From Monday’s NY Times.I think you need to go further in order to make clear if it was the courier, not OBL, who was being surveilled. So modify (b) to make the appositive clear: "Osama bin Laden's trusted courier, whom American spies hand been hunting for years, was finally located ..." Thoughts?
A trusted courier of Osama bin Laden’s whom American spies had been hunting for years was finally located in a compound 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, close to one of the hubs of American counterterrorism operations.The question is: why do you need the possessive apostrophe after Laden at the beginning of the sentence. You could have written:
a) A trusted courier of Osama bin Laden whom American spies had been hunting for years . . .But it seems redundant to me to have both the word “of” (which denotes possession) and the possessive apostrophe. Of course, in spoken English, I think it is quite common to have the double-possessive construction. “John is a friend of mine.”
b) Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier whom American spies had been hunting for years . . .
Friday, May 6, 2011
A STRANGELY TOPICAL ALOTT5MA FRIDAY GRAMMAR RODEO: From regular commenter Chuck:
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