From: eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan)
Subject: Re: New light on the apostrophe
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 01:55:58 GMT

In article <C0Fn6z.FnI@demon.co.uk>, gtoal@pizzabox.demon.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:
> 
> Would whoever wrote that excellent piece on case declension in old English
> (a couple of years ago) care to repost it?

I doubt that this is the piece to which you're referring, but it's
about time I reposted an article I wrote for the mythical FAQ file.
It's appended below.

> (Say, is a.u.e gophered or waised anywhere?  If you want to look up one
> of the previous times we ran this discussion, look for the keywords
> 'Piet zijn hond'.  I vaguely remember discussing the differences between
> English and Dutch in this respect.  Kay, you were in on this one weren't
> you?)

My knowledge of Dutch is rather sketchy, but I seem to remember that
(a) Dutch used to have a genitive case with an -s ending, it just
    isn't used much any more;
(b) The "Piet zijn hond" form is for when a special emphasis is needed
    (it's not just anyone's dog, it's Piet's dog).  Its use as a general
    possessive form is considered by at least some people as rather
    vulgar and not very good Dutch.

-- 
Peter Moylan                      eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
Original article follows.

=========================================================================
WHERE TO PUT APOSTROPHES IN POSSESSIVE FORMS
--------------------------------------------
Most of this is part of a basic knowledge of English; but so many
people get it wrong that the topic deserves the status of a FAQ.


PRONOUNS

The ONLY personal possessive pronoun with an apostrophe is "one's".

   .----------------------------------------------------------------------.
   | The words "his", "its", "whose", "their" do NOT contain apostrophes. |
   |        Nor do words like "hers", "ours", "yours", "theirs".          |
   |                   (Would you say "mi'ne"?)                           |
   '----------------------------------------------------------------------'

The forms "it's", "they're", and "who's" are contractions for "it is",
"they are", and "who is" respectively.  (Or sometimes "it has", etc.)
They have nothing to do with possessive pronouns.

The apostrophe does occur in the possessive case of indefinite
pronouns (anybody's, someone's, and so on).


NOUNS

1. The standard rule:  Use 's for the singular possessive, and a bare
   apostrophe after the plural ending for the plural possessive.  For
   example:

                            Singular         Plural
      Nominative              dog             dogs
      Possessive              dog's           dogs'

2. Nouns ending with an s or z sound (this includes words ending in
   "x", "ce", and similar examples):  The plural ending is -es rather
   than -s, but otherwise the rule is the same as above:

                            Singular         Plural
      Nominative             class          classes
      Possessive             class's        classes'

   There are however examples where the singular possessive ending is
   a bare apostrophe:

                            Singular         Plural
      Nominative            patience        patiences
      Possessive            patience'       patiences'

   (In most such examples the plural is rarely used.)  For nouns in
   this category many people would consider the 's ending and the
   bare apostrophe to be acceptable alternatives.  The rules listed
   below may be taken as "most common practice", but they are
   not absolute.

   A. The 's ending is preferred for one-syllable words (grass's) or where
      the final syllable has a primary or secondary stress (collapse's);

   B. The bare apostrophe is preferred:
      - for words ending in -nce (stance');
      - for many classical names (Aristophanes', Jesus', Moses');
      - where the juxtaposition of two or more "s" sounds would cause
        an awkwardness in pronunciation (thesis').

   C. Usage is divided in the situation where the final "s" or "z"
      sound falls in an unstressed syllable (octopus'/octopus's,
      phoenix's/phoenix', and so on).

   The question of which ending is correct arises less often than one
   might imagine.  Instead of saying "the crisis' start" or "the
   crisis's start", most native speakers of English would say "the
   start of the crisis", thus avoiding the problem.

3. Plurals not ending in s:  Use 's for the possessive plural
   (men's, people's, sheep's).


HISTORY

For those who want to know where the apostrophe came from, here is how
it probably happened.  Some of this is well documented, some is
guesswork on my part.

Back in the days when English had many more inflections than it now
has, the most common ending for the genitive singular was -es.
(There were several noun declensions, so that not all nouns fitted this
pattern; but this could be considered to be the "most regular" case.)
For example: mann (=man), mannes (=of the man).  Over time there
developed a tendency to stop pronouncing the unstressed "e", so that
"mannes" became "mann's".  The apostrophe stands for the omitted letter.

(Modern German still has -es as the genitive ending for many nouns.
The Germans did not stop pronouncing their unstressed "e"s,
so the case ending is still written as -es.)

Pronouns were also inflected, but not in the same way.  (They were
all fairly irregular, as they still are today.)  The genitive form
of "hit" (=it) was "his" (=its).  As "his" evolved into "its", there
was no "e" to drop, therefore no logical reason to insert an apostrophe.

The "its" and "it's" forms did coexist in the 17th and early 18th
century, but today the "its" form is considered to be the only
correct spelling.

Plural nouns are harder to explain.  The most common genitive plural
inflection was -a, which is quite unrelated to our modern -s'.
My best guess is that most of the old plural endings were replaced
by -s under the influence of French; and that subsequently the rules
for forming singular possessives were extended to the plurals.  If
this is what happened, then a hypothetical -s's plural possessive
ending would immediately collapse to -s', in the same way as for many
singular nouns ending in "s".  There was in any case a long period
where spelling was a lot less standardized than it is today, so one
should not think in terms of any sort of "standard rule" existing
during the transitional period.


NOTE FOR NON-ENGLISH SPEAKERS

The apostrophe in these cases normally has no effect on pronunciation.
Thus dogs, dog's, and dogs' all sound the same.  The exception is where
the apostrophe separates two "s"s, and then it is pronounced as an
unstressed schwa.  Thus class's, classes, and classes' are all
pronounced as /klas@z/.

For nouns where there is some difference of opinion over whether the
possessive ending should be -'s or a bare apostrophe - that is, those
nouns where a final unstressed syllable ends with an "s" or "z" sound
- some native speakers use a lengthened final consonant intermediate
between /z/ and /z@z/.  This is, however, a fine and almost inaudible
distinction.


OTHER COMMENTS

One occasionally hears that "John's dog" is an abbreviation for
"John his dog".  It is more likely that the derivation went in the
opposite direction, i.e.
   Johnes hund => John's hound => Johnny's dog => John 'is dog
with the "John his dog" form coming into use only briefly before
disappearing from modern English.

Using an apostrophe in a plural which is not a possessive form is
almost always wrong.  The only situation in which this is acceptable is
where visual confusion would otherwise result, as for example in
the sentence "Mind your p's and q's".  Forms like "the 1980s" or
"two CPUs" normally have no apostrophe.

It is correct to use an apostrophe to indicate missing letters, in
contractions like "aren't", "isn't", "it's" (= it is or it has).
Be careful in these cases to put the apostrophe in the correct place.
The apostrophe replaces the missing letter(s); it does not
replace the space between words.


                                (Notes by Peter Moylan, with feedback
                                 from lots of other people)