Re: prescriptive possessives, was: Number of writing systems

--- Anton Sherwood <bronto@...> wrote:

> How long have we had a consistent distinction
> between -s, -'s and -s' ?

That's an interesting question (and it's on-topic).
I do know that "philosophers stone" has been around
longer than the possessive apostrophe though, no
matter
the distinction.

Andrew Dunbar.

> Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> > While I am a big fan of the OED, I don't believe
> it
> > has no prescriptive content at all. For instance
> look
> > at its entry for "philosophers' stone". All
> quotations
> > which have an apostrophe put it before the 's'.
> Other
> > Oxford dictionaries also put it before the 's'.
> The
> > full OED makes an analysis, a judgement, and then
> > prescribes only the apostrophe-after-s spelling,
> > omitting the other. [...]
>
> --
> Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
> "How'd ya like to climb this high *without* no
> mountain?" --Porky Pine
>

http://en.wiktionary.org -- http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl



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