Mr. Bader,
Noting your address @firespout.com, I feel that perhaps your remarks
should be taken with a cup of water as well.
Honestly & earnestly, I do think it's worth noting that flames are as
relative as both blessings & curses, depending on where they originate and
where they end up.
I guess I take apostrophes (apart from the one in my name which the
American Social Security Dep't took away a few years back) entirely for
granted.
In sum, while I have nothing of merit to contribute to the actual
discussion, I found the flame aspect noteworthy. There aren't many such
indulgences on the corpora list.
Cheers,
M. O`Connell
On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Christopher Bader wrote:
> I was pained to see Alex Fang's flame of Simon Smith's thoughtful post.
>
> Alex should read up on language vs. orthography, prescription vs.
> description,
> and other concepts that are covered in elementary linguistics courses,
> before
> issuing more flames.
>
> Christopher Bader
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Chengyu Fang
> Sent: Tue 12/18/2001 9:10 AM
> To: Simon G. J. Smith; corpora@hd.uib.no
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: Corpora: Apostrophes
>
>
>
> 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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