Attributive nouns vs. of-genitive

Question

I would be very grateful for some advice on how to decide whether to use an attributive noun or the "of genitive" (periphrastic genitive).

It seems to me that an attributive noun is generally preferable, except when it leads to ambiguity, often due to the combination of several modifiers with mixed dependent relationships.

Additionally, the of-genitive, when used stand-alone, seems to impart a more formal tone, a higher register.

Simple examples (preferred first, less-preferred second):

The department secretary vs. the secretary of the department.

But:

The excellent secretary of the department vs. the excellent department secretary.

Any additional guidelines would be most welcome.

Answer 1

• The attributive style is professional-sounding, and more clipped / economical. It allows broader association (imagine 'a Manager of Football'. 'A pen of writing'!) Of course, [noun] + [noun] strings are often weak to strong collocations or even open compound nouns (and more recent strings may develop in cohesiveness over time).
• The periphrastic-of style adds gravitas (imagine 'The Flies Lord' ... and 'Royal Air Force Marshall' sounds less dignified than the standard term). It avoids awkward singular/plural problems sometimes met with in using an attributive noun.

Doubtless exceptions to the above rules of thumb exist.

And at times, the choice seems (at least at first glance) quite random.

                          Babel Tower!?                                              The Tower of Blackpool!?

                          The Youth Fountain?                                  The Fountain of Trevi?

                          The Sighs Bridge?                                        The Bridge of Forth?

                          The Sin Wilderness?                                   The Wilderness of Sawtooth?

                          Tara Hill?                                                      The Hill of Bunker?

Of course, one is not likely to see the of-variant with geographical features and the like named after persons. 'The Wilderness of John Muir' // 'The Ice Shelf of Ronne-Filchner / Ross / McMurdo' /// 'The reaction of Hell, Volhard, and Zelinsky' /// 'The constraints of Ross' would sound too proprietorial.

And 'The Sighs Bridge' is an example where the prepositional phrase would be expected, as with 'A House of Cards', 'a game of chance', being essentially a fixed phrase.

Answer 2

Simple examples (preferred first, less-preferred second):

The department secretary vs. the secretary of the department.

Fine.

The helpful secretary of the department vs. the helpful department secretary.

No, here you've put the less common one first.

Note, I replaced excellent with helpful, so the phrase would sound natural to my ear. But my answer holds for "excellent" too.

In general, stringing things out with lots of extraneous prepositions comes across as pompous or foreign-sounding.

Answer 3

If "genitive" is limited to possessive case, which I think it should be, then this question does not involve periphrastic genitive per se. Instead, "the department secretary" is a noun phrase containing a noun modifier--no possession indicated. The other example is a prepositional phrase modifying a noun to form a noun phrase that would be used in either nominative or objective case. Now if "the secretary of the department" means "the department's secretary," then you involve periphrastic genitive. The simplest distinction is to refer to a foreign language such as French or Spanish, which routinely require periphrastic constructions for the genitive. A speaker cannot say "Paul's livre" or "Pablo's libro": he or she must say "le livre de Paul" or "el libro de Pablo." In English we routinely indicate possession with either an initial modifier: "Paul's book," or periphrasis: "the book of Paul's."

Answer 4

It's actually pretty complicated in some cases. Here's a brief example from a non-native writer: 'policies were mainly aimed at sustainable management of forest'. This is not wrong at all, but creating the NP collocation 'sustainable forest management' is better, since what is at issue here is the 'management', not the 'forest'. Calling this 'clipped', however, or what it replaces as a bit foreign sounding is to miss the point, which is where the stress demanded by the larger sentence context falls. In other words it's frequently a question of what you mean to say, and one form provides the appropriate focus, while the other diffuses it.

Answer 5

This might loosely pertain to active vs passive voice (the active voice is generally preferred). While there is no verb here, it is more "direct" (for lack of a better term) to say "department secretary" rather than "secretary of the department" as well as more economical.