LANGUAGE CORNER
Possessive Nouns with Pronouns
A Rule to Ignore
A lot of attention has been devoted to a grammar argument, of all things, between a high school journalism teacher and the College Board. The teacher won.
He had objected to this part of a sentence on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test administered in 2002:
"Toni Morrison's genius enables her . . ."
The teacher insisted — for three months — that a possessive noun (Toni Morrison's) functions as an adjective and can't lead logically to a pronoun (her). In late May, 2003, the College Board capitulated, as in fairness it had to. Such a rule did show up in a few grammar books, so students who applied it couldn't be penalized.
The triumphant — and clearly dedicated — teacher was roundly cheered. Yet the rule that enticed him years ago defies common sense. Must "Jane's word is her bond" become "Jane's word is Jane's bond"? No. Possessives with their very own pronouns have been ubiquitous in good English writing forever.
On June 1, the Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, writing in the Week in Review section of The New York Times, provided legal support, as it were, for sense and universal usage. Possessives like "Toni Morrison's," he said, should be thought of not as adjectives but as "determiner phrases," which can be tied to pronouns. Nice to know.
Earlier, one commentator savaged the board, saying it "wrote an error" into the PSAT. His solution: Say "The genius of Toni Morrison . . . ," making the name work as a noun, leading legally to "her." All English possessives can be formed with "of," though, and not always happily. Anybody like "The word of Jane is her bond"? Or try tapping to the rhythm of "The body of John Brown lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on."
The apostrophe is so handy. French-speakers have to make do with "la plume de ma tante," but English-speakers can say "my aunt's pen." And can certainly add, "is mightier than her sword."
— CJR, July/August 2003
