Well, if the apostrophe is an appropriate option then it must mean that the community service belongs to the hours rather than the hours belonging to the community service, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Roger Loran Bailey"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Karl Marx The Militant: http://www.themilitant.com Pathfinder Press: http://www.pathfinderpress.com Granma International: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html----- Original Message ----- From: "Lynn Zelvin" <lynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 3:31 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] OT: Re: Re: question about a sentence
I can see why this list is so ridiculously high volume. Put together a group of people who love books and reading and this is what you get. And I can't resist weighing in. Clearly, the apostrophe could have been intentional and without any way to check should be left. But on the grammatical front, I think we routinely let segments of time take possession. 120 hours is a segment of time. In this case, it is actually the person's sentence, the other meaning of sentence, or you might say his penalty. You could say he received a sentence of community service of 120 hours or that he was sentenced to 120 hours of community service. Either one could belong to the other. In searching for confirmation of this, I found a <http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm>Guide to Grammar and Writing put up by an organization called the "<http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/giving/>Capital Community College Foundation" at http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm which has a very interesting page on possessive forms at http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/possessives.htm. At least I found it fascinating. Which may say something about my level of nerdiness. There is a section that might be relevant which begins with "For expressions of time and measurement, ...," which affirms my assertion that an amount of time can take possession. But the bottom line seems to be that either 120 days could modify "community service" or possess it, and either one would be grammatically correct with slightly different shades of meaning. I'm still pondering this, but the apostrophe is clearly an appropriate option. Lynn
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