Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[David Wright]

On Fri 17 Nov 2017 at 17:43:09 (+0000), Wol's lists wrote:
> On 17/11/17 16:10, David Wright wrote:
> >On Fri 17 Nov 2017 at 07:45:58 (-0500), Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> >>Hi all,
> >>
> >
> >>[Am 17.11.2017 um 08:55 schrieb Henning Hraban Ramm:]
> >
> >>>An apostrophe in German is a sign for something left out like "so’n Ding" 
> >>>(short for "so ein Ding"), similar to English use in "don’t" (do not).
> >>
> >>It's the same in English, naturally.
> >
> >It's just one of its uses, true. But the following sentence said:
> >
> >«"While it would make some sense to use it in "mein’s" ("meines"), while 
> >still being unnecessary, it makes no sense at all to use it in a genitive 
> >like "Lisa’s" except in cases like "Jens’s" (oldfashioned but complete would 
> >be "Jensens").»¹
> >
> >implying that something *has to be* omitted for an apostrophe to make
> >sense, but that is not true in English.
> 
> Examples, please. A suitably "grammatically correct" one, please :-)

You won't be happy with the apostrophe's shape if you don't use ’ in
Lilypond. I want to dot the i's and cross the t's before I give you
a copy. I had to buy manuscript paper back in the 1960's but LilyPond
has put paid to that. Socrates' death inspired this piece. Wichita's
last syllable rhymes with ajar if you don't pronounce your r's. The
FBI's behaviour was faultless. I tried to use somebody else's cheque
book but it was so old that it still had Barclay's Bank printed on it.
Are we providing separate facilities for V.I.P.'s to use? Westward Ho!'s
full title has 36 words. The man in the moon's smile is more of a smirk.
She comes and parks in whoever's not here's space that day.
(Apologies that they're all in English, not German.)

> >>Even the possessive "Kieren's" is derived from old English "Kierenes" 
> >>(though even most native speakers don't know that).
> >
> >Of course, they don't need to know that because English accepts
> >'s tacked onto almost anything to indicate a possessive relationship.²
> >
> Because the CORRECT possessive ending, as mentioned above, is "es".

In English? So when I write "I'm at deathes door", which of deathes
three genders am I using?

> Except it's been corrupted to " 's ".

Who's to blame for this corruption? Have they been charged?

> In other words, if you tack " 's "
> onto the end of a word to indicate the possessive, something
> HAS been omitted, namely the "e". Which is why it's wrong to use an
> apostrophe with the possessive "its", because there was never an "e"
> there in the first place.

It's a pity you weren't around at the time "it's" and "its" were
invented, to rebuke people who used the former. Or perhaps we could
just admit that allowing "its" into English was one huge mistake,
and go back to using "his". Now nobody will have to remember which
spelling is which. Of course, any child can justify their writing
"it's". There's an "it", it possesses something, so stick an  's
on the end. Perhaps Shakespeare had a better reason for writing "it's".

> >Native speakers don't learn the language by studying its derivations,
> >but by being immersed in it. At school, they are taught "rules" that
> >make it easier to cope with the areas where immersion is less than
> >total (eg writing, formal constructions).
> 
> And said rules nearly always have their roots in genuine stuff. All
> too often I agree the rules are mis-applied, especially when they
> state that a modern young construct is "more correct" than the older
> construct that preceded it, "Standard English" is a very young
> language, but I do strongly support the use of "Standard English"
> and its associated rules - one of which is that an apostrophe
> indicates omitted letters, usually in the possessive, and should not
> be used where letters have not been left out.
> 
> (Dialect is not Standard English, if you want to talk dialect that's
> fine, just accept that it is not standard.)

I see. So Standard English is what you accept, and no more?
Where do we find this Standard English? Perhaps we need an
English Language Academy to guard this young language lest it
be corrupted by its young speakers. We can't trust them.

> >Only specialists have to worry about derivations. They can't be
> >ignored when trying to tease out what the underlying rules of a
> >language really are; similarly, the mistakes made by children are
> >an important aspect of searching for those rules.
> >
> Anybody who cares about communicating should care about language.

But most native speakers don't care about language; they just use it
to communicate. Quite well, it appears. We're the unusual ones.

> And if you care about language you need to care about derivation and
> grammar and all that stuff.

So your care of the language concerns itself with examining words
that contain an apostrophe and checking back to make sure that at
least one letter has been omitted. What do you do when you find
an example that doesn't conform? Strike out the apostrophe?
Censure the writer? Or try to invent some word derivation that
includes a letter that's now gone missing?

> If you don't, you get into the Humpty
> Dumpty world of "words mean what  I say they mean" and you can't
> understand what someone else is saying - I had a perfect example of
> that this morning when somebody said "close a door" when they meant
> "lock a door". It's horribly frustrating when you're talking at
> cross purposes because you don't know what the other person means.

Not knowing the people or the circumstances, I can't judge. But a
word of warning: don't ever travel. You might find yourself being
misunderstood in more serious circumstances, if you don't allow
for the same words to mean different things, or even the opposite.

> To bring it into computerese, it's like people saying "computer
> memory" when they mean the hard disk...

Sometimes these things depend on context. If someone says they have
1TB of memory, you say "Hold on, _"

But now we've shifted to vocabulary rather than grammar.

Cheers,
David.