Question about apostrophes

Right I know the rule of it's and its. But I don't know why. I understand that the it's is shortened of it is, and its is when it belongs to it. But when something belongs to me it is Moogle's. So why is it not It's. e.g The cat has left its poo on the doorstep. If it was my poo it would be, the cat has left Moogle's poo on the doorstep. So why is it not, the cat has left it's poo on the doorstep?

There are plenty of language buffs on here so I'm sure somebody can answer my question.

it's = it is

So the literal translation would be

"The cat has left it is poo on the doorstep"

Or is your question more in the line of "where did its come from"

it's = it is

 

So the literal translation would be

"The cat has left it is poo on the doorstep"

 

Or is your question more in the line of "where did its come from"

Right I know the rule of it's and its. But I don't know why. I understand that the it's is shortened of it is, and its is when it belongs to it. But when something belongs to me it is Moogle's. So why is it not It's. e.g The cat has left its poo on the doorstep. If it was my poo it would be, the cat has left Moogle's poo on the doorstep. So why is it not, the cat has left it's poo on the doorstep?

 

There are plenty of language buffs on here so I'm sure somebody can answer my question.

I know that part.

sorry i'm high right now and skipping over things.

The cat left its poo - in this case "its" is more like "his" than anything else.

The cat left its poo - in this case "its" is more like "his" than anything else.

You're assuming that the cat is a boy?

Sexist.

Yeah, could be a hermaphrodite cat...

Its is something we developed in common speaking, like when we want to talk about something which we dont really need to know the gender of.

Thats what i think anyway.

But when something belongs to me it is Moogle's.

I'm pretty sure its not.

Yeah, could be a hermaphrodite cat...

Could be that cat in gARYgREATIE*s pants.

Don't get me started on grammer and spelling.... Never one of my 'enjoyable' espects at school. Brings back so many bad memories....

Moogle, I know what you mean and I've been pondering it myself. I haven't come to a conclusion, unfortunately.

'Its' is the non-gender specific version of his or her.

The cat's poo is on the doorstep. = correct

The cat has left it's poo on the doorstep. = wrong because poo doesn't belong to 'it', it belongs to the cat.

'Its' is the non-gender specific version of his or her.

 

The cat's poo is on the doorstep. = correct

The cat has left it's poo on the doorstep. = wrong because poo doesn't belong to 'it', it belongs to the cat.

We know the how the rules are, but we're wondering why they are so. Normally, the possessive mark is an apostrophe followed by an "s", like so: Daniel's. But when we are talking about the pronoun "it", there's no apostrophe: its. It isn't logical. The only reason for it is to make "its" and "it's" distinguishable.

The English language is beautiful, but its structure is needlessly tough.

tbh who cares. There's loads of anomalies in the english language. You just have to remember them and not worry about why they exist

To answer this you need to look at old English, which was much more inflected than modern English. (as was middle English, though to a lesser extent) In a highly inflected language, all (or most) words have to change form according to their function in the sentence - for example, their grammatical case (nominative, accusative etc.). Examples of highly inflected languages are Latin and Icelandic - often in such languages inflection rather than word order defines word function.

In modern English, little inflection remains, but there are still some vestiges - note how "I gave it to his" is wrong, but "I gave it to him" is right. Pronouns are among the words still inflected in the English language, and "its" is the third person singular possessive determiner - basically, the right pronoun for phrases like "its box". Other possessive determiners are things like "ours" and "yours", which are similarly inflected, and similarly use no apostrophe.

In old English, there was also a genitive case, used to indicate possession, which usually involved words ending in "-es". Today, this is still sort of present, but an apostrophe is used to mark omission of the e - hence "the dog's bowl" and so on. At some stage, the idea of placing the apostrophe after the s was introduced, to indicate multiple things possessing, which seems relatively (though perhaps not entirely) logical if you think about it.

Of course, apostrophes are used to mark omission in many other situations, such as in "mustn't" (must not), and "this day's long" (this day is long). This usage extends to shortening "it is" to "it's", which causes a lot of confusion because of the similarity with the third person singular possessive determiner combined with the fact that it looks like the modern equivalent of a genitive case marker is being used.

tbh who cares. There's loads of anomalies in the english language. You just have to remember them and not worry about why they exist

I care.

The topics on here are getting more interesting each day.

