[8], The interrogative and relative pronoun who has the possessive whose. The possessive can express intangible things as well. (= exclamation of exasperation). For example: Indigenous peoples have close connections to their ancestral lands and traditions. Sometimes genitive constructions are used to express a noun in apposition to the main one, as in the Isle of Man, the problem of drug abuse. In the Early Modern English of 1580 to 1620 it was sometimes spelled as "his" as a folk etymology, e.g. Possessive relationships can also be expressed periphrastically, by preceding the noun or noun phrase with the preposition of, although possessives are usually more idiomatic where a true relationship of possession is involved. This sounds very confusing, but these examples may make it easier to understand: The cars belong to the women. For most singular nouns the ending 's is added; e.g., the cat's whiskers. This means when it becomes possessive, it gets the same treatment as its singular form. Nibbles has a funny habit: when you open the door of his cage, he starts whistling a children’s song. Now that you understand how the plural and possessive forms work, you can apply this logic to the difference between people’s and peoples’. the sensitivity of the genitive formation to the internal morphological structure of the noun. The possessive can also express where someone works, studies or spends time. The cases where the apostrophe is not an abbreviation for, CMOS, 7.25: "If plural compounds pose problems, opt for. The genitive can be combined with an of construction to produce what is often called a double genitive, as in the following examples: Some object to the name double genitive because the "of" clause is not a genitive. This may be occasionally be done with a possessive (as in Dublin’s fair city, for the fair city of Dublin), but this is a rare usage. It was also frequently used in place of a final e (which was still pronounced at the time) when it was elided before a vowel, as in un' heure. Understanding the difference between people’s and peoples’ comes down to the context. →  The person’s hat. In this case, the inflection of only the last item may sometimes be, at least marginally, acceptable ("you and your spouse's bank account"). [63] APA style requires that one write: ps, ns, etc.[64]. To form the possessive, add apostrophe + s to the noun. Jesus' ) is also correct. (The form the king's horse of England was the correct form in old times,[when?] Smart quote features also often fail to recognise situations when a prime rather than an apostrophe is needed; for example, incorrectly rendering the latitude 49° 53′ 08″ as 49° 53’ 08". A small activist group called the Apostrophe Protection Society[54] has campaigned for large retailers such as Harrods, Currys, and Selfridges to reinstate their missing punctuation. - English Grammar Today - a reference to written and spoken English grammar and usage - Cambridge Dictionary In these languages a character is a different object than a one-letter string. When we want to show that something belongs to somebody or something, we usually add an apostrophe + s ('s) to a singular noun and an apostrophe (') to a plural noun, for example: Notice that the number of balls does not matter. For example, the phrase the king of Spain can form the possessive the king of Spain's, and – in informal style – the phrase the man we saw yesterday can form the man we saw yesterday's. George Bernard Shaw, a proponent of English spelling reform on phonetic principles, argued that the apostrophe was mostly redundant. If the noun is plural, or already ends in s, just add an apostrophe after the s. Simply changing the name of the genitive does not change or eliminate any of its multiple functions. →  The boys’ bat. To make typographic apostrophes easier to enter, word processing and publishing software often convert typewriter apostrophes to typographic apostrophes during text entry (at the same time converting opening and closing single and double quotes to their standard left-handed or right-handed forms). Answer: The traditions belong to the peoples. When we want to show that something belongs to somebody or something, we usually add an apostrophe + s ('s) to a singular noun and an apostrophe (') to a plural noun, for example: the boy's ball (one boy) the boys' ball (two or more boys) Notice that the number of balls does not matter. [79] A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly. the Smiths's house (or the Smiths' house), America has some gold reserves. For example: The houses belong to those people.

[note 8] As the case of womens shows, it is not possible to analyze these forms simply as non-possessive plurals, since women is the only correct plural form of woman. This is like an ordinary possessive use. As we’ve already seen, when the word person is in the possessive form, we add an apostrophe “s” (‘s) to the end of the word as follows: The dog belongs to this person. The possessive case expresses ownership. (. Then test your knowledge in the exercises. The same applies to of phrases. The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as 's (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely as /ɪz/ when following a sibilant sound (/s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/), as /s/ when following any other voiceless consonant (/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ or /θ/), and as /z/ otherwise. 's railway station"; "Awaye!

He wrote "in this continent [that] our people's (sic) share" [84], The term is believed to have been coined in the middle of the 20th century by a teacher of languages working in Liverpool, at a time when such mistakes were common in the handwritten signs and advertisements of greengrocers (e. g., Apple's 1/- a pound, Orange's 1/6d a pound). Compose'> or To express that something belongs to a person, animal or country, we use the possessive ’s. We use the possessive form with of mostly for inanimate objects. "Alex' brother" instead of "Alex's brother"), but the possessives of nouns (e.g. →  This person’s dog. In Microsoft Word it is possible to turn smart quotes off (in some versions, by navigating through Tools, AutoCorrect, AutoFormat as you type, and then unchecking the appropriate option). ", 4.

"for goodness' sake"). We specifically use these two to show a contrast or difference between... Hi! Until the 18th century, the apostrophe was extensively used to indicate plural forms. If it’s a regular plural form that just ends with s, we simply add an apostrophe. This was regarded as representing the Old English genitive singular inflection -es. For guidelines on apostrophe usage in Wikipedia, see, "Apos" redirects here. There is a simple rule that governs how to show the possessive, and in most cases, it is through the possessive apostrophe (’). See Apostrophe: Historical development. When pronouncing a possessive name, we add the sound /z/ to the end of the name. You can see that example 1 refers to a group of people, while example 2 refers to many peoples. "his and her children"). With plural forms, the apostrophe follows the s, as with nouns: the others' husbands (but compare They all looked at each other's husbands, in which both each and other are singular). Adrian Room, in his English Journal article "Axing the Apostrophe", argued that apostrophes are unnecessary, and context will resolve any ambiguity. Unlike with other noun phrases which only have a single possessive form, personal pronouns in English have two possessive forms: possessive determiners (used to form noun phrases such as "her success") and possessive pronouns (used in place of nouns as in "I prefer hers", and also in predicative expressions as in "the success was hers"). Possessive determiners are not used in combination with articles or other definite determiners. This page was last edited on 2 August 2020, at 20:59. You’ll also notice that the verb bring changes to brings, and is changes to are when we use the plural forms. [16][17] The inflection of both is normally preferred (e.g. Names that are not strictly native to English sometimes have an apostrophe substituted to represent other characters (see also As a mark of elision, below). A possessive adjective can be intensified with the word own, which can itself be either an adjective or a pronoun: my own (bed), John's own (bed). [5] The Elements of Style and the Canadian Press Stylebook prefer the form of s's with the exception of Biblical and classical proper names (Jesus' teachings, Augustus' guards) and common phrases that do not take the extra syllabic s (e.g. An apostrophe is used by some writers to form a plural for abbreviations, initials including acronyms, and symbols, especially where adding just s rather than 's may leave meaning ambiguous or presentation inelegant. ' is officially supported in HTML since HTML 5. Sometimes the apostrophe is omitted in the names of clubs, societies, and other organizations, even though the standard principles seem to require it: Country Women's Association, but International Aviation Womens Association;[52] Magistrates' Court of Victoria,[53] but Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union.
When possessives are used with a verbal noun or other noun expressing an action, the possessive may represent either the doer of the action (the subject of the corresponding verb) or the undergoer of the action (the object of the verb). English is a very flexible language and words can have multiple functions. [42] The United States Board on Geographic Names, which has responsibility for formal naming of municipalities and geographic features, has deprecated the use of possessive apostrophes since 1890 so as not to show ownership of the place. Choosing between two words that look almost identical but have subtly different meanings can sometimes feel like an impossible task. As a result, it is normally viewed by linguists as a clitic, i.e. Names based on a first name are more likely to take an apostrophe, but this is not always the case. Page 26", "Genesis Chapter 9, 1611 King James Bible", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_possessive&oldid=970861574, Articles lacking reliable references from September 2019, All articles with vague or ambiguous time, Vague or ambiguous time from January 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
The structure can be used for a whole phrase: We very often use possessive 's with names: When a name ends in s, we usually treat it like any other singular noun, and add 's: But it is possible (especially with older, classical names) to just add the apostrophe ': Some nouns have irregular plural forms without s (man → men). →  The heroes’ capes. We also use apostrophes to show abbreviation or contraction, such as in the word don’t, a contraction of do not.

gen. pl. Most disagreements about the use of possessive forms of nouns and of the apostrophe are due to the erroneous opinion that a term should not use an apostrophe if it does not express possession. an affix that cannot be a word by itself but is grammatically independent of the word it is attached to.[21]. The plural use was greatly reduced, but a need was felt to mark possessive plural. (, We rehearsed because Friday's opening night. For two nouns (or noun phrases) joined by and, there are several ways of expressing possession, including: Some grammars make no distinction in meaning between the two forms. However, the rules are different when it comes to the very irregular plurals that are completely different from their singular forms. the personal pronouns, where "no other analysis is possible", the varying form of the genitive suffix (/ɪz/, /z/, /s/) depending on "the phonological properties of the base to which it attaches".


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