Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 21:41:15 -0400

From: James C Stalker stalker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU

Subject: Re: Faculty and Librarian



librarian's code

librarians' code

librarian code



The first means one librarian and the code belongs to the librarian.

The second means two (or more) librarians and the code belongs to all of them.

The third is a new development, maybe.



A good analogy might be secretary. They have settled on National Secretaries

Week. Plural, but not possessive.



Traditionally, faculty is noncount; secretary or librarian is count.



Now, how about the possessive problem: faculty code vs. faculty's code. Is the

first the code for the faculty imposed by someone else and the second a code

that the faculty imposed on themselves? Or do they mean the same thing (no

matter where the code came from) with the first being an attributive noun (or a

compound noun) and the second a possessive noun, that is different syntactic

structure, same meaning?



The best bet might be #3, on the grounds that librarian code in this case is to

be construed as a compound noun. Forget the faculty. They aren't much help

anyway.