English Grammar Questions
Q2: Using synthetic genitive
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| From Corollary Theorems In our News page (Week 4, 2007) you could discover a news highlight about the "Grammar Girl". It says in that article that Ms. Mignon Fogarty was asked by the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice to clarify on using either: "Kansas' statute" or "Kansas's statute" Ms. Fogarty said that both forms were correct, but she preferred leaving off the extra "s" [sic]. The answer Ms. Fogarty has provided to the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice is indeed "quick and dirty"--as she likes to label it herself--and it is not correct. [No disrespect is intended here; on the contrary, we do appreciate a lot Ms. Mignon Fogarty's work. It is just that some of the words she uses are not quite ... appropriate.] The correct answer is: 1. in writing, particularly in official papers, the correct grammatical form is: "Kansas's statute"--grammatical rules are perfectly clear on this aspect, please consult LSEG; 2. note that it is very difficult to read "Kansas's statute", therefore in spoken language people use "Kansas' statute". However, we can write "Kansas' statute" only in Direct Style (because spoken words need to be reproduced exactly in Direct Style). The reasons behind using one form or the other are indeed complex issues, from multiple points of view. For example, the synthetic genitive form of the words above is not sufficient to clarify the problem, because in many instances the most appropriate form is: "Kansas statute" [this is similar to "driver licence"]. Without apostrophe, both words form a compound-noun construction having exactly the same meaning as the genitive form Attention: the compound-noun construction we refer to is a bit more complex, because the word "Kansas" becomes in fact adjective. For accurate details, please consult LSEG. In addition, the genitive form may be analyzed only in context: within the sentence structure. To conclude, the genitive form may be used grammatically or "as it is spoken" in particular instances; the compound-noun [sic] construction has a general range of applications (these topics are perfectly presented in LSEG).
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