Dear all,
 
The following topics have come up in my grammar course, and I would be grateful for your analyses.
 
The verb-phrase structure of "Experience had to be part of the difference" (from a sports article): Is "had to" in this case a semi-modal qualifying "be" with "part of the difference" serving as a subject complement and would the voice then be a variant of the conditional or of another form, i.e., "Experience must have been part of the difference"? Or, what seems less intuitive, would you say that "had" is the primary and main verb with a nonfinite object "to be part of the difference"?
 
The plural possessive forms of proper last names ending in -es, as in Jones? Would the proper form be the Jones's [dog] or the Joneses' [dog]. I suppose what is throwing me in this case is the existence of well-known phrases like "keeping up with the Joneses": are those exceptions based on fixed collocations?
 
Finally, related to the last question, I have not found in my textbooks (Longman or Hacker) a rule explicating why when proper names end in -y as in Zabrodsky, the plural would be Zabrodskys and not Zabrodskies. If the first analysis is correct, is it then fair to say that the rules for forming plurals have reference to the underlying nominal category? Or am I confusing matters here?
 
Thanks,
 
Natalie Gerber
SUNY Fredonia

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