Corpora: Apostrophes

[Alex Chengyu Fang]

I'm sorry, Simon, but I think you've said a few
incorrect and confusing things:

> I suppose when I referred to the status of 1L and 2L
> English I was thinking more of the language itself
> than its orthographical representation, but it

Can you clarify on this please?

> certainly is interesting that native writers cannot
> agree on apostrophe/letter "s" usage. I went to a

There is indeed some agreement on the use of
apostrophes.

> called "Thomas' Train" (of tank engine fame). If I
> were guided by the pronunciation, I would write
> "Lord Williams' School" and "Thomas's train"; so
> presumably pronunciation has nothing to do with it,
> and the alternatives are in arbitrary free
> variation.

Pronunciation has a lot to do with it. They both
should have a "s's" pronunciation. The correct
treatment of "Williams's" is muffled because of the
clumsy "s's" cluster when followed by "school".

> seems that the correct use of the apostrophe, in
> British English at least, is not as cut and dried as
> one might suppose, so perhaps it is not surprising
> that people do sometimes make mistakes. We manage

So you do think they are mistakes?

> quite satisfactorily without the apostrophe in
> speech, since it serves no disambiguating function;
> I expect eventually it will simply slip out of use.

It does serve some disambiguating function:
"Williams's" is singular and "Williams'" plural.

> 's tend to use that construction; in some such cases
> I think a native speaker would prefer a noun
> compound. Annoyingly, though, I can't think of a
> convincing example.

"Learner dictionary" would be a good example, for both
English and Chinese.


Regards,

Alex


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