With the 'correct' Danish genitive form being s without the
apostrophe, it is amusing to note that the 'correct' English form is
creeping in - as in the case of a shop in, Rønne on the island of
Bornholm, named Simon's!
On 4 Jul 2006, at 03:34, Peter Tan wrote:
> We know that the possessive apostrophe is a relatively recent
> development and was not used by Shakespeare, for example. If the
> possessive apostrophe started out in the mistaken etymologising
> belief that there was some form of elision, perhaps there might be
> a case for getting rid of it (the way it is happening in a lot of
> informal written text - eg St Johns Wood - and maybe even formal
> text - eg Harrods, Woolworths), and we might be able to stop
> telling people not to use the apostrophe in the possessive pronoun
> its!
--Nicholas J A Sanders _____________________ semiotek
T: +44 [0]7092 153 409 nick@semiotek.org _____________________
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 04 2006 - 20:24:32 MET DST