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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009joint possessive question
The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary party." Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing sounds right. > The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary > party." > Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing sounds right. I'll venture a guess: you - Maybe. But only figuratively, ("you" meaning "your shindig") and only if the sentence ends right there (with Joe out of the picture). your - Certainly: I'll attend your party and Joe's party, which may even be the same event. yours - Sorta: I'll attend Joe's party and yours, but not at the same time, because they are separate parties. Pitty, that they don't celebrate their anniversary together, though. ;) /W  SignatureMy real email address is constructed by swapping the domain with the recipient (local part). In our last episode, <b4e08d3a-f1cf-4318-8c23-1943128c6e86@x14g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>, the lovely and talented val189 broadcast on alt.usage.english: > The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary > party." > Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing sounds right. Your. When it act as as adjective with an explicit noun (in this case 'anniversary') it is 'your' (my, our, her). You attend my anniversary, so I will attend yours. This is because the noun does not occur here. 'Yours' is a pronoun that stands for 'the thing that belongs to you.' 'Your' is the adjective. Pronoun Adjective mine my (thine) (thy) ours our yours your his his hers her its its The jointness here is not the problem. If you wanted to apply the joint rule here, it would have to be 'you and Joe's anniversary.' For most people that is asking too much of the conjunction 'and.' If 'you and Joe' really are considered together, why wouldn't it just be 'you' -- which can be plural, in which case the anniversary would be 'your (person spoken to and Joe) anniversary.' When you speak of you(your/yours) and Joe(Joe's) you have drawn a distinction between the person spoken to and Joe. The joint possessive is at odds with that distinction. SignatureLars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> usenet@larseighner.com 6 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term. Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't. >The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary >party." >Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing sounds right. I analyze compound possessive sentences a piece at a time. Since "I will be glad to attend your anniversary" is correct, as is "I will be glad to attend Joe's anniversary", I know that "I will be glad to attend your and Joe's anniversary" is correct. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >>The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary >>party." [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > glad to attend Joe's anniversary", I know that "I will be glad to > attend your and Joe's anniversary" is correct. Perhaps "Joe's and your anniversary" sounds better. >>>The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary >>>party." [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > >Perhaps "Joe's and your anniversary" sounds better. That is a second decision to make. I agree that it sounds better. SignatureRegards, Chuck Riggs Near Dublin, Ireland >> I analyze compound possessive sentences a piece at a time. That's wrong. The 's clitic is not like a Latin genitive inflection. >> Since "I will be glad to attend your anniversary" is correct, >> as is "I will be glad to attend Joe's anniversary", I know that >> "I will be glad to attend your and Joe's anniversary" is correct. Wrong. > Perhaps "Joe's and your anniversary" sounds better. It's wrong too. Forget "you" for a moment and let's talk about Joe Clark and Maureen McTeer, because they're famous enough to have web pages about them where I can look up their dates. Whose anniversary is June 30? *Joe and Maureen's*. Whose birthdays are June 5 and February 27? *Joe's and Maureen's*. (Hmm, also Joe's and my father's. I'll have to tell him.) In other words, if something is jointly possessed by the two entities joined by "and", the possessive of the whole phrase must be formed using a single 's clitic. If you make a separate possessive form for each part, you indicate that there are two separate possessions. So "your and Joe's" is wrong, whatever order you write it in. But "you and Joe's" is also wrong, because pronouns don't form possessives using 's. So there is no way to form the desired possessive, as I said before, and you have to express the sentence another way. SignatureMark Brader | "I can direct dial today a man my parents warred with. Toronto | They wanted to kill him, I want to sell software to him." msb@vex.net | -- Brad Templeton My text in this article is in the public domain. > The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary > party." Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing sounds right. Nothing is right. You can muddle through in speech by picking "your" or "you" and people will get what you mean, but in writing, form the sentence another way. SignatureMark Brader, Toronto "I'd opt for Oz, myself." msb@vex.net --Buck Henry >> The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's >> anniversary party." Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > or "you" and people will get what you mean, but in writing, form the > sentence another way. I agree that the sentence should be formed in another way, possibly omitting the mention of Joe altogether, as he would certainly be thought of as a party to the anniversary. If the question is to be answered with the originally imposed limitations, the answer is "you". Some support for that can be found at http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/possessives.htm under /Compound Possessives/. SignatureSkitt (AmE) >> The sentence is "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary >> party." Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ? Nothing sounds right. > > Nothing is right. You can muddle through in speech by picking "your" > or "you" and people will get what you mean, but in writing, form the > sentence another way. I agree. This is a serious deficiency in English (because it's reaonably frequent that one _needs_ an idiomatic way of handling it), but there is no solution. Signatureathel |
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