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> Scott is my cofounder from Skysheet Off-topic, but if anyone is interested in educating a non native speaker: why is the word "my" used here? Wouldn't this m

> Scott is my cofounder from Skysheet Off-topic, but if anyone is interested in educating a non native speaker: why is the word "my" used here? Wouldn't this mean that Scott founded the author? Which doesn't make sense. Or does it mean that the author and Scott are both co-founders? Thanks for any input.

graeme 10y ago
Many people have cofounders, but Scott is their particular cofounder. It's like saying "my dog" or "my house". The use of my doesn't change just because the noun changes.
- graeme 10y ago
  I should add that if humans did have founders, then we would say "my founder". But we don't. So understanding of that phrase depends on us knowing the use of the noun cofounder.
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    Yeah I get the grammatical usage but I don't know how humans can have cofounders. My mom and dad kind of cofounded me, I guess.
    - dang 10y ago
      Super late to this, but I have a weakness for grammatical puzzles. I think you put your finger on something rather obscure—the sort of thing the people on Language Log would come up with competing explanations for. Here's a guess about what is going on. The "my" in "my cofounder" is different from how "my" usually works. Normally it expresses an "of" bond, as "my father" means "father of me". But here, it expresses a "with" bond, as in "cofounder with me", not "cofounder of me". Think of "my" as being bound to "co" rather than "founder". The reason why the "founder of me" meaning doesn't arise here is partly because (as graeme pointed out) we never speak of founding a person in English. But it's also because the phrase already mentions what Scott is a founder of (Skysheet), so "cofounder" has a natural object nearby to bind with. Compare this to a phrase like "my coworker". There, the "with" meaning is unambiguous, but that's because "work" doesn't normally take an object, so there's no competition for what "my" should bind to.

graeme 10y ago

Many people have cofounders, but Scott is their particular cofounder. It's like saying "my dog" or "my house". The use of my doesn't change just because the noun changes.

graeme 10y ago
I should add that if humans did have founders, then we would say "my founder". But we don't. So understanding of that phrase depends on us knowing the use of the noun cofounder.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Yeah I get the grammatical usage but I don't know how humans can have cofounders. My mom and dad kind of cofounded me, I guess.
  - dang 10y ago
    Super late to this, but I have a weakness for grammatical puzzles. I think you put your finger on something rather obscure—the sort of thing the people on Language Log would come up with competing explanations for. Here's a guess about what is going on. The "my" in "my cofounder" is different from how "my" usually works. Normally it expresses an "of" bond, as "my father" means "father of me". But here, it expresses a "with" bond, as in "cofounder with me", not "cofounder of me". Think of "my" as being bound to "co" rather than "founder". The reason why the "founder of me" meaning doesn't arise here is partly because (as graeme pointed out) we never speak of founding a person in English. But it's also because the phrase already mentions what Scott is a founder of (Skysheet), so "cofounder" has a natural object nearby to bind with. Compare this to a phrase like "my coworker". There, the "with" meaning is unambiguous, but that's because "work" doesn't normally take an object, so there's no competition for what "my" should bind to.