Re: Corpora: Apostrophes

From: Mike O'Connell (Michael.Oconnell@Colorado.EDU)
Date: Wed Dec 19 2001 - 05:22:51 MET

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    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@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
    >
    >



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