A3. The
answer Ms. Fogarty has provided to the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice is
indeed "quick and dirty"--as she prefers to label it herself--and it is
not correct. [No disrespect is intended here; on the contrary, we do
appreciate a lot Ms. Mignon Fogarty's work. It is just that some of the
words she uses are not quite . . . appropriate.]
The correct answer is this:
1. in writing, particularly in official
papers, the correct grammatical form is:
"Kansas's
Statute"--grammatical rules are perfectly clear on this
aspect;
2. note that it is very difficult to read
"Kansas's Statute", therefore in spoken language people use
"Kansas' Statute". However, we can write
"Kansas'
Statute" only in
direct style, because spoken words need to be reproduced exactly in
direct style.
The reasons behind using one form or the other are
indeed complex issues, from multiple points of view. For example, the
synthetic genitive form of the words above is not sufficient to clarify
the problem because in many instances the most appropriate form is: "Kansas
Statute"--this is similar to "The
Ohio Amendment Act", "The USA Immigration Law",
"The State of California Clean Air Act", etc. Without
the
apostrophe, both words form a compound-noun construction having exactly
the same meaning as the genitival form.
ATTENTION
The compound-noun construction we refer to [Kansas Statute] is a bit
more complex, because the word "Kansas" becomes in fact an
attribute. For details, please consult LSEG4.
To conclude, the synthetic genitive form may be used
grammatically, or "as it is spoken", in particular instances; however,
the compound-noun[sic] construction alternative/option has a far wider
range of applications.
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