Using 's possesive marker at the end of noun phrases.

Guest   Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:33 am GMT
I often hear people say things like:

"That's the woman standing over there's dog."

...where they use the 's marker at the end of the last word in the noun phrase, even if the word is not the main noun.

I've been told that this is ungrammatical, but can't figure out how one would say a statement like this correctly.

"....the dog of the woman standing over there", sounds bumbling.

How would you word a statement like this?
Uriel   Sun Sep 07, 2008 1:39 am GMT
I would go for the ungrammatical version -- The woman standing over there's dog. Which actually becomes grammatical if you hyphenate it all into one word -- The woman-standing-over-there's dog. Sort of like saying that's my brother-in-law's truck (and hey, when you speak there are no hyphens, right?)

Another common, if ungrammatical, result of thinking in hyphenated terms is to pluralize in the wrong place -- I have two brother-in-laws. Technically the correct term for both of your better half's male siblings is "brothers-in-law", but people tend to forget that, and it sounds a little awkward anyway (probably because it's not used that frequently).
Amabo   Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:16 pm GMT
"I often hear people say things like:

'That's the woman standing over there's dog.'"

You hear that because it is perfectly natural in spoken English and completely grammatical though your example is a particularly lengthy one.

The possessive marker particle "s" is frequently attached to an entire noun phrase in this manner.

The late King of Spain's daughter

(she is obviously the late King's daughter not Spain's)

Nor is there anything "wrong" with the alternative plural "brother-in-laws".

What we are talking about here is the age-old divide between language as it is actually used and language as some would wish it to be.
Guest   Sun Sep 07, 2008 12:38 pm GMT
>>I often hear people say things like:

"That's the woman standing over there's dog."

The grammatically correct way to phrase it would be.

"That's the woman's standing over there dog."

...but often you'll hear the former in colloquial speech.
Uriel   Sun Sep 07, 2008 5:00 pm GMT
<<The grammatically correct way to phrase it would be.

"That's the woman's standing over there dog." >>

That's not grammatical, either. And no one would ever say that. You would have to say, "That dog belongs to the woman standing over there.
Another Guest   Sun Sep 07, 2008 5:56 pm GMT
First of all, pronouns shouldn't take the possesive 's. Secondly, the sentence has two different pronouns, and they're interwoven. "That" refers to the dog, "there" refers to the woman, and then the speaker returns to the dog. When you use pronouns, you should try to finish with one before moving on to anther, especially in the case of "there" and "that", which don't operate quite like normal pronouns. Why not just say "That dog belong to the woman over there"? Now you talk about the dog and then the woman, instead of talking about the dog, the woman, and then back to the dog. It's not merely a matter of grammar but of clarity.
Johnny   Mon Sep 08, 2008 11:05 am GMT
How about these, where there's a relative clause attached? I think I should use "of" when relative clauses are involved, and 's when it's just an adverbial clause like in "The naked girl in the pool's dog is watching her"

The girl I met in LA's dog was purple! (bad)
The dog of the girl I met in LA was purple! (ok)

Your opinion?
Travis   Mon Sep 08, 2008 2:31 pm GMT
>>I often hear people say things like:

"That's the woman standing over there's dog."

...where they use the 's marker at the end of the last word in the noun phrase, even if the word is not the main noun.

I've been told that this is ungrammatical, but can't figure out how one would say a statement like this correctly.

"....the dog of the woman standing over there", sounds bumbling.

How would you word a statement like this?<<

In normal everyday English, I would word that:

"That's the woman standing over there's dog."

That is, your original sentence *is* grammatical in actual modern English, and indeed is the way such normally would be phrased in everyday speech in many if not most English dialects today.

The matter is that in modern English, the <'s> clitic is indeed attached to the entire noun phrase in question, *not* the noun in question. It should be noted that <'s> does not operate like a case-marking affix in English today, even though it did originate in the case ending <-es> in Middle English.
Leasnam   Mon Sep 08, 2008 4:30 pm GMT
The only grammatically correct way to say this in a manner similar to the original example and using the -'s marker is :

The over-there-standing woman's dog

which incidentally is totally unlike how a modern english speaker would say it, but which is actually quite logical. It almost harkens to how German sounds in the way they string their phrases together.

the only cases where this rather old fashioned type of word placement is used is in words like "oncoming", "by-standers", etc., but it seems that these constructions are in conflict with other, newer variations such as "passers-by" (cf. "by-passers"), "set-back" (cf. "back-set"), where the alternative usually means something totally different.
John Cowan   Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:12 am GMT
There is no sharp line between grammatical and ungrammatical in play here. We have long since stopped saying "my mother's-in-law hat" in favor of "my mother-in-law's hat", and although "That umbrella is the young lady I go with's" (i.e. it belongs to her) is a bit extreme, it is not flatly ungrammatical.

Although the 's ending descends from a case ending, it no longer functions as a case ending, but as a free-floating clitic between the possessor and the possessed, both of which can be full noun phrases.
Iain   Wed Oct 01, 2008 6:15 am GMT
I agree with the person who wrote the last post's opinion.
Damian in Edinburgh   Wed Oct 01, 2008 10:53 am GMT
***"That's the woman standing over there's dog."***

I try hard not to complicate an otherwise simple answer with a pedantic ramble about the strict rules of grammar, but to be honest - do you think that the above sounds right? Doesn't it sound just a wee bit awkward to you?

That's the dog belonging to the woman standing over there.

That dog belongs to the woman standing over there.

Or you could say something like:

See that woman standing over there? (Indicate to the left) See that mutt over there? (Indicate to the right). Well, it belongs to her. It's name is Bonzo and it snarls and bares its teeth if touched.
Johnny   Wed Oct 01, 2008 3:43 pm GMT
<<"That umbrella is the young lady I go with's">>

What would the idiomatic way to say that be?
Travis   Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:23 pm GMT
>><<"That umbrella is the young lady I go with's">>

What would the idiomatic way to say that be?<<

That may seem a bit akward syntactically, but to me at least, that is probably the way that I would probably put that in Real Life. While one can, of course, use "belong to" to make such less grammatically akward, idiomatically the normal construction for indicating such possession in everyday speech in most NAE dialects is "<possessed> is <possessor>'s" not "<possessed> belongs to <possessor>". The matter is that such seemingly akward uses of "'s" are far more freely allowed and used in NAE dialects as used on an everyday basis in Real Life than they are in formal/literary English. Conversely, while "belong to" is seemingly a more straightforward usage here. the form "belong to" is actually significantly more formal than even such akward usages of "'s".
Leasnam   Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:58 pm GMT
<<Although the 's ending descends from a case ending, it no longer functions as a case ending, but as a free-floating clitic between the possessor and the possessed, both of which can be full noun phrases. >>

It still functions as a case ending, and this use is extended to use as a clitic marker--it is both.