State of the realm

maxis · Post by **maxis** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 10:32 pm

ownership or omission gwenn, them's yer apostrophes

ambera · Post by **ambera** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:09 pm

That works for all apostrophes except its and it's. It's is omission, but its is ownership and yet doesn't have an apostrophe. Damn English and its myriad exceptions...!

Edit: possibly because the ownership is indirect? If you talk about "its tail" there is a subject in there which has the ownership of the tail; "the dog's tail" or "the unicorn's flowing pink tail"...?

Cromcruaich · Post by **Cromcruaich** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:45 pm

I'm crying irl.

Cryn · Post by **Cryn** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 3:06 pm

[quote="ambera"]That works for all apostrophes except its and it's. It's is omission, but its is ownership and yet doesn't have an apostrophe. Damn English and its myriad exceptions...!

Edit: possibly because the ownership is indirect? If you talk about "its tail" there is a subject in there which has the ownership of the tail]

The reason is that "its" is single lexical item. It isn't "it" + "s", it is a pronoun showing possession, filling the same syntactic role as "his" and "her". It's just coincidence it ends with "s", the "s" has not been added.

This is not a case where English is inconsistent. We might say apostrophe usage is one of the few cases where it IS consistent

Kallima · Post by **Kallima** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 5:07 pm

<reads, decides she really really needs a drink, and goes to the pub>

Belisar · Post by **Belisar** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 5:56 pm

Kallima wrote:<reads, decides she really really needs a drink, and goes to the pub>

Pub is closed, it has run out of beer as Taardad has been in there all afternoon drinking

Tasmin · Post by **Tasmin** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 12:13 am

So in summing up this thread.....'tate of the realm'...

some great people,
some great alliances,
some great guilds,
some quiet alliances,
some inactive guilds,

but all with a great command of the English language (at least after the latest lesson). Wonder what the next great topic of importance to hijack this thread will be? The other subject close to the heart of every Englishman, the weather?

Can we get this back on topic?

Cheers

Tas