Carol and others,
It might give you some comfort to know that the article you saw about
the hyphens was/is entirely British in origin. American English has not
removed any hyphens, at least not anywhere near 16,000.
For a more in-depth (and no-nonsense) discussion of this issue, see
grammar maven Bill Walsh's blog post at
http://theslot.blogspot.com/2007/09/some-do-about-no-thing.html.
Tim
Timothy D. Hadley
Assistant Professor of Professional Writing
English Department
Missouri State University
Springfield, MO 65897
office 417.836.5332, fax 417.836.4226
[log in to unmask]
Editor, ATEG Journal
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 9:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Fate of the Hyphen
While I was enjoying my coffee at Starbucks just the other day
(Starbucks's coffee is the best!), I remarked to a friend that I was in
mild despair over the tragic demise of the hyphen, or the recent loss of
it in almost 16,000 words. I am wondering who decides which words will
lose their hyphens and how that is determined. In many cases, the
meaning actually changes as a result of this. Take, for instance, the
word "pop-tart." With its hypen, this word signifies a flat,rectangular,
toaster pastry. Without the hyphen, "pop tart" could refer to any of
several young Hollywood starlets who make a practice of flaunting their
promiscuity to the media (don't want to mention any names
here)...Anyway, being that I am very fond of most punctuation marks, it
upsets me to watch them vanish from our language.
Carol Morrison
Nancy Tuten <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
My grandparents (I'm from the deep South) always referred to
stores in the
possessive: "Kmart's," "WalMart's," and so forth. I always
assumed that such
usage was a throwback to the days when stores *really did*
belong to the
people for whom they were named (Smith's Hardware Store,
Johnson's Marina,
etc.). A regional department store owned by John Belk was called
"Belk's"
for decades until the decision makers dropped the -'s
completely; it is now
"Belk," although 99 percent of people who shop there still call
it "Belk's"
and probably always will.
The plural of Starbucks? Here is where creative avoidance comes
in handy:
"Starbucks shops" gets my vote. Can't imagine saying "We have
three
Starbuckses within a one-mile radius of our house."
I have always heard that Starbucks was named for the character
by that same
name in _Moby-Dick_ (he loved coffee?), but I can't find
anything on the
Starbucks Web site to support that story. It would be
interesting (only to
us word nerds) to know if it started out as "Starbuck's" and
evolved into
"Starbucks" or if the founders meant to suggest many stores
named after the
same character.
Or, most likely, they never gave the issue a moment of thought.
Nancy
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katz, Seth
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: What's the plural of "Starbucks"? (was Master's vs.
Masters)
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to one of those
discussions on this
list that make me go, "Wow! What a cool crew of word nerds."
This stuff just
lights up my day.
And thanks, Herb, for even a brief summary of what sounds like a
really rich
argument. I'd be interested in what you and others can offer on
the
following question:
One of my Intro to Language students asked, in a flippant
moment, "What is
the plural of 'Starbucks?'" I have been asking various people
and it seems
to me that there are two forms, both dependent on home dialect.
Northeasterners tend to favor 'Starbuckses' (say it with a Joe
Piscopo New
Jersey accent) while those from the Midwest and Southwest tend
to favor
'Starbucks' as both a singular and a plural. And aside from how
you would
pronounce the plural of "Starbucks," how would you spell it?
Does one of the
major style manuals offer guidance on such matters?
And a curious dialectism that we hear from central Illinois to
southern
Wisconsin: "I'm going to Walmart's." No joke. Though there's no
distinguishing whether the speaker intends a possessive or a
plural. But
there's something in the usage that makes it sound like "I'm
going to
Woolworth's" or "I'm going to Kresge's" (which was what K-mart
was, once
upon a time).
Thanks--
Seth
Dr. Seth Katz
Assistant Professor |
Department of English |
Bradley University |
Peoria, IL 61625 |
[log in to unmask] |
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of
STAHLKE,
HERBERT F
Sent: Tue 10/2/2007 5:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Master's vs. Masters
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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