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Could you use me's as in something like this?

  • The person behind me's phone keeps ringing.
  • The person behind me's breathing sounds laboured.

I've tried looking at other questions but I couldn't find anything about it in this context.

Edwin Ashworth
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Jasmine
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    Related, if not actually providing the answer Q107727. – Andrew Leach Aug 12 '23 at 19:27
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    The genitive -'s suffix has mutated from being a noun case marker (as it still is in German) to being a Noun Phrase Clitic. I.e, it goes at the end of a noun phrase, like the man on the corner's cat. It doesn't matter what that last word means, since the possessive is attaching to the whole noun phrase, not its last word. – John Lawler Aug 12 '23 at 23:34
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    I guess you could, but maybe you shouldn't've'dun. – Mazura Aug 13 '23 at 03:36
  • Did you mean "the person behind me's breathing slow" or "the person behind me's breathing slowly"? – phoog Aug 13 '23 at 13:06
  • Another example of group genitive, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is the subject of this question on the English Language Learners site: "I saw him waving it in the bloke from the Ministry's face". There are some minority opinions on that page that it is a mistake on the author's part. – IMSoP Aug 14 '23 at 13:05
  • It is not entirely clear whether the OP is asking a theoretical question or seeking a practical advice on how to communicate effectively. The comment by @Mazura managed to very succinctly cover both possibilities. – jsw29 Aug 14 '23 at 15:52
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    @IMSoP The ‘minority opinion’ is from one particular user who – for someone claiming to be a native speaker – consistently shows an astounding lack of knowledge and understanding of the English language, claiming that perfectly normal, grammatical, unremarkable constructions are wrong, while exceedingly idiosyncratic and ungrammatical constructions are the only possible correct forms. That particular opinion can be safely ignored. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 15 '23 at 07:57
  • 'The person behind me's phone keeps ringing' is clear, less clunky than 'The phone of the person behind me keeps ringing' ... but sounds slightly tongue-in-cheek, as one knows one's stretching grammaticality somewhat. I'd say best kept to informal registers. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 18 '23 at 17:53

2 Answers2

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"The person behind me's breathing" is called a "group genitive". Grammarian Richard Nordquist states in his introduction to the topic on ThoughtCo:

In English grammar, the group genitive is a possessive construction (such as "the man next door's cat") in which the clitic appears at the end of a noun phrase whose final word is not its head or not its only head. Also called a group possessive or phrasal possessive.

Group genitive constructions are more common in everyday speech than in formal writing.

Nordquist lists several authentic examples, in most of which the last word of the possessive phrase is a noun. Some may find the construction less acceptable when the final word is a pronoun as in this case.

Here are some of the examples of the group genitive that Nordquist includes in his article:

  • I am sitting here in my apartment, recording the guy next door's activities...

  • 'Sweet Home Alabama' begins to play in the man with the boyish hair's pocket...

  • 'No, sir,' said the lad, 'the fellow that washes the windows' brother.'

  • He is the woman who is the best friend this club has ever had's husband.

