Why is "Geography's test was difficult" ungrammatical?
I've been working on this minimal pair and sentence B is ungrammatical but I don't know the reason so far. I have to give an answer contrasting both sentences but B seems grammatical to me. Does anyone know how can I explain it? Thank you in advance.
A. Today's test was difficult.
B. Geography's test was difficult.
Solution 1:
We do find geography's X with certain meanings.
R. B. Cathcart; American Geography's Image of Human Life in Earth
J. M. Olson et al.; Geography's Inner Worlds
G. K. Conolly, ed. Geography's Place: Promotion of Geography in Australia
Geography's Lesson
I will begin the final part of this examination by briefly summarizing "L'Hôte", a novella that serves as an exceptionally telling fictional exemplar of applied moral values. J. Herbeck and V. Grégoire; A Writer's Topography
Here, religious geography's lesson is simple, subtle, and essential: [R]eligious groups do not simply exist in space; they also imagine and construct space in terms related to their faith."The Supreme Court Review, 2014
Historian David Landes finds this the central strength of geography's message, and, interestingly, the reason many people prefer to ignore geography. J. Agnew and J> M. Smith; American Space/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States
As Tinfoil Hat commented: Geography's final was much harder than Creative Writing's is sound. Or Because she found it hard to get up early, Gina found Geography's 8:00 start time to be a problem.
As jsw29 points out in the comment below, the above print examples are in some sense personifying Geography, so Geography's lesson would be fine for the lesson that Geography can show/teach us, but "Geography's test" is questionable for the test we had in our Geography class. Our Geography test was difficult is what we normally say.
Solution 2:
There is a question of semantics. The genitive 's' has various nuances controlled by context.
The genitive noun is a determiner that implies an association with its object noun. There are default associations.
A. Today's test was difficult.
= (i) The test that was set today was difficult.
= (ii) The test that was taken today was difficult.
There is no ambiguity here. Both express the difficulty of the test.
Compare
The headmaster's test was difficult =
(i) The test taken by the headmaster was difficult.
(ii) The test set by the headmaster was difficult.
Now replace "headmaster" with geography...
B. Geography's test was difficult.
= (i) * The test that was set by geography was difficult.
(ii) * The test that was taken by geography was difficult.
There have been attempts in earlier comments to understand "geography's" as "The subject associated with geography", but this use is not idiomatic and therefore the default association fails.
Idiomatically: "The geography test was difficult."