Homer B Week 4 Parsing Review (p. 64 of SW)

[Kim in FL]

Happy New Year and FL Greetings!

I have a question regarding sentence #2 of the Parsing Review for Week 4: Tom Sawyer -

"Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes."

My daughter parsed "Tom's" as a descriptive adjective answering the question, "whose?" and modifying eyes.

I see her logic. In fact on p. 112 of the Homer Core Manual in the adjective table, examples like "Mary's" and "John's" are used for Possessive Case nouns functioning as adjectives.

I guess the discrepancy is that she selected adjective vs. noun for the Part of Speech column which then caused the other columns to be interpreted as an adjective.

How shall I explain the correction to her?

Appreciate your insights as always,
Kim

[Carolyn]

Excellent question!

Explain to your daughter that the word 'Tom' is a noun. It is, indeed, in the possessive case and functioning like an adjective here, but at heart, it's still a noun. I would accept parsing it