Apostrophe and a type of noun

Question

Hello,I know that by adding 'the' to some adjectives I can make a plural noun, e.g. the poor. Can I use "s+apostrophe" to show plural possession? For example, the poor's houses. Thank you.

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

No. You have to say: the houses of the poor, or poor people's houses.

CB

BillJ · Answer

Good question!

Since the genitive (possessive) is marked on nouns by 's (or by the apostrophe alone), and "the poor" is after all a noun phrase, you'd think that "the poor's houses" was okay.

But "the poor" (a noun phrase understood as "poor people"), is no ordinary noun phrase. Grammatically, "poor" is a "fused modifier-head" where the head "people" (a noun) and the modifier "poor" (an adjective) are "fused" together into the single word "poor", which is then determined by the definite article "the".

But "the poor" seems to resist taking a genitive marker, probably because of its "fused" construction where the prominent word is the adjective "poor".

I looked but couldn't find any attested examples of "the poor's houses" (or "the rich's houses"), so it seems the answer to your question is, no.

Apostrophe and a type of noun

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