apostrophe or no?

donnach · Post by **donnach** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:09 pm

Students also worked together informally, which seemed beneficial because few students picked the same exact terms, so that by helping each other they demonstrated their understanding of not only their own term, but that of their peers as well.

Would there be a case for using an apostrophe in peer's (or peers', depending on if the author meant single or plural peer/s)?

Thanks,

Donna

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:13 pm

I'd say no: ...but those chosen by/those of their peers as well. (...those of their peers' choosing? LOL) (NB: I've changed 'that' because it does not match 'peers'. I'd need to check, but I'm pretty sure that 'peers' in this sense is always plural e.g. 'one of his peers').

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:14 pm

Double genitives are only allowable with possessive pronouns
A friend of mine/his

Unless the peer or peers possesses or possess vassals who own the terms you'll have a double genitive.

And 'their peer's' would only be appropriate if you were referring to the local lord of the manor.

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:36 pm

Proper nouns take an apostrophe in these phrases.

My term and that of Bob's

But you wouldn't use one for most common nouns

My term and that of my classmate

I have a vague memory of reading about instatnces where a common noun could take an apostrophe, but I can't think of any examples.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:34 am

Proper nouns take an apostrophe in these phrases.
My term and that of Bob's

That doesn't sound right to me. I suspect context sensitivity.
A friend of Bob's
A building of Gaudí's

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language deals with this in considerable detail, but my copy is in Sri Lanka. Here anyway is a link to two interesting discussions on Language Log.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 05368.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 03800.html

I particularly like this example:
"Many a modern philosopher is a student of Kant, but any student of Kant's has been dead for more than a century."

The difference here of course is between an objective genitive and a possessive genitive.

The genitive is of course the most complex area of English grammar. It is one of the few places in English where you see that in fact English does have gender, as opposed to sex (the two genders in English are higher animals and the rest if you are curious).
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ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:51 am

An interesting property of genitive apostrophe suffixes is their ability to hop. Note the ambiguity in the following clause.

"The son of the pharoh's daughter is the daughter of the pharoh's son."

Affix hopping enables the 's suffix to change an entire noun phrase into an adjective. That is, the noun phrase "the daughter of the pharoh" plus the suffix "'s" forms an adjective phrase.

That's not exactly what's happening in "a friend of Bob's"?, but is the object of the preposition "of" a noun or an adjective? Adjectives can be objects of prepositions.
"The situation's gone from bad to worse."

However, genitive suffixes can also combine with noun and prepositional phrases.