| 词组 | apostrophe |
| 释义 | apostrophe 1. The original use of the apostrophe in English appears to have been as a mark of elision used to indicate in writing and printing the omission of a letter—usually a vowel—that was not pronounced. Ben Jonson's Grammar (1640) lists such examples as these: • Th' outward man If y' utter If thou'rt is time t' awake A man t' have The plays of Restoration dramatists such as Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, and Farquhar abound in such contractions. A great many of them are still familiar: she'll, I'll, 'em, can't, 'tis, e'en, e'er, he's, I've, among others. And some are no longer familiar: i'fac, 'ygad, to't, in't, an't, on't, ifaith, 'zbud, wo't, dar'st, for example. (One can't help noticing that the pronoun it was reduced to't in a great many spoken environments.) In his own writings Ben Jonson frequently used the apostrophe to mark omission of silent e in the -ed ending of verbs. "Timber, or Discoveries" (written before 1637) shows borrow'd, deform'd, refus'd, expung'd, ban-ish'd, squar'd, among others. The convention of spelling -ed as -'d when the e was not pronounced was more common in verse than in prose for the purpose of emphasizing scansion. It seems, however, to have become more frequent in prose during the early 18th century. In Defoe, for instance, can be found many an arriv'd and order'd. The practice provoked some curious remarks by Swift and Addison in the Tatler and Spectator objecting to the practice. It is not overly clear today what their objection was. Here, for instance, is Addison in The Spectator, No. 135 (4 Aug. 1711): • ... by closing in one Syllable the Termination of our Praeterperfect Tense, as in the Words drown'd, walk'd, arriv'd, for drowned, walked, arrived, which has very much disfigured the Tongue, and turn'd a tenth part of our smoothest Words into so many Clusters of Consonants. Addison seems to be writing about speech, but his own inconsistency is curious; not only do we have turn'd in the same sentence in which he decries the practice, he has earlier used observ'd, us'd, and deriv'd. It is hard to tell what he is driving at. At any rate, the convention of marking the unpronounced e of the -ed ending by an apostrophe gradually died out. Also gone are such early 18th-century apostrophized spellings as Defoe's cou'd, shou'd, wou'd—showing that the l was not pronounced. Cou'd is a most curious case; Strang 1970 notes that "the native word coud was altered to could on the model of should, would. " Defoe's apostrophe thus indicates the omission of a letter that didn't belong there in the first place. Strang also notes the occasional use of the apostrophe to mark imaginary omissions, for instance ha's, as if it were contracted from haves. The chief modern uses of the apostrophe are about the same as those of the late 17th century, with certain old conventions having been discarded. We still use the apostrophe to show contractions (didn't, I'll) and to mark features of speech (singin', N'Orleans). In addition, the apostrophe is used to mark the omission of numerals: • class of'86 politics during the'60s Some words or their variants are consistently spelled with apostrophes: • fo'c'sle, bos'n, rock 'n' roll 2. The apostrophe is used to mark the possessive case of nouns and indefinite pronouns. The Grammar of Joseph Priestley (rev. ed., 1798) contains the basic modern system: • The GENITIVE case is that which denotes property or possession; and is formed by adding (s) with an apostrophe before it to the nominative; as Solomon's Wisdom; The Men's wit; Venus's beauty; or the apostrophe only in the plural number, when the nominative ends in (s) as the Stationers' arms. Current usage deviates very little from the general system described by Priestley. The chief variation in current use is in the case of nouns ending in an \\\\s\\\\ or \\\\z\\\\ sound, such as audience, waitress, index. Even with these -'s is usual: audience's, waitress's, index's. Some writers prefer the apostrophe alone, especially if the word is followed immediately by a word beginning with the same sound: for convenience' sake (see sake). For other questions relating to the use of the possessive, see genitive. 