Apostrophe Plurals
Discussion
Grandson's home work
Make these nouns plural
The hen's beak
The goose's head
The man’s jacket
The sheep's nose
To my mind the three examples given to work on , are ambiguous
The hen's( posessive) can be made plural thus, hens’ but the beak can be either plural , beaks’ or possessive beak’s
Geese’s heads’/head’s
And so on
This is for an 8 year old
(and a 60 something
)
Make these nouns plural
The hen's beak
The goose's head
The man’s jacket
The sheep's nose
To my mind the three examples given to work on , are ambiguous
The hen's( posessive) can be made plural thus, hens’ but the beak can be either plural , beaks’ or possessive beak’s
Geese’s heads’/head’s
And so on
This is for an 8 year old
(and a 60 something
)Edited by MX51ROD on Sunday 7th February 16:20
Greg66 said:
ianrb said:
Should it not be "The sheeps' noses"?
No: the plural of sheep is sheep. Not sheeps. To illustrate the point I am trying to make lets change it to "The sheep's legs", is that one or more sheep? Using "The sheeps' legs" provides that additional information.
marshalla said:
ianrb said:
Oddly I was aware of that.
To illustrate the point I am trying to make lets change it to "The sheep's legs", is that one or more sheep? Using "The sheeps' legs" provides that additional information.
Not to anyone who knows English.To illustrate the point I am trying to make lets change it to "The sheep's legs", is that one or more sheep? Using "The sheeps' legs" provides that additional information.
I'll give you a hint. The rules of grammar don't exist to allow pedants to score point, rather they exist to help people convey information, but sometimes, as illustrated above, exceptions are needed.
I would hope that the original lesson being discussed was to help the children think about how to apply some of the rules of grammar rather than forcing them into a rigid structure which prevents them saying what they want or need to say. I suppose you were of school on that particular day.
ianrb said:
Oddly I was aware of that.
To illustrate the point I am trying to make lets change it to "The sheep's legs", is that one or more sheep? Using "The sheeps' legs" provides that additional information.
Absent any context, that would be a puzzle. But it would never lack context, so working out whether there was more than one sheep would come from context. To illustrate the point I am trying to make lets change it to "The sheep's legs", is that one or more sheep? Using "The sheeps' legs" provides that additional information.
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