a complement, it is comparable to the subject of a clause since it occurs before the head nominal as a clause subject occurs before the head VP.

For this reason the genitive NP can be referred to as a subject-determiner.