3. The apostrophe is sometimes used with -s to form the plural of letters, numerals, abbreviations, symbols, and words used as words. Letters are usually pluralized with -'s mind your p's and q's although capital letters are sometimes pluralized with -s alone. The use of -'s to form the plurals of numerals, abbreviations and symbols is not now as common as plural-ization with simple -s; 1970s, CPUs, &s are more likely to be found than their apostrophized counterparts. A dissent can be found in Safire 1980; he prefers 1980's, and the 80's to the '80s. Words used as words—such as might be given as examples from a text: too many howsoever's—are usually pluralized with -'s. But words representing sounds or words used as words in common phrases are pluralized with -s alone: • the oohs and aahs of the crowd the whys and wherefores of the issue Theodore Bernstein's Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage 4. Her's, our's, your's, their's. Lowth 1762 notes that these pronouns "have evidently the form of the possessive case"; Baker 1770 likewise spells them with the apostrophe. But even then usage was mixed: Lowth on the preceding page in his paradigm spells all of them without the apostrophe, even its. Priestley 1798 spells them without the apostrophe but later comments, "Sometimes these possessives have an apostrophe before the s, when they are found without their substantives, which gives them more the appearance of a genitive case." He gives as an example "That you may call her your's" from a novel. Jonathan Swift writes "better to be in your hands than her's" in his Journal to Stella (21 Nov. 1710). Priestley regularly spells it's with the apostrophe, as does Jane Austen later (see its, it's). Today all these pronouns are regularly written without the apostrophe: hers, ours, yours, theirs, its. 5. Simon 1980 speaks of " ... the Great Apostrophe Plague: the newfangled insertion of apostrophes in ordinary plurals." It can be pointed out that Joseph Addison in The Spectator, 4 Aug. 1711, pluralized Genius into Genius's, but it is far from certain what Addison meant by his apostrophe. It marks the omission of e, but in Addison's time such an omission usually meant that the syncopated syllable was not pronounced; perhaps Addison pronounced the plural of genius the same way as he did the singular. The phenomenon is not as recent as many writers think, but older evidence is scarce. Robert Baker in 1770 censured the use in his time of's after nouns ending in vowels (as idea's, opera's, virtuoso's) and -s (as the Genius's of Addison). But we do not have enough evidence to assume with confidence that this late 18th-cen-tury practice has led to the present one. At any rate it has certainly become more noticed in recent years by writers of English texts and writers on usage. Bernstein 1977, Simon 1980, Harper 1975, 1985, and Janis 1984 all notice's plurals in the U.S.; Howard 1984 and Longman 1984 note them in Britain. No one has an explanation for the practice, but it is widely assumed to be practiced chiefly by the less well educated—handwritten signs offering "Fresh Strawberry's" or "Auto Repair's" are often cited. Such plurals also turn up in handwritten letters sent to this office: "... these type of dictionary's." Bernstein and Janis mention their appearing in ads; several such have been noticed here too: • ... the finest Tibetan Mastiffs —Dog World, May 1984 • The floating mover judge's look for —Chronicle of the Horse, 25 May 1984 Apostrophized plurals also turn up in other text: • ... by using he to refer to all people, she's and he's alike —Carol Tavris, Vogue, June 1984 • The buyback's included Texaco's purchase —N.Y. Times, 13 June 1984 • I thought we kept the weirdo's locked up —"Brock" cartoon, Morning Union (Springfield, Mass.), 25 July 1984 No apostrophe is necessary or wanted in any of the above examples. 6. Words formed from abnormal elements, such as numerals, abbreviations, and the like, are often provided with an apostrophe before the addition of a suffix: • OD'd on heroin 86'd our party 4-H'ers 7. If you need any further evidence that the apostrophe has not been universally understood, a correspondent of Simon's sent in as an example a sign reading "Larr'y 66 Service." To this gem we can add only • T'was not always so —Southwest Art, May 1984 Commenting on the apostrophe, Robert Burchfield, editor of the newest OED Supplement, has said: • The apostrophe was only a moderately successful device, and it is probably coming to the end of its usefulness, certainly for forming plurals and marking possession. It may only be retained for contractions —quoted in Boston Sunday Globe, 12 May 1985 |
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