I found it interesting to learn that possessive apostrophes are more or less an English language only thing. Possessive word endings ("Tomes pen") used to be a thing, but I guess got abbreviated so much (Tom's pen) they no longer exist.
A professor of mine used to say that the original form (don't know what time period; he never explained that) was "Tom, his pen", so therefore the apostrophe still indicates elided characters. I don't know whether his example is correct, or yours, or both, but they're clearly pointing in the same direction.
Since English is a Germanic language, it seems more likely to me that the possessive ‘s’ is a carryover from the German genitive case. Pure speculation, but perhaps the apostrophe was added as case endings disappeared from English (except for the rare exceptions like who/whom)
Note that it's also spilling over into German, frequently called "Deppenapostroph" by people with a similar, but less polite view as those behind the article. So Germans absolutely do assume that it is the same thing, to the point where many seem to feel that it would be more correct to write it like the English do.
Thank you! I didn't take the time to google anything this morning.
However, from that article:
>Some people thought that the ’s at the end of a word indicating possession was simply a stand-in for “his,” and so “the king’s book” would be the shortened version of “the king his book.” This theory is no longer popular. Instead, it seems likely that the genitive apostrophe is an illustration of our language’s older, highly inflectional state.
So... Maybe. But I don't think it's "mainly" my professor's!
Which makes me sad, because he was a man of good cheer, and erudition, who so enjoyed having his ideas challenged by interesting new ones. I would have enjoyed going down this particular linguistic / orthographic rabbit hole with him. He passed away last year, and this conversation reminded me how much I miss him.
He had a good innings, though! 1930 - 2022. What a wonderful, interesting life.
In eats, shoots and leaves I recall the claim being made that apostrophes can be used for plurality with borrowed words. A particular example would thus be the "potato". Therefore, a so-called grocer's apostrophe to pluralise potato would be ok, while to pluralise turnip it would not.
Similarly it was considered appropriate for pluralising numbers and days of the week. "There are fifty-two Wednesday's in a normal year." However, if the contraction argument were correct then "Tomes Pen" -> "Tom's Pen" could also allow "Potatoes" -> "Potato's"
