Apostrophes in possessive forms
Peter Moylan
I'd better invite feedback on the draft before calling it a final
copy. Your comments - probably by e-mail - would be welcome.
Note particularly that there are some conjectures rather than hard
facts towards the end. (I don't have much of a collection of good
reference works.) I'd particularly like to hear from experts who
could confirm or refute my guesses.
After looking after responses and revising where necessary, I'll send this
off to Mark.
--
Peter Moylan ee...@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
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Where to put apostrophes in possessive forms
--------------------------------------------
Most of this is part of a basic knowledge of English; but so many
people get it wrong that the topic deserves the status of a FAQ.
PRONOUNS
The ONLY possessive pronoun with an apostrophe is "one's".
---> The words "his", "its", "whose", "their" do NOT contain apostrophes. <---
---> Nor do words like "hers", "ours", "yours". <---
The forms "it's", "they're", and "who's" are contractions for "it is",
"they are", and "who is" respectively. They have nothing to do with
possessive pronouns.
NOUNS
1. The standard case: Use 's for the singular possessive, and s' for
the plural possessive. For example:
Singular Plural
Nominative dog dogs
Possessive dog's dogs'
2. Nouns ending in s: The nominative plural takes -es rather than -s,
but otherwise it's the same rule as above:
Singular Plural
Nominative class classes
Possessive class's classes'
3. People's names ending in s: This is the same as above, but for some
reason (perhaps because the repeated s looks inelegant) there is a common
tendency to write abbreviated forms in this case.
Correct: Chris's dog, the Joneses' cars.
Incorrect but frequently seen: Chris' dog, the Jones' cars.
4. Plurals not ending in s: Use 's for the possessive plural
(men's, people's, sheep's).
HISTORY
For those who want to know where the apostrophe came from, here is how
it probably happened. Some of this is well documented, some is
guesswork on my part.
Back in the days when English had many more inflections than it now
does, the most common ending for the genitive singular was -es.
(There were several noun declensions, so that not all nouns fitted this
pattern; but this could be considered to be the "most regular" case.)
For example: mann (=man), mannes (=of the man). Over time there
developed a tendency to stop pronouncing the unstressed "e", so that
"mannes" became "mann's". The apostrophe stands for the omitted letter.
(Modern German still has -es as the genitive ending for many nouns.
However the Germans did not stop pronouncing their unstressed "e"s,
so the case ending is still written as -es.)
Pronouns were also inflected, but not in the same way. (They were
all fairly irregular, as they still are today.) The genitive form
of "hit" (=it) was "his" (=its). As "his" evolved into "its", there
was no "e" to drop, therefore no apostrophe.
Plural nouns are harder to explain. The most common genitive plural
inflection was -a, which is quite unrelated to our modern -s'.
My best guess is that the -a changed to -s under the influence of
French; and that the apostrophe was added later, by analogy with the
singular form, to remove an ambiguity.
NOTE FOR NON-ENGLISH SPEAKERS
The apostrophe in these cases normally has no effect on pronunciation.
Thus dogs, dog's, and dogs' all sound the same. The exception is where
the apostrophe separates two "s"s, and then it is pronounced as an
unstressed schwa. Thus class's, classes, and classes' are all
pronounced as /klas*z/.
(Notes by Peter Moylan)
Ethan Bradford
3. People's names ending in s: This is the same as above, but for some
reason (perhaps because the repeated s looks inelegant) there is a common
tendency to write abbreviated forms in this case.
Correct: Chris's dog, the Joneses' cars.
Incorrect but frequently seen: Chris' dog, the Jones' cars.
Strunk and White say that the bare approstrophe is correct for a fixed
set of historical figures (I remember Jesus' and Moses').
--
-- Ethan (eth...@u.washington.edu)
Eamonn McManus
>Strunk and White say that the bare approstrophe is correct for a fixed
>set of historical figures (I remember Jesus' and Moses').
The rule I learnt was that the S could (should) be omitted if the last
syllable ends in "ses" or something similar, to avoid having three
similar sounds in a row. This applies to Jesus and Moses, and also to
Isis and perhaps Sid Vicious.
,
Eamonn
Peter Moylan
while before I reply, because of a huge backlog of mail.) Indeed, I
oversimplified the rule for nouns whose singular ends in "s", and I've
now made substantial modifications to that section of the article for
the FAQ file.
Nobody who wrote to me had anything to say about the history of why
we use -s' for the possessive plural. Since what I wrote was pure
conjecture, I'd dearly like to see a confirmation or rebuttal. Is
there no expert out there who knows the true story?
Peter.
--
Peter Moylan ee...@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
G Toal
:Nobody who wrote to me had anything to say about the history of why
:we use -s' for the possessive plural. Since what I wrote was pure
:conjecture, I'd dearly like to see a confirmation or rebuttal. Is
:there no expert out there who knows the true story?
I always assumed that (say) "The cars' horns" was from an omitted
possessive -es, ie "The carses horns". Seeing it written down I'm
having second thoughts, but that was my assumption anyway...
Graham