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October 3

Yours'?

My name is Adam. Your name is Bert.

My name is Adam. Yours is Bert.

My name's initial is "A". Your name's initial is "B".

My name's initial is "A". Your name's is "B".

My name's initial is "A". Yours' initial is "B".

My name's initial is "A". Yours' is "B".

Are the last two lines ungrammatical or just unusual, would you say? For the sake of argument, assume that the distinction between "your name's initial" and "your initial" signifies, so that simply dropping the possessive apostrophe from the last line may (or may not) subtly change the sense.

- 2A02:560:4D27:B100:ED8D:9D51:1B0C:D4CB (talk) 16:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's ungrammatical. In a situation where there's a meaningful difference between ownership being yours and being your name's, you'd need to spend additional words to be clear. As far as I'm aware we don't have second-order possessive pronouns in formal English, like "mine's" or "his'" which would describe possession by a party that itself belongs to another party. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:28, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's pretty safe to say that "yours'(s)" doesn't exist in any form of quasi-standard English... AnonMoos (talk) 19:52, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's your'n opinion. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:47, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or y'all's. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suddenly I'm thinking of how often I've heard your guyses as the possessive of you [plural]. —Tamfang (talk) 20:40, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]