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 ________________________________________________________________________ Email and AIM finally together. 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