Corpora: Apostrophes

[Mike O'Connell]

I wonder if anyone's considered what happens in Pidgins & Creoles, both
phonologically and where applicable, orthographically? Perhaps the fact
that this is peculiar to English precludes anything of interest, but then
again English is a contributor to many Pidgins and Creoles.

Respectfully,
   Michael O'Connell

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Peter K Tan wrote:

> At 19.30 18.12.01 EST, Avryl2 at aol.com wrote:
> >Yeah, I agree with Alex.  I cannot imagine that apostrophe use to indicate
> possession would ever slip out of use.  In American English, by the way, 's
> or a simple ' are both correct for indicating possession with nouns that
> end in s. So Williams' and Williams's are both correct, according to which
> form makes more sense to you, I guess.
> >
> Yes, therefore _Bridget Jones's Diary_. I haven't done a corpus search, but
> from experience in Singapore and Malaysia, the apostrophe is almost never
> left out in simple singular possessives here (so a Singaporean wouldn't
> write _St Georges Church_ or _St Andrews Cathedral_ or _Peoples Park_),
> although plural possessives or possesives of singular nouns ending in <s>
> sometimes pose problems (you might see _Raffles Girl's School_  instead of
> _Raffles Girls' School_, or even _St Jame's Kindergarten_ instead of _St
> James' [or James's] Kindergarten_). Among less fluent speakers though, the
> tendency is not to leave out the apostrophe, but to leave out the
> possessive altogether (there is a low-brow bookshop called Popular Bookshop
> in Singapore which has a section for _Children Books_).
>
> Someone asked if there was an overgeneralisation of the possessive by
> analogy to Chinese _de_.  I've seen this although it might be a case of
> hypercorrection. These are generally found when writers attempt a more
> formal register, as in student essays - eg _England's king_ is possible in
> standard English, but not common.
>
> Cheers,
> Peter Tan
>
>