gerscene.blogg.se - What is a possessive noun

An apostrophe followed by "s" was often used to mark a plural specifically, the Oxford Companion to the English Language notes that English spelling retained many inflections that were not pronounced as syllables, notably verb endings ("-est", "-eth", "-es", "-ed") and the noun ending "-es", which marked either plurals or possessives, also known as genitives (see Possessive apostrophe, below). Early English practice įrom the 16th century, following French practice, the apostrophe was used when a vowel letter was omitted either because of incidental elision ("I'm" for "I am") or because the letter no longer represented a sound ("lov'd" for "loved"). Modern French orthography has restored the spelling une heure. It was also frequently used in place of a final "e" (which was still pronounced at the time) when it was elided before a vowel, as in un' heure. Introduced by Geoffroy Tory (1529), the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision (as in l'heure in place of la heure). It was introduced into English in the 16th century in imitation of French practice.

The apostrophe was first used by Pietro Bembo in his edition of De Aetna (1496). įor use in computer systems, Unicode has code points for three different forms of apostrophe. The word "apostrophe" comes ultimately from Greek ἡ ἀπόστροφος ( hē apóstrophos, ' turning away or elision'), through Latin and French. It is also used in a few distinctive cases for the marking of plurals, e.g.

The marking of possessive case of nouns (as in "the eagle's feathers", "in one month's time", "at your parents'‌ ").

The marking of the omission of one or more letters, e.g.

In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: Recognizing possessive nouns is easy because they always show an apostrophe.The apostrophe ( ' or ’) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. It is letting you know that the noun “fur” belongs to the cat. Here the word “cat’s” is a possessive noun.

Normally these words would be a singular or plural noun, but in the possessive form they are used as adjectives to modify another a noun or pronoun. Possessive nouns are nouns that show ownership or possession. In most cases (with singular nouns) all that is needed is an apostrophe and the letter “s.’īut there are a few more rules to follow with possessive nouns so let’s take a look. What are possessive nouns? Need help understanding what are possessive nouns and what aren’t? Check out our page and find our possessive nouns examples and learn how to weave possessive nouns into your own writing.īelieve it or not, in the English language showing the possessive form of nouns is rather straightforward.