Timeline for At 12 o'clock, I have ... "an hour's break" or "an hour break" or "a one-hour break"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Dec 9, 2015 at 14:25 | comment | added | Jay | @FumbleFingers I didn't switch anything: I used the word "belong" in my original post. :-) I absolutely agree that a possessive or genitive does not necessarily indicate strict "possession". I've said that multiple times. But I'd say that it does indicate some sort of "association" -- happy to hear a better word. Surely your position is not that ANY use of a modifier on a noun calls for a genitive. Just saying "it doesn't have to be ownership in the sense of bought and paid for" doesn't prove that therefore it does mean absolutely anything. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 22:12 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Even though you've switched the word to belong, you're still preoccupied with the notion that the genitive indicates possession. As noted in the relevant Wikipedia article, In English, strict possession has been found to be expressed in only about 40% of the situations labeled as "possessive" by linguists, a fact which may incline some to prefer the more traditional term "genitive".. I don't claim to be a "linguist", but I'm definitely one of those "some" who prefer the less misleading term. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 22:02 | comment | added | Jay | Let me put it this way: Would you say, "I have a one-foot's ruler" or "I have a one-foot ruler"? "We had 40 mile-per-hour's winds" or "We had 40 mile-per-hour winds"? Or generally for words that express the amount or extent of something: "He was a tall's man" or "He was a tall man"? Etc. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 21:58 | comment | added | Jay | @FumbleFingers "A week's wages" makes sense to me. It is the wages for the week, the wages that belong to that week. "Dawn's early light" means the light that is part of the dawn, the light of the dawn. But "hour's break" isn't the break for the hour or the break produced by the hour or the break associated with the hour. It is the duration of the break. Unless, as I said, you are talking about the break associated with this hour versus the break associated with another hour, like the 9:00 break and the 10:00 break, in which case "this hour's break" would make sense. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 21:51 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Jay: What can I say? Your answer text says "a possessive is not appropriate", and you comment that you "don't see any sense" in such usages. But Google Books claims almost 30,000 written instances of, for example, a week's wages, and even more for dawn's early light. Those usages aren't so much stretching the limits of figurative possession as simply reflecting the scope of the genitive form, which is inherently much broader. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 21:26 | comment | added | Jay | @FumbleFingers Not my intent to say that a genitive can only mean possession in the sense of "these are MY shoes because I bought and paid for them". As I vaguely recall us discussing elsewhere, "possessive" is a very broad concept: there's a huge difference between "my shoes", "my husband", "my country", "my favorite color", etc. ("Red is MY favorite color! You'll have to pick a different one because I already claimed red.") My intent (mine!) though, was to say that I don't see any sense in which "hour's break" makes sense as a possessive. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 21:12 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Dan: I'd also generally say that, but if you're going to write it you really should include the apostrophe (Jay is mistaken in supposing the Saxon genitive implies possession, ownership in such usages). But when I just checked Google Books for have an hour / an hour's / a one hour break the numbers are 626/206/431, so apparently we're in a (slight) minority. On the other hand, switching to the more informal get an hour/.../... break gives 156/39/8, so in the context of casual speech we at least move up from last position to second place. | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 18:53 | comment | added | Dan | @FumbleFingers +1 I'd generally say "I'm going to have an hours break" or "I'm going to have an hour off" | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 17:53 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | What @stangdon said. It's already misleading to single out one of OP's alternatives as "better" than any others. It's even worse to mistakenly single out an hour's break as "wrong" (particularly if, as I more than suspect, that's actually the most common form in natural speech). | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 15:25 | comment | added | stangdon | "An hour's break" is perfectly correct usage, because it is a break of one hour. This usage isn't as common as it used to be, but you do still see it: Google Ngrams search result | |
| Dec 8, 2015 at 15:00 | history | answered | Jay | CC BY-SA 3.0 |