alcun altro / alcun' altra

21:59 Dec 12, 2012 

@James (Jim) Davis
The rule that helps to crack both your enigmas is as follows: [Inanimate Possessives: As a rule, nouns referring to inanimate things should not be in the possessive. Use an of phrase instead.] Since 'England' is an inanimate thing, and yet ends with an apostrophe plus 's'...etc...Could you, please, cite any rule regarding the 'alcun' thing, except for the negation case? That's all I need.

18:55 Dec 12, 2012 

You don't seem to have understood. My questions were rhetorical. "The king of England's hat" has two possible meanings 1) the king of the hat of England and 2) the hat of the king of England. No grammatical rule exists to say the possessor indicated by the apostrophe s is "England" or "the king of England". Common sense says 2) is probable. In the case of the "captain of England's team" the possibilities are 1) the captain of the team of England and 2) the team of the captain of England. Number one is more probable.
Normally alcun= uno but alcun + negative = nessuno, but clearly not in this case because otherwise it doesn't make sense.

16:42 Dec 12, 2012 

@James (Jim) Davis
__Thank you. I can find an appropriate rule to answer your questions. Just asking to do likewise with mine. For example:
The Gregg Reference Manual, Section 6 (Plurals and Possessives), p. 183.

13:37 Dec 12, 2012 

If formal rules worked well, computers would be following them and doing our jobs. Formal rules leave room for loads of ambiguities, which you solve by considering the context. Consider: "the king of England's hat" (king of a hat or a country?) "the captain of England's team" (captain of a country or a team?). You follow the rule which makes sense, which fits the reality.

07:42 Dec 12, 2012 

I'd be grateful to anyone who will suggest some formal criteria. It occurs in literature that authors focus on an individual's feature, regarding it as a normal characteristic of the hole nation/region/city/etc.

05:54 Dec 12, 2012 

Yes, here alcun'altra means nessun'altra. The governor's daughter was beautiful like no other girl in Cyprus.

05:08 Dec 12, 2012 

I'm not the person to give you any grammatical rules, but the sense here, as Jim suggests, is clearly superlative - the noblest in the land/the fairest in the land. She is not "as beautiful as any other", even though a literal translation of the Italian would seem to suggest that, but "more than any other"

01:58 Dec 12, 2012 

medeval Italian, but Noradino was just as noble as any other person makes a pretty poor poem, which it isn't.

01:50 Dec 12, 2012 

I'd like to get familiar with the rule that disambiguates here the meaning of the 'alcun'-bearing expression. How do I know if it's 'any other' or 'no other'? i.e. 'Noradino was strong and had a noble look like any other man in Damascus', or
'Noradino was strong and had a noble look like no other man in Damascus'?
'The governor's daughter was beautiful like any other girl in Cyprus', or
'The governor's daughter was beautiful like no other girl in Cyprus'. Thank you.

23:05 Dec 11, 2012 

The Asker added this in the question box: (formal rule for applying 'nessun' meaning?), which I have deleted to preserve glossary format in accordance with site rule: http://www.proz.com/siterules/kudoz_general/1.4#1.4

22:21 Dec 11, 2012 

There are many ways to translate this. "Like no other" "with no equal" "with no peer" As for grammatical rules well "not" + "any" or just one single "no", but you don't want to use "any" here. "matchless" comes to mind, but it wouldn't fit in two lines.