Saxon genitive question

Question

Is it correct, from a grammatical point of view, to say "a cats' love"? Can it be translated as "a love between cats"? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

No, that doesn't really work, due to a combination of these two reasons:

• In general, possessives function as determiners, meaning that they play the same sort of role as a or the or every. Just as we never combine a with the or every, we never combine it with a possessive.
• The -'s (or -') of a possessive attaches to the entire phrase that it follows, not just to the head noun.

So, for example, "a cat's love" (with singular cat) is "{{a cat}'s} love": -'s attaches to "a cat", and "a cat's" is the determiner of "love".

That said, sometimes possessives are re-purposed to function as modifiers or complements rather than determiners. When that happens, they are no longer really possessives. For example, we speak of "layman's terms", meaning terms that are commonly used by non-specialists in a subject (as opposed to the "technical terms" that specialists use). In that situation, the determiner is not part of the possessive: "this layman's term" means "this {layman's term}", not "{this layman}'s term". Similarly, "a women's dressing room" means "a {women's {dressing room}}", not "{{a women}'s} {dressing room}".

?"A cats' love" does not have any conventionalized meaning with cats' being repurposed in this way, but I think it's at least possible. For example, I could imagine a fantasy short story about Cupid giving out "loves" to various animals, and accidentally giving "a cats' love" (=a love intended for cats) to a pair of dogs.

In any event, it would not mean "a love between cats".