Why does 90 days' written notice
WellOfTheWillow
Thanks.
meirman
welloft...@aol.com (WellOfTheWillow) posted:
>have an apostrophe after days? Doesn't make any sense to me. Please explain.
>Thanks.
How would you feel about "He signed up for two months' tenancy."?
s/ meirman If you are emailing me please
say if you are posting the same response.
Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis, 7 years
Chicago, 6 years
Brooklyn NY 12 years
Baltimore 17 years
mb
WellOfTheWillow wrote in message
<20020727235059...@mb-fc.aol.com>...
>have an apostrophe after days? Doesn't make any sense to me. Please
explain.
>Thanks.
Genitive. If uncomfortable with that (who knows, looks like a new generation
is there) use 90 day-notice.
Peter Duncanson
<crofterscan@yahoo_spamdieshere.co.uk> wrote:
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>it's notice which belongs to 90 days...?
>
Not exactly. It's [a period of] notice of 90 days [in length].
--
Peter D.
UK
(posting from a.e.u)
Robert Lieblich
Never. If you must hyphenate, use "90-day [written] notice."
Regardless, I'd omit the apostrophe (although I'm not sure it's
exactly "wrong").
--
Bob Lieblich
Hyphen-spotting
Robert Lieblich
>
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> it's notice which belongs to 90 days...?
Have you read the AUE FAQ materials? It's at
<http://www.alt-usage-english.org/>. You might particularly want to
check out <http://www.alt-usage-english.org/intro_a.shtml>.
Yes, I know it actually belongs to another group. But it's hard to
tell AUE from AEU these days.
--
Bob Lieblich
Welcome and enjoy
Dena Jo
> Genitive. If uncomfortable with that (who knows, looks like a new
generation
> is there) use 90 day-notice.
I think you meant 90-day notice.
--
Dena Jo
Alan Jones
"crofter#2" <crofterscan@yahoo_spamdieshere.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ai0e6a$8la$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> it's notice which belongs to 90 days...?
You are perhaps assuming that the apostrophe indicates possession,
"belonging to"; but it has other meanings of which "ninety days' notice" is
an example. A common one is "for": a boys' school is one for boys, not one
belonging to them.
Alan Jones
Raymond S. Wise
"Robert Lieblich" <Robert....@Verizon.net> wrote in message
news:3D43FF15...@Verizon.net...
The phrase "90 days' written notice" seems unremarkable to me, but I had a
heck of a time finding anything about such a use of the possessive on the
Internet. I did find the following:
From
http://www.abfab-australia.com/netiquette/grammar.html#apostrophe
[quote]
False Possessive
Sometimes words appear to be in the possessive case but there is no real
ownership, such as:
a month's pay
two days' washing
yesterday's appointments
last year's bank statements
two years' receipts
girls' underwear
[end quote]
However, a further search for "false possessive" and "false possessives"
turned up very little, including the following from the BBC Style Guide:
From
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/audiovideo/programmes/radio_newsroom/1099593.stm
[quote]
_False possessives_
are to be avoided at all times. We should never talk of "Washington's
Lincoln Memorial", "London's West End", "London's Docklands", "Rugby's
Calcutta Cup" etc.). People don't talk like that; we shouldn't write like
that.
[end quote]
However, people *do* say things like "yesterday's appointments" and "last
year's bank statements," so that's no reason to avoid that use of the false
possessive. I also found the following, in the "Rules of the Senate of
Canada":
From
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/process/senate/rules-e/senrulespart6
-e.htm
"Two days' notice shall be given of any of the following motions:"
"One day's notice shall be given of any of the following motions:"
It seems to me that any other way of saying it would sound awkward: "Two-day
notice"? "A notice of one day"? Doesn't work for me.
Given how rare the phrases "false possessive" and "false possessives" show
up on the Internet, I figure this use of the possessive must normally have
some other designation, but I can't think what it might be.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
David H Li
follows a numeral and the phrase is used adjectivally -- specifically, a two-time
champion. The consensus of responses on this thread is that this is an
"idiomatic" use, whatever that means. Your query is on the opposite end -- why an
apostrophe when an "s" is added. The best I can gather, from the responses to
your thread, (though none has the courage to say it) is that it is another
"idiomatic" usage. So, it is either a 90-day notice or a 90 days' notice. Just
do it, and forget about logic -- this is the lesson I learned from these two
threads. David Li
Alan Jones
"David H Li" <dav...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:3D44A4D7...@erols.com...
No "courage" needed: of course it's idiomatic in one sense of that slippery
word.
