Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: "to" al posto di "of"

Ho letto o sentito (non ricordo) queste espressioni:
son TO his father
the page TO a book
In pratica OF (del complemento di specificazione) era rimpiazzato dal
TO
è un errore?
Quand'è che si può rimpiazzare OF con TO?
Grazie,
:::Dibbibbì:::

what about To instead of OF
like in
"to me you are perfect"
english is not italian!

>>> Dibbibbï¿œ:::
Neither of these sounds right to me, although I have heard people (rarely) 
say things like "He's the father to my secretary" or "the great-grandmother 
to seventeen children"  That construction always strikes me as odd and not 
many people use it, where "of" would be expected.
I can't think of a single circumstance where I would say - or expect to hear 
- "the page to a book" except in a rare situation where someone said "I added 
a page to a book but I can't remember which book or which page."
Do you remember the rest of the context where you might have read or heard 
these?
-- 
Joe/Joey da New York
English as she is spoken (and sometimes written) in the US

 a page to a book but I can't remember which book or which page."
I've just written "the introduction to chapter 7" in another post, but 
the fact that both "of" and "to" are correct is just accidental, of course.
Kiuhnm

):

In that case, "to" is correct -- or /more/ correct than "of."
One introduces someone /to/ something. "Of" sounds odd.


 English as she is spoken (and sometimes written) in the US
I've heard it on a audio lesson downloaded from ESL podcast
http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html
 (home page), as soon as I
have some leisure time I'll spend few minutes listening to that file
again so that I can type the exact sentence I hear.
"I added a page TO a book" sounds certainly right, but that's not the
point I'm talkin' about, since I want to know whether (and when) it is
possible to swap from "OF" to "TO" in possessive sentences and "I
added a a page TO a book" isn't possessive at all.
In each case, thanks for your reply (and pardon my humble written
English. PS= feel free to correct me)

 One introduces someone /to/ something. "Of" sounds odd.
I thought that "of" was also correct because an introduction is 
introductory to the chapter but is also at the beginning of the chapter, 
i.e. it's part of the chapter.
Kiuhnm

 Kiuhnm
It's not incorrect. It's just not the usual way of expressing it.


 me as odd and not many people use it, where "of" would be expected.
[...]
Anche a me frasi come
"She was the mother to five children, one of whom preceded her in
death."
sono suonate "odd" quando le ho incontrate la prima volta, e in
effetti si incontrano raramente, però le ho prese come un'altra delle
forme idiomatiche della lingua inglese.
Forse una forma old fashioned?
Forse "be mother to" viene inteso come "give birth to"?

>>> Dibbibb�:::
A me � capitato di sentire spesso "the keys to the door", laddove in 
italiano diremmo "le chiavi della porta". Forse in questo caso il "to" 
indica pi� un modo di accesso alla porta che una vera relazione di possesso 
tra la porta e la chiave. 

 tra la porta e la chiave.
Used to indicate appropriation or possession: looked for the top to
the jar.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/to?r=66
ciao