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KaisuHolm Posted 14 years ago
Grammar
Possessives with gerunds
I had a lengthy conversation with one my English teachers about a sentence we analyzed during class. I was sure there was an alternative structure we could use in the sentence but my teacher disagreed.
The sentence was: "There were problems because of my parent's insistence to take the dog on holiday."
I was sure that you could say "There were problems because of my parent's insisting to take the dog on holiday."
Well, as I said my teacher said it is incorrect and said if I wanted to use a genitive structure I would have to have a noun after it, not a verb. So I said I would look into it at home and I found something about "possessives with gerunds". But I'm not so sure if that structure can be used in this sentence as I found examples like "we enjoyed their singing" and "he affected my going there".
I would appreciate if someone could help me out with this one. Thank you in advance!
The sentence was: "There were problems because of my parent's insistence to take the dog on holiday."
I was sure that you could say "There were problems because of my parent's insisting to take the dog on holiday."
Well, as I said my teacher said it is incorrect and said if I wanted to use a genitive structure I would have to have a noun after it, not a verb. So I said I would look into it at home and I found something about "possessives with gerunds". But I'm not so sure if that structure can be used in this sentence as I found examples like "we enjoyed their singing" and "he affected my going there".
I would appreciate if someone could help me out with this one. Thank you in advance!
Top answer
" Unless you are speaking of only one parent, the apostrophe should follow the s. The sentence does not sound natural to me. " If I were to say something like this, it would be, " ...
- " Unless you are speaking of only one parent, the apostrophe should follow the s.
- The sentence does not sound natural to me.
- " If I were to say something like this, it would be, " ...
- ".
- There are some who would use parents as a simple plural, with no apostrophe.
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2 Answers
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KaisuHolm "There were problems because of my parent's insistence to take the dog on holiday."Unless you are speaking of only one parent, the apostrophe should follow the s.The sentence does not sound natural to me. I would say, "...my parents' insistence on taking the dog ..."
KaisuHolm "There were problems because of my parent'
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Oh, of course the apostrophe comes after the s as I mean it as a plural.
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