I would like to say something like
The boy, Adam's, favorite toy was a bike.
What is the proper way to say this?
1 Answer
Yes. That's right.
The possessive -'s suffix has gone from being a paradigmatic Genitive Case suffix that marks the possessor noun in Old English (or Modern German), to being a syntactic clitic marker in Modern English that marks the end of a Noun Phrase containing the possessor (e.g, the King of England's mistress).
Since the boy and Adam are both noun phrases in an apposition relation, that in itself constitutes an NP, and that NP ends with Adam. Hence that's where -'s may be placed.
The boy, Adam's, favorite toy was a bike.
However, -'s may also mark both of the apposed NPs, since they're NPs too, and they're both possessors.
The boy's, Adam's, favorite toy was a bike.
In writing, this last construction might be a good occasion to use a dash to set off the appositive.
The boy's – Adam's – favorite toy was a bike.
answered Feb 11, 2012 at 0:43
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2Thanks so much! To be honest, the second sentence you provided was what I figured would be correct, though it sounded quite weird, so I was going to stick with what I had. The last sentence, however, sounds and looks perfectly fine and grammatically correct. Commented Feb 11, 2012 at 0:47
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Punctuation is always a crapshoot. Sister Mary Nazarita never discussed dashes -- feeling perhaps that they were beneath her august notice -- so I had to figure out their intonation curve myself. Commented Feb 11, 2012 at 1:33
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Maybe ok in speech, sure. All speech is okay. But beyond that, I disagree. Not sure I accept that kind of appositive in most writing. The King of England's mistress is fine.– LambieCommented May 3, 2022 at 22:25
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2There is no language beyond speech. Spoken language is real language; writing is just modern technology. English could be written in Chinese characters and it'd still be English. Commented May 4, 2022 at 1:54
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Imho, this particular example could reasonably be articulated with or without a pause between the generic noun boy and (particularizing, "appositive") Adam. Same as the optional commas/pauses setting off the specific name in, say, That's my uncle, John, over there. But regardless of whether they're separated by a pause or not, the two terms collectively effectively constitute a "composite noun" (boy + Adam and uncle + John) subordinate to the clitic 's. And to my mind, valid orthography includes parenthesizing the second term in the pair. Commented May 4, 2022 at 12:05
boy's. In the end I rewrote it to avoid the mess. Something likeThe favorite toy of the boy, Adam, was a bike.