Laurel
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Shoe
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    I think Nordquist is understating it to say that such constructions are more common in everyday speech than in formal writing. In formal writing, they are very rare. – TimR Aug 12 '23 at 23:02
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    @TimR. There is little doubt that group genitives ending with a pronoun are rarer in formal writing than those that end with a noun, such as "the King and Queen of England's visit..." or "the speaker of the Houses of Parliament's reprimand..." – Shoe Aug 13 '23 at 10:12
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    Yes, I agree, and that's why I found Nordquist's understatement a bit odd. Even the comparative "rarer" doesn't make clear that such constructions are almost never found in formal writing. – TimR Aug 13 '23 at 11:16
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    Examples similar to "the man next door's" are certainly found in written English, including on Google Books eg "the man next door's deeply pitted leg". I also found on Google Books "my colleague next to me's accrediting body", "What about the guy next to me's sleeve?", plus examples in The Guardian. Obvs your definition of formal could be almost anything. – Stuart F Aug 13 '23 at 12:01
  • This might just be my bias as a mathematician, but if you throw in some parentheses, I think it is much easier to see what is going on: "(The person behind me)'s phone keeps ringing" or "(the man next door)'s cat". – Xander Henderson Aug 13 '23 at 14:50
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    Rather than parens, I'd hyphenate it to indicate the grouping: ”_The person-behind-me's phone keeps ringing._” (The way I see it, American English is a little too eager to jam words together, and British English to separate them, when hyphenating can often make it clearer in both.) – gidds Aug 13 '23 at 17:28
  • That all has to do with the particular technology of printing being used, not with the grammar. While I don't think a special phrase "group genitive" is necessary, having a name to mutter may keep the discord down. As I noted in a comment, the usual linguistic explanation is that the Apostrophe S is no longer a case marker (which has to go on a single word), since there are no case markers for nouns anymore. Instead, it is described as a possessive (or genitive; in English the two mean the same thing) Clitic. – John Lawler Aug 14 '23 at 14:43
  • @gidds Germans have it easy, they'd just create the word personbehindme. – Barmar Aug 14 '23 at 15:26
  • The reason why such constructions (in so far as they can be found at all) are more likely to be found in speech than in writing, may be that in speech the manner of utterance can do the job (without appearing artificial) that in writing can be accomplished only by hyphens. – jsw29 Aug 14 '23 at 15:45
  • @JohnLawler Both "group genitive" and "special clitic" are attempts by linguists to systematize this somewhat peculiar feature of modern English. This paper discusses (although mostly decides against) an alternative explanation of an "edge inflection". The bottom line is, English speakers generally agree that noun phrases can behave like this at least most of the time, although exact limits, such as + 's, may produce more debate. – IMSoP Aug 14 '23 at 16:04
  • @IMSoP Clitics are a recognized category in linguistics, occurring frequently in many languages, whereas "group genitive" is an arbitrary name for a phenomenon that doesn't occur in any other language beside English, afaik. – John Lawler Aug 14 '23 at 16:45
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    @JohnLawler Yes, but analysing 's as a clitic is a specific judgement about English, and not a trivial one, because its behaviour and origin are different from most clitics. Talking about "group genitive" is a more general way to discuss the phenomenon without taking a position on how to break it down morphologically. – IMSoP Aug 14 '23 at 17:13
  • So, who's your audience? Linguists rarely use the term, and nobody else cares what it's called. – John Lawler Aug 14 '23 at 19:01
  • It's 0057 in NZ. I'm sitting here chortling over your superb examples. Especially "He is the woman ..." – Russell McMahon Aug 15 '23 at 12:58
  • Your examples may have come form here. Either way, some are incomplete in your version and would (IMHO) be even better if completed. – Russell McMahon Aug 15 '23 at 13:07
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    @JohnLawler The exact same structures are found in the Scandinavian languages, all of whom have generalised -s as a possessive clitic in exactly the same way English has. And the hesitations and insecurities around tacking that clitic on to coordinated NPs containing pronouns or NPs whose final word is not the (only) head (in simpler terms: group genitives) are exactly the same as well. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 15 '23 at 22:45
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People might say it colloquially, but it doesn't really sound right. If you think about it as "the-person-behind-me" being one object, then it seems like it could technically be correct, but it definitely sounds really clunky to my ears. Some alternatives:

  • The phone of the person behind me keeps ringing.
  • The person behind me - their phone keeps ringing!
  • The person's phone behind me keeps ringing.

The first one would probably be my preference as a native speaker (southeast England) if I were writing, though in an informal setting I might also slip into the third one.

JamesW
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    "but it doesn't really sound right" I will say that in the north of England (Manchester) I wouldn't even bat an eyelid at "The person behind me's phone keeps ringing" and I'm usually quite pedantic regarding grammar - I would argue that it's commonplace here. "The phone of the person behind me keeps ringing." is actually a lot less natural to me even if it's technically correct. – roganjosh Aug 15 '23 at 07:20
  • You could also go with "the phone behind me keeps ringing" since presumably the phone and the person who owns it are in the same place, and the person is really entirely unnecessary. – Darth Pseudonym Aug 15 '23 at 14:45