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Re: English plurals and possessives

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 27, 2001, 23:03
"Scott W. Hlad" wrote:
> Thank you Daniel, for writing that out. The above should be engraved in > concrete on the lintel of every door of every school in the English speaking > world. This has been totally lost to the person on the street. I also > despise seeing 's used to indicate a plural. How many times have you seen > the following sign on a door in a store: > > Employee's only
It's a lost battle. I even find myself doing it sometimes, tho I usually catch myself and fix it. It's a shame, because it eliminates the one genuinely useful use of the apostrophe. But, 's = plural does still irritate me. Perhaps the whole apostrophe-possession convention will be dropped, so that, like pronunciation, we'll write "boys", "boy's" and "boys'" the same. On the other hand, in a future English I once worked on, where the morphological genitive was lost, apostrophe was still used for possession. For example "The boy' hat" = ModEng "The boy's hat", plural possession being written the same as today, "The boys' hat". -- Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42