+-YS-+-D-+
| | |
Jane 's dog is black
Plural nouns take only an "'"; "The students' dogs are black".
This uses YP rather than YS. The dictionary
thus includes the following:
's: YS- & D+; ': YP- & D+;
A possessive pronoun ("Jane's") can also act as a complete noun phrase: "Jane's is black". Thus the expressions "'s" and "'" also carry the main expression carried by nouns "(S+ or O- etc.)". This usage is rare, however; we therefore give it a cost of 2.
All proper and common singular nouns have YS+; all plural nouns have YP+. (YS is also used for plural forms that don't end in 's': "Men's legs are longer than women's". For this reason it was necessary to create separate dictionary categories for plural nouns ending in 's' and not ending in 's'.) Nouns which form possessive determiners in this way - whether singular or plural - take their own determiners and adjectives just like ordinary nouns (ex. 1-6 below). However, they may not take post-modifiers like relative clauses (ex. 7-8); nor, of course, may they act as subjects or objects. Thus YS+ and YP+ on nouns must be conjoined with "@A- & D+", disjoined with everything else.
1.The rich student was tall 2.The rich student's car was black 3.*Student was tall 4.*Student's car was black 5.Students are tall 6.Students' cars are black 7.The man I met was tall 8.*The man I met's car was black
In a few weird cases, a noun can take both a possessive determiner and another determiner; these cannot be handled ("A girls' school" is rejected).