A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

§5.2 Genitive formation 279

With some of these nouns the foreign plural is much more common than the sin­
gular, and for some speakers has been learned as a singular. Examples include
data (from datum), media (medium), algae (alga), bacteria (bacterium), criteria
(criterion) and phenomena (phenomenon). There is considerable variation, how­
ever, with respect to how far this singular usage has become established as a vari­
ant of the plural. Singular data and media are firmly established in Standard
English (examples like The data is reliable or The media keeps hounding her are
widely used and considered acceptable); but singular criteria and phenomena def­
initely are not (expressions like !this criteria or !a new phenomena are regarded as
non-standard). Various other items, such as algae and bacteria, belong in the
middle ground.

5.2 Genitive formation

The genitive forms of the personal pronouns and the interrogative!
relative genitive pronoun whose have been described in Ch. 5, §8.3, and Ch. 11, §3:
in this chapter we confine our attention to other genitive forms.
From a morphological point of view, there are two kinds of genitive, the 's geni­
tive and the bare genitive:

[24] 's GENITIVE

11 BARE GENITIVE

girl - �irl 's

girls - �irls'

woman - woman's women - women's lames - lames's

barracks - barracks' lames -lames'

The 's genitive is the default form: we need only give the particular conditions under
which the bare genitive must or may occur, and can then say that the 's genitive is
used for the remainder.

(a) The bare genitive

In speech, the bare genitive is not overtly marked at all, being identical in form with
its non-genitive counterpart. In writing, it is marked by a final apostrophe.
The bare genitive is virtually restricted to nouns ending in s. It is usually obliga­
tory, but it may also be optional, alternating with the 's genitive:

[25] PLURALS FORMED WITH THE -sl-es SUFFIX
ii NOUNS IN s WITH BASE PLURALS
iii CERTAIN PROPER NOUNS IN s

obligatory

obligatory

optional

girls'

barracks'

lames'

foxes'

series'

Socrates'

The obligatory bare genitives are found with plural nouns marked as such by the

·s or ·es suffix (including those with modification of the lexical base, as in

wives'), and with nouns ending in s that have base plurals, as described in §5.1

above. Note that barracks' and series', like the non-genitive counterparts, can be

either singular or plural.

The optional bare genitive is found in proper nouns ending in a single s, espe­

cially classical ones. It is more likely in writing than in speech, and more formal

than the variant with's.