Possession in context (like everything else): transitive nouns

Something I've been thinking about...

What does the 's mean, in English? It's the possessive, right? But what is the relationship between the word marked as possessive and the other word in the phrase - the possessor and the thing possessed?

If you're wondering what I'm getting at, you've probably never thought much about it. It's not straightforward.

The 's (and other possessives, like the pronouns - which, after all, function like the nouns they replace [mostly]) takes its actual meaning - that relationship - from the context. From the meaning(s) of the other word(s) in the phrase.

For instance, take the clause "The Union defeated the Confederacy". If you want to create a somewhat more complex sentence, you can essentially turn that clause into a noun phrase (nominalize the verb and show subject with a by and object with an of prepositional phrase) and then plug it in as the subject or complement inside a larger clause, such as

The defeat of the Confederacy by the Union was followed by years of reconstruction.

You can also, however, use the possessive to replace one of the prepositional phrases, producing either

The Union's defeat of the Confederacy ...

or

The Confederacy's defeat by the Union ...

They're the same thing, right?

Except that the possessive is on the subject of the original clause in one, and the object in the other. Which is which is clear, as long as you keep those little prepositional phrases in there. Now (just as in passives) you can lose the original subject (the actor) and things remain clear:

The Confederacy's defeat was followed by years of reconstruction.

But how about this one?

The Union's defeat was followed by years of reconstruction.

It doesn't work. Oh, it's grammatical enough, but it's not true. For some reason, you can drop the by phrase but not the of one.

That reason has to do with the transitivity of the noun. Yes, the noun.

The default meaning of that 's (same with with possessive pronouns: I defeated him, his defeat by me, my defeat of him... his defeat - yes; my defeat - no) is to mark the object of the verb the noun has been created from (defeat). This remains true with nouns more removed from the verb, such as "destruction":

The enemy destroyed the city and its inhabitants were forced to flee.

The city's destruction by the enemy forced its inhabitants to flee
The enemy's destruction of the city ...
The city's destruction ...

But not

The enemy's destruction ....

So, in some way, the noun is filed in your brain as transitive - taking its object with "of" or with the possessive if "of" is not present.

Let's check that by looking at an intransitive, where the complement of the verb is made with a prepostion. Remaining with our rather bellicose theme,

Zendia triumped over its foes, and that was cause for much rejoicing.

The triumph of Zendia over its foes ...
Zendia's triumph over its foes ...

Yes, here we can use both of and the 's possessive marker, but in both cases it's clearly the subject of the original verb being marked. You can't wangle its foes into either. You can leave it out entirely, as above, but this doesn't affect which slot Zendia can occupy:

The triumph of Zendia...
Zendia's triumph ...

Both are acceptable.

And all this means that somehow that native speakers of English have filed in their brain the transitivity of nouns. "The Union's defeat in the Civil War" is a perfectly grammatical phrase, and apparently derived from "The Union's defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War", and yet we know it's wrong, and different from "The Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War". And in the same way, if we hear "Zendia's defeat in the late 19th century led the way to more warfare in the 20th", we know, without a doubt, that Zendia was defeated. In short, that "Zendia's defeat", with no by phrase supplied, is passive. But "Zendia's triumph in the late 20th century" cannot be passive, for triumph is an intransitive verb, and thus we know that Zendia has now won. And this though we know nothing of Zendia and its history.

[For that matter, in all of these you can take away both the subject and complement of the original, essentially, reducing a clause with subject-verb-complement to a single noun phrase consisting of a nominalization of the verb.

The defeat was followed by years of reconstruction.
The destruction caused the inhabitants to flee.
The triumph was cause for much rejoicing.

]