I find this a particularly interesting topic since two grad students and I have a paper coming out in Word next year titled "English nominalizations in -s". It's a bit dense and tightly argued, so I'll just give a brief summary here. English has nouns ending in -s that clearly are not plural, e.g., linguistics, dependence, news, and spokesman. There are quite a lot of these, hundreds in -ics alone, and that set is still growing. The spelling of "dependence" obscures the fact that it ends in an /s/, and in linguistic analysis it's sound, not spelling, that counts. In fact, "dependence" and "dependents" are pronounced the same but have rather different meanings. "News" was still used as a plural in Shakespeare's time but no longer is. The -s in "spokesman" baffles even the OED etymologists and is quite old. There are also words in -ics and words like "news" that can be used as plurals, like graphics, politics, and sports.
We argue that these various instances of -s come from several different sources. The -s of -ics is a calque on the Greek neuter plural -a added to the nominal derivational suffix -ik, as in Aristotle's "ta phusika" "The Physics". The -s of "dependence" goes back to a 2nd c. Latin sound change in which /t/ became /ts/ before /i/ plus another vowel. What was in Latin a noun derived from a present participle was inherited by French as a nominalizing suffix added to adjectives. The -s on "news" was a plural up into the 17th c. The -s of "spokesman" is analogous to the -s of "sportsman" or "linesman" which was in some cases plural and in others genitive. In the late 16th and early 17th c. these various suffixes came together in the grammar as a single nominalizing suffix, which is the role it has today.
We don't address the modern attributive noun, but I would argue that the -s there is no longer a plural but rather is another instance of the nominalizer. The semantic shift from plural through collective to abstract is not unusual, and attributive nominals are frequently generic, giving them a type of abstract quality.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Nancy Tuten
Sent: Tue 10/2/2007 5:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Master's vs. Masters
Hi, Bill.
We have another article discussing the difference between the attributive
and the possessive (http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/082504.htm).
There we make the same points you have made and would, therefore, agree with
nearly every example you provided in your post.
However, don't see how the _Chicago_ statement about the attributive applies
to the apostrophe in "master's degree" (and I wouldn't capitalize it in the
generic--only in reference to a particular degree). I'm also a bit skeptical
about using a Google search as much more than evidence that lots of people
find this usage issue confusing--even well educated people. I know many
people who don't realize, for example, that only a small handful of style
books drop the "s" after a singular possessive noun that ends with an s (as
in "Bess's dress"). People tend to perpetuate whatever rules they were
taught (or internalized) concerning a usage issue without research, don't
you agree?--and that includes public relations folks who write Web pages for
colleges.
I must confess that I have a real problem with "mens clothing." I'll have to
go back and dig up that discussion in the archives!
I know that I am a recovering prescriptivist, but I'm having trouble with
this one . . . I guess the larger question (and one that pops up here
often) is where do we draw the line between prescription and description and
still be helpful to the person on the street who wants advice?
Best,
Nancy
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 4:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Master's vs. Masters
Nancy,
That's a very useful (and approachable!) article. I'm wondering,
however, if a clear consensus exists among editors that the
"apostropheless" version is *wrong*; a quick Google search shows that a
number of institutions use it, and while the Google sample was
top-weighted for distance-learning programs (which can be a
bit...er...unauthoritative), that's to be expected from an online
search, given the way Google ranks pages. University of Georgia and
University of Nebraska seem to use the apostropheless version in at
least some cases, and they aren't degree mills.
My old desk copy of the Random House dictionary uses the version with
the apostrophe, but _The Chicago Manual of Style_ (14th ed.) includes a
statement that would seem to give it tacit approval (p. 200):
"Among some circles there is a penchant for omitting the
apostrophe from what are sometimes regarded as possessive
constructions. Some business establishments and factories, for example,
refer to the cafeteria for their employees as the 'employees
cafeteria' ...Actually, this might properly be said to constitute an
attributive rather than a possessive use of nouns. A noun is
functioning attributively if it performs an adjectival role in modifying
a following noun....As in so many other matters of style,
consistency is to be encouraged"
In short, the _Manual_ allows this kind of usage as long as one sticks
with it (despite the expectation set up by the use of "penchant" in that
quote, the section doesn't condemn the practice at all). And, of course,
there's a kind of legal argument: if the University of Nebraska gives
you a diploma that says you've earned a "Masters Degree," then that is
exactly what you've got.
There are other cases in which what was originally a possessive has been
officially reanalyzed as a classifier but has retained the final -s
(this reminds me of a conversation on the list a while back about "men's
clothing" vs. "mens clothing"). A number of years ago, the bureau in
charge of official landscape feature names in the U.S. (I *think* it's
the US Geological Survey) switched from "Pike's Peak" to "Pikes Peak."
Most people visiting the spot knew its name, but had no idea there was
anyone named Pike it was named after (after all, it's hard to credit him
with discovering it, since we have -- finally -- grown a bit nervous
about pretending that the Native American groups who lived next to
mountains and rivers for millennia never managed to notice them). On the
other hand, there's a plant whose name seems evenly split between
"Viper's Bugloss" and "Vipers Bugloss," though I doubt there are many
people who have really thought about why a viper would need some bugloss
in the first place; heaven knows what they do with the stuff. Given
enough use, these modifiers simply become part of set expressions, and
punctuation changes can register this shift.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nancy Tuten
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 3:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Master's vs. Masters
Hi, Warren. A colleague and I wrote a short article on that topic (and
other
issues related to graduation) a few years ago. You can read it at
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/052101.htm. Your question is
addressed in the last paragraph. I hope that it is helpful.
Best,
Nancy
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
[log in to unmask]
803-786-3706
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Warren Sieme
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 3:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Master's vs. Masters
After I completed my undergraduate degree, I elected to continue on to
graduate school. My question is: Did I recieve a "Master's Degree,"
i.e. a degree belonging to a Master ( I will humbly interject here that
there is in reality, precious little that I feel myself a 'master' of),
or a "Masters Degree," that is a degree denoting that I am a master of
several things somehow related to teaching. I've looked at a few random
websites; some schools use the "apostrophe-'s'" and others the 's'
without an apostrophe. Opinions, comments, clarifications?
Warren
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