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I think I understand: I thought about trees: Tree leaves (leaves from a tree) Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree) Same logic for wate
by nomilk 2y ago
I think I understand:
I thought about trees:
Tree leaves (leaves from a tree)
Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree)
Same logic for water:
Water edge (an edge that happens to be of a body of water)
Waters edge (same but of more than one body of water)
- f33d5173 2y agoIn tree leaves, it could be leaves from a single tree or multiple trees. Hence, you can't pluralize tree into trees leaves, tree isn't allowed to recieve a plural there. If you write it as tree's leaves, then tree is singular, and the form is possessive (whereas before it served to disambiguate from, say, leaves of a book). Then you can also pluralize tree to trees' leaves, and now it's leaves from multiple trees.
- nomilk 2y agoWould the same logic also invalidate ‘waters edge’?
- dylan604 2y ago> Tree leaves (leaves from a tree) or it could be the single tree is vacating the area > Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree) or multiple trees are vacating the area we could equally turn edge into a verb as well. so now we have a whole other meaning outside of an apostrophe
- nomilk 2y agoHadn't even considered that. I think that confirms "waters edge" can be grammatically correct. (random example: "as rain falls, flood waters edge closer")
- penteract 2y agoI'd add that "waters" doesn't need to mean more than one body of water. It can be used somewhat poetically to refer to water in a single body. First example I could find: https://biblehub.com/joshua/3-8.htm https://biblehub.com/joshua/3-8.htm