Please note that it is unlikely that the expressions you cite would be used
with the indefinite article, especially the version with the apostrophe: "He
has been given 90 days' notice to quit the premises", or "... the agreed 90
days' notice..." The non-plural version:: "The 90-day notice required to
terminate this lease is longer than usual" but - rarely - "A 90-day notice
to quit is unusually generous".
I'm surprised, by the way, that you expect logicality in language.
Alan Jones
meirman
<a...@blueyonder.co.uk> posted:
>
>"David H Li" <dav...@erols.com> wrote in message
>news:3D44A4D7...@erols.com...
>> Earlier, I posted a similar query concerning the omission of "s" when a
>noun
>> follows a numeral and the phrase is used adjectivally -- specifically, a
>two-time
>> champion. The consensus of responses on this thread is that this is an
>> "idiomatic" use, whatever that means. Your query is on the opposite
>end -- why an
>> apostrophe when an "s" is added. The best I can gather, from the
>responses to
>> your thread, (though none has the courage to say it)
We've mentioned the existance English idioms on many other occasions,
including within the last day or two in another thread. No courage is
needed. If it didn't come up this time, it's because other answers
came to mind first. Because whether you understood it or not, whether
they explained it well or not, whether someone made a mistake or not,
there is some logical relationship between this usage and other more
standard ones, and it is not entirely idiom. People go to the trouble
to answer you and then you, in other words, call them cowards. We
have a lot of free-wheeling conversation in this group, but you could
at least ask, instead, why no one called it an idiom.
>> is that it is another
>> "idiomatic" usage. So, it is either a 90-day notice or a 90 days' notice.
>Just
>> do it, and forget about logic -- this is the lesson I learned from these
>two
>> threads. David Li
>
>No "courage" needed: of course it's idiomatic in one sense of that slippery
>word.
>
>Please not/e that it is unlikely that the expressions you cite would be used
>with the indefinite article, especially the version with the apostrophe: "He
>has been given 90 days' notice to quit the premises", or "... the agreed 90
>days' notice..." The non-plural version:: "The 90-day notice required to
>terminate this lease is longer than usual" but - rarely - "A 90-day notice
>to quit is unusually generous".
>
>I'm surprised, by the way, that you expect logicality in language.
Especially when he says he has heard for decades that Chinese has no
grammar. Why should English have no exceptions? (I would think that
has some relationshiop to logicality.)
A friend asked me to find some information about a person on the net
for him. I said I didn't know how. He got annoyed and said, but they
say that all this information is easy to find on the net. And I
replied that I'm not one who says that, and I had never told him that.
He acknowledged my point.
I hope that whoever told David over the years that Chinese has no
grammar didn't give him the impression that English has no idioms.
None of us here has ever said that. The possibility that Chinese has
no grammar and the fact that English has plenty do not imply that
English has no idioms** David should not expect more than is promised
or he falls into the trap of my friend, who thought all info was easy
to find on the net.
**That's logicality for you.
>Alan Jones
Raymond S. Wise
From *The New Fowler's Modern English Usage,* Oxford University Press,
(C) 1968 at
http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=596866
[quote (italics in the original not represented)]
's and of-possessive
[...]
There is general agreement that the non-personal genitive is
frequently used with nouns of time (e.g. the day's routine, an hour's
drive) and space (e.g. the journey's end, a stone's throw, at arm's
length). It is also often used before sake (e.g. for pity's sake, for
old times' sake), and in a number of fixed expressions (e.g. at
death's door, out of harm's way, in his mind's eye). Jespersen noted
the prevalence of 's genitives before the word edge (the cliff's edge,
the water's edge, the pavement's edge, etc.). He also noted that ship,
boat, and vessel tend to turn up with an 's genitive when we might
expect of (the ship's provisions, the boat's gangway, etc.). In 1988
Noel Osselton demonstrated that the somewhat unexpected types the
soil's productivity and the painting's disappearance (as well as
others) represent a legitimate class of what he called thematic
genitives. When a noun that cannot 'possess' is of central interest in
a particular context, it tends to acquire the power to 'possess', and
is therefore expressed as an 's genitive. One major genitival area
remains virtually untransformable into 's genitives. Only the
of-construction is appropriate for partitive genitives: e.g. a glass
of water cannot be re-expressed as a water's glass, and try converting
a dose of salts.
[end quote]
Mark Wallace
This all brings us around to the old battles about 'can
non-living/human things possess things', and the true function of
the adjective.
I've always been of the opinion that there is no sense looking at
adjectives as anything other than possessions, no matter who or what
'owns' them. Attributes *belong* to things; they don't exist in a
vaccuum.
--
Mark Wallace
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