Another common exception to the singular possessive rule is in expressions like
for goodness’ sake, concsience’ sake, and appearance’ sake.
I don’t get why the -'s would be deleted from writing, but still retained in pronunciation. I thought it was the other way around: Some people chose to stop pronouncing it, which was reflected in the spelling.
I’d forgotten St Thomas’ Hospital in London - it’s always pronounced “Thomas-iz” (St James’s Park is always “James-iz” as well).
It’s a good question, but I, like Lama Pacos have never heard anyone leave off the possessive sibalant. In the law office I worked at, most of the lawyers prefered to use the apostrophe-s-less spelling for the possessive of names like “James” and “Jones.” They always pronounced the extra s, though. And, like mentioned above, certain stylebooks, like The Associated Press Stylebook, require this sort of spelling. Why it’s deleted in writing and retained in pronunciation, who knows? For AP, the argument would probably be issues of space. One less letter. Same with their asinine “waitress’ seat” contruction. (What’s wrong with “waitress’s seat” other than there being four esses in a row?)
Hmm. From my experience with Chinese as my first language, possession is indicated with the article “de” (or “di” in certain situations) much like the Japanese use of “no”, in the form of subject “de” object. As a direct inverse to the above example, my mother still can’t get used to the English syntax of possession, so when she’s speaking English, she’ll drop the “s” and wedge in a de like, “I think MetroGnome de cell phone is broken because HE NEVER CALL* ME.” I can see how the de can be discounted as a transitive “um” or “duh” when heard by the casual ear.
For the specific example of "“the thought of Chairman Mao” being read/heard as “Chairman Mao thought”, it could just be a product of nuances being lost in translation. Rather than speaking of the thoughts as an object of the subject (Chairman Mao), perhaps “Chairman Mao thought” is being used as the subject as a whole, analogous to saying “Maoist Thought”.
I always thought English was more or less unique in having this grammatical shortcut to indicate possession, and everyone else had to formally pair the subject and object with their version of “of”.
- The only conjugation my mother is interested in is the kind that will get her some grandkids. Actually she’ll drop the “S” at the end of just about anything since she’s so used to Mandarin where it’s rare to end anything with a hard consonant.
Except that the Chinese construction is almost exactly the same, as you’ve summarized above! Though obviously de is used more broadly than 's is in English, you can take an English possessive like “Chairman Mao’s hat” and translate it exactly word for word to “Mao Zhuxi de maozi”. De works exactly like 's in those two sentences.
Plenty of languages, incidentally, don’t need “of” to mark possession. The English clitic 's is a descendent of the Old English system of cases. Many languages with case systems use one of them to indicate possession. So in Latin, liber pueri ("[the] boy’s book") could be glossed as “book boy’s”; the fact that the boy is the possessor is indicated by the fact that puer is in the genitive case and has the -i ending. In some languages, as indicated by Johanna above (though Chinese is not among them, dear) you simply juxtapose two items to indicate possession; context probably has to play a slightly greater roll in ironing out these sorts of relations in languages that allow that kind of thing.
Anyway, don’t generalize from very small examples to assume something is universal. The fact that some languages use some translation of “of” to indicate possession doesn’t remotely indicate that it’s a universal thing.
English is funny. Is it easier to learn than Chinese? Or, does English just have
more rules?
And, isn’t Spanish backwards of Chinese? Vasco DE Gamo, libro de Kevlaur?
So, no comments on insure vs. ensure?
Oh, and thanks for the ‘clarification’! I wonder if it’s (‘s vice s’) a colloquial thing in the States?
Here are some prior threads relating to the OP, as well as a post of my own based on some web research. Bottom line is, exactly as DrDeth suggests, there lots of rules, all different.
Wow…that took me back. Having grown up in the Catholic Church, I always heard “In Jesus’ name we pray” as opposed to “Jesus-iz name.” The latter sounds very awkward to me.
But if it is your sisters, and you call them both sis:
sis
sis’s dress
my sisses’ dresses
??
Yes.
You sound like you’re playing maracas.
Dictionary.com says they can mean the same thing (as can “assure”). Check out the usage note here for some more info.
Note that only the OP’s case is common (using “insure” to mean “ensure”), not the other way around, at least here in the states.