Hey when did my sig become too big

To answer this you need to look at old English, which was much more inflected than modern English. (as was middle English, though to a lesser extent) In a highly inflected language, all (or most) words have to change form according to their function in the sentence - for example, their grammatical case (nominative, accusative etc.). Examples of highly inflected languages are Latin and Icelandic - often in such languages inflection rather than word order defines word function.

 

In modern English, little inflection remains, but there are still some vestiges - note how "I gave it to his" is wrong, but "I gave it to him" is right. Pronouns are among the words still inflected in the English language, and "its" is the third person singular possessive determiner - basically, the right pronoun for phrases like "its box". Other possessive determiners are things like "ours" and "yours", which are similarly inflected, and similarly use no apostrophe.

 

In old English, there was also a genitive case, used to indicate possession, which usually involved words ending in "-es". Today, this is still sort of present, but an apostrophe is used to mark omission of the e - hence "the dog's bowl" and so on. At some stage, the idea of placing the apostrophe after the s was introduced, to indicate multiple things possessing, which seems relatively (though perhaps not entirely) logical if you think about it.

 

Of course, apostrophes are used to mark omission in many other situations, such as in "mustn't" (must not), and "this day's long" (this day is long). This usage extends to shortening "it is" to "it's", which causes a lot of confusion because of the similarity with the third person singular possessive determiner combined with the fact that it looks like the modern equivalent of a genitive case marker is being used.

 

I care.

You are so awesome. I haven't met anyone with this great an interest in languages before.

I thought this topic was going to be about people using ` instead of ' for apostrophes. I'm disappointed.

I thought this topic was going to be about people using ` instead of ' for apostrophes. I'm disappointed.

I hate it when they do that ...

tbh who cares. There's loads of anomalies in the english language. You just have to remember them and not worry about why they exist

I do. Hence why I created the thread.

To answer this you need to look at old English, which was much more inflected than modern English. (as was middle English, though to a lesser extent) In a highly inflected language, all (or most) words have to change form according to their function in the sentence - for example, their grammatical case (nominative, accusative etc.). Examples of highly inflected languages are Latin and Icelandic - often in such languages inflection rather than word order defines word function.

 

In modern English, little inflection remains, but there are still some vestiges - note how "I gave it to his" is wrong, but "I gave it to him" is right. Pronouns are among the words still inflected in the English language, and "its" is the third person singular possessive determiner - basically, the right pronoun for phrases like "its box". Other possessive determiners are things like "ours" and "yours", which are similarly inflected, and similarly use no apostrophe.

 

In old English, there was also a genitive case, used to indicate possession, which usually involved words ending in "-es". Today, this is still sort of present, but an apostrophe is used to mark omission of the e - hence "the dog's bowl" and so on. At some stage, the idea of placing the apostrophe after the s was introduced, to indicate multiple things possessing, which seems relatively (though perhaps not entirely) logical if you think about it.

 

Of course, apostrophes are used to mark omission in many other situations, such as in "mustn't" (must not), and "this day's long" (this day is long). This usage extends to shortening "it is" to "it's", which causes a lot of confusion because of the similarity with the third person singular possessive determiner combined with the fact that it looks like the modern equivalent of a genitive case marker is being used.

I thought this post might make more sense if I looked up the definition of inflection.

inflection; prosody: the patterns of stress and intonation in a language

prosody; term used to refer to speech elements such as intonation, pitch, rate, loudness, rhythm, etc.

intonation; The ways in which the voice pitch rises and falls in speech.

Please can you simplify/summarise your post for my understanding.

I thought this topic was going to be about people using ` instead of ' for apostrophes. I'm disappointed.

I've never even seen anybody do that.

One of my uni tutors discussed this with us recently. Basically that 'It' does not recieve an apostrophe for the possessive. She had no idea why, and told us she thought it was one of the stupidest things in the language And that was from a University English professor.

This whole apostrophe thing is one of those things that no-one seems to be able to trace back to. My tutors at Uni had a good go but I can't remember what they said now.

And here's me with an Honours Degree in English and even I can't explain it. For Shame:wtf:

It's probably similar to "His". Hi's sounds like it's someone called "Hi", His' (His-is) sounds stupid and awkward and so it's "His".

Hers and it's probably follow the same pattern so they're all similar, even if the sounds are exactly the same as "Her's" and "It's".