Posessive of a Posessive

I’m going to contradict myself. I’ve reread the OP and had a few conversations with myself. For spoken English only, I think I actually agree. “The queen’s’s is scuffed, the king’s’s is not” [queenzuz / kingzuz] doesn’t sound as wrong as it looks when written. I think, though, that the second [’s] is either just a contraction of [one’s / thing’s / pawn’s / base’s] or a reduplication, as “the queen’s is scuffed, the king’s is not” doesn’t have any contrast in meaning with the -zuz sentence, and it certainly doesn’t add anything. And like the OP, I think if I were to actually speak this on my own, I would change the possessives to adjectives: “The queen pawn base is scuffed, the king’s isn’t.”

Well, maybe there’s no contrast in meaning in that particular case for you, since you consider that base to belong to the queen as well, or some such. But how about contracting “queen’s pawn’s location” to “queen’s’s location” (pronounced like queenzuz)? Presumably, this is in stark semantic contrast to “queen’s location”, which indicates a whole different square on the board.

Incidentally, to Frylock, I guess I said it before, but the second reduction of the OP is something of a red herring, isn’t it?; I mean, we can ask about how to write down “queenzuz location” without worrying about further reducing that to “queenzuz” (or worrying about the acceptability of the further reduction; I think I’d let such a construction pass me by without notice in normal speech (though I wouldn’t iterate the process any further; i.e., “queenzuzuz” is right out), but that whole discussion might be distracting people from the core question of the OP).

I have to hop on a plane and I’ll be gone for three days but:

Yes, I think this is right.

:slight_smile:

-FrL-

I’d’ve disagreed with this if I’d seen it earlier. :slight_smile:

Dictionary.com does list 'tain’t. But I can’t remember seeing it in any other form than tain’t.

And even if so it’s a dialectical contraction, just as I said earlier.