Monday, April 29, 2013

possessives - What is the correct way to say "It was this week that Justin and my lives changed forever"?




What is the correct way to indicate "Justin and I" as being possessive of our individual lives in this sentence? Is there a way to do this without restructuring the sentence?



A friend of mine posted a Facebook status that said, "It was this week that Justin and my lives changed forever," in regard to a Facebook memory. This doesn't sound correct to me, as it is possessive and thus, I assume, needs a possessive suffix ('s) after either "Justin" or "my".



I've seen some other threads on here that come pretty close to answering my question, but they all follow the joint possessive (my and Justin's) with a singular noun, like "cat" or "seafood dinner".



The best solution I can think of is to change "Justin and my" to "our", but in a sentence that follows she says, "Now he's gone over a year...etc." without any other reference to Justin, so I feel like individual identity might be important to maintain. Some other possibilities that I've seen suggested include:




  • It was this week that Justin and my's lives changed forever


  • It was this week that my and Justin's lives changed forever

  • It was this week that mine and Justin's lives changed forever

  • It was this week that Justin and I's lives changed forever

  • It was this week that Justin and my's life changed forever



Are any of these suggestions even remotely correct?



Thanks in advance, everyone!







Links to the threads I mentioned:





Another page I found - they suggest 'our' the the second last paragraph




Answer




The least amount of restructuring I can think of is:




It was this week that both my life and Justin's changed forever.




The use of both makes it clear that there are two lives—rather than a shared single life (in the case of a partnership).



Without any restructuring, the "best" that can be done (I think) is:





It was this week that Justin's and my life changed forever.




With joint ownership, the possessive belongs to the final subject. In the example, since the first subject has a possessive, it could be assumed that there is no joint ownership. Of course, this is still not ideal. I don't think there is a good solution without some degree of restructuring.


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