Linda,
I didn't mean to suggest that your reaction was at all inappropriate. As Craig and others have pointed out repeatedly, Standard English comprises a set of norms that we expect to be observed in professional discourse, and I agree that teachers especially need to be competent in these norms. If only in their own defense. And, of course, you are right that teams of teachers work very well because of the different expertise each member brings. Grammar is pretty clearly one such area of expertise.
You raise a very interesting point about what some of these suffixal -s forms actually are, whether they are in fact genitive and so require the apostrophe. As it happens, I have a paper coming out this year (I hope) in Word: Journal of the International Linguistics Association, co-authored with a couple of graduate students, Yonghong Cheng and Duck Hee Sung. It's titled "English nominalizations in -s", and it describes the grammar of the -s suffix on such words as "politics", "dependence", "news", as well as the historical development of this suffix from Old English through its establishment as an element of English grammar during the Early Modern English period. Some of these instances of -s started out as genitives, others as plurals, but the evidence is that they no longer have those functions but rather create abstract nouns. What was fun about this, besides the analysis itself, was that we discovered a previously unrecognized derivational suffix in English, not something that happens very often. By the way, another example of the sort you bring up is "masters degree". Originally a genitive, but now it appears often without an apostrophe. Do we still treat it as a genitive? I'm not convinced that we do.
One of my coauthors, Yonghong, is now working on an extension of this, the behavior of other odd, marginal, or non-plural nouns in -s, for his doctoral dissertation. He's getting some interesting results that we'll be going over together in the next couple of weeks.
I can send you the nominalizations manuscript separately if you'd like.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Linda DiDesidero
Sent: Fri 5/12/2006 9:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: to HERBQuestion re: introducing grammar
Hi, Herb.
I probably sounded like some condescending English prof, and I didn't mean
to do that. My children's experiences in elementary school with respect to
grammar and usage were very uneven. But I did find myself 'unteaching' some
of the 'rules' that they had been taught. My daughter would bring in Diana
Hacker's Rules for Writers and show her teachers some of the inconsistencies.
And many of her teachers were happy to know, I think. This one teacher in
particular actually taught the kids that anytime a phrase meant possession and
had an (s) in it, the (s) was ('s). The teacher was clearly misinformed, and
had developed her own rule which she applied enthusiastically to writing in
letters home, on bulletin boards, etc. We all have students who have stories
about things that they were taught incorrectly.
But I don't mean to criticize school teachers. I think that this simply
speaks to the necessity of MORE focus on language, not less. And I do think that
people (including teachers) need to acknowledge that there are things we do
understand about language and grammar, and other things that we need to look
up or figure out. Being able to acknowledge someone's expertise in usage
rules and having that person as a designated resource is not a bad thing. (And
in this elementary school, it got so bad that the principal insisted on
proofreading all of the letters that teachers sent home to parents. She would send
the drafts back to the teachers full of red marks. Of course, this was
extremely insulting to the teachers, and had the effect of diminishing written
communication between teachers and community.)
And I am aware of the problems with that little apostrophe. I imagine that
the ('s) is on its way out. I often see noun phrases that cause me to ask
myself: what is the function of that (s)? For example, a student in my fall
grammar class brought in literature on the "Presidents Cup" (golf championship)
What does that (s) mean? Why is there no apostrophe? I have not studied
that in particular, and there may be a history with the name that I'm not aware
of. I work in Prince George's County, Maryland, and there are many public
and private organizations with "Prince George's" in the title without the
apostrophe. I'm sure that some people see it as optional. And perhaps one day it
will be so. Or can we say that it is already optional?
Linda
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