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From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Possessive plurals of last names (and other odd plural formation)
Message-ID: <1134@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 23:16:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.1134
Posted: Mon Sep 23 23:16:19 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 03:30:46 EDT
References: <2475@mit-hermes.ARPA>
Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept
Lines: 35

I entirely agree with John Purbrick that family names form the possessive
plural just like any other noun.  I think the source of the odd forms
you often see lies in uncertainty about how to form the plurals of names
in the first place.  Personally, I prefer to handle them just like
other nouns, so for example the five Jones brothers are the five Joneses
(but in Spanish, los cinco Jones :-)).  There's room for variation in this,
but the one form that just messes things up is to throw in an apostrophe
for a non-possessive plural.

The latter is a widespread oddity, not confined to names.  I've seen
a sign:
                       EMPLOYEE'S ONLY

And recently on one of these newsgroups someone `corrected' himself
into an oddity:  `` but rabbis -- I mean rabbi's --''.  You can see
this sort of thing all over.

I have a theory (no evidence) about how this oddity became so popular.
One fairly legitimate use for an apostrophe in non-possessive plurals
is with (self-quoting) symbols:
               How many p's in `Mississippi'?  How many 5's in 555-1212?
I think the widespread use spread out from this fairly legitimate use.  One
direction of spreading was through acronyms: How many MIRV's do they
have?  There are two NP's in this S.  (I would write both without the
apostrophe.)  Another direction of spreading, for which I can't make
a good description, is this: In the 1960's many people...

These uses are not really bad.  I wouldn't object to them, except that
I take them as sources of infection.  It leads to employee's and rabbi's.
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar
P.S.  My host has been down for over a week, so please forgive some
belated-looking replies to older articles.  Thanks.


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