specification proposal: possesive nouns

[phseiff]

Every noun in English has a possessive form. If a worker owns a chair, it's "the worker's chair". If Jesus owns a chair, it's "Jesus' chair". So whether a word (a person's personal-name, name or a noun replacing them) is followed by a "'" or a "'s" when it is put into its possessive form depends on whether it ends with an "s" or not.

I think this should be addressed by adding an extension specification implementing a 's-context value which is resolved to "'" or "'s" depending on whether the word (or resolved value of the tag) proceeding them ends with an "s" or not. This would entail that a warning is recommended by the specification to be raised in case the "'s"-tag follows on a hard coded word rather than a tag, and an error in case a "'s"-tag is not proceeded by anything except whitespace until the start of the file or the next newline before it. It would also require a definition of "word" in the specification, which should generally not be an issue.

Another thing this should entail should be that the string "'s " (if it is hardcoded into the template rather than rendered from a tag) is, if following immediately on a tag, replaced with a tag à la "{'s} "; this should make the syntax less cumbersome.

It might be a good idea to -in the same specification or a different one- implement similar features (minus the string replacement) for the distinction between "a" and "an".

(Also see Wikipedia on this)