Re: Re[4]: [tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian M. Scott

To: Patrick Ryan

Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 10:45 PM

Subject: Re[4]: [tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

At 6:22:09 PM on Saturday, February 12, 2005, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

<snip>

> The apostrophe simply indicates a former letter/sound
> which is not pronounced. <it's> for <it is>, etc.

Clearly not in the plural possessive, e.g., <wolves'>.

PCR:

 

What is clear to you is certainly not clear to me.

 

<ox>; plural possessive: <oxen's>

 

<wolves'> is pronounced /wulv-z:/ with the /z/ sustained longer than than in <wolves>, or made into a separate syllable; <wolves> is /wulvz/ - at least in my Midwestern English dialect.

 

Perhaps in some dialects, <wolves> is pronounced identically to <wolves'> but not in mine.

 

So, again, the apostrophe indicates something not pronounced: the <6z> of a missing regularly formed */wulvz6z/.

 

Of course, in <it's> for <of it>, it simply indicates a brain which is not being used.

 

 

> The English genitive ending was formerly <-es> after
> consonants.

The one that was generalized, you mean.

 

PCR:

Yes, of course. By way of information, what was another English genitive ending that was not generalized?

> When it began to be abbreviated to <-s> in pronunciation
> after most consonants, the former <-e-> was remembered as
> <'>. Even where the former <-es> is still pronounced (ex.
> <goose's> /gus6z/), analogy insists on the abbreviated
> spelling.

In fact forms without the <e> were common for quite a while
before the apostrophe became the normal usage.  It appears
to me that the main driving force in the adoption of the
possessive apostrophe was a desire unambiguously to
distinguish possessives from plurals.

 

PCR:

Probably right.

> <'s> is simply a genitive ending.

In <the king of England's daughter>?

PCR:

Yes, of course. The underlying genitive is <king's>.

 

 

Brian

Patrick


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