Corpora: apostrophes, FAQ?

[Christopher Bader]

I apologize to anyone who was offended by my description
of Alex Fang's post as a "flame".  My own tone perhaps left
a bit to be desired from the standpoint of collegiality.

I should perhaps have politely directed Alex to an FAQ
on language vs. orthography, prescription vs. description,
and other questions relevant to the corpus linguistics.
Does such an FAQ exist?  If not, should we create one?

CB

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike O'Connell [mailto:Michael.Oconnell at Colorado.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 11:23 PM
To: Peter K Tan
Cc: corpora at hd.uib.no
Subject: Re: Corpora: Apostrophes


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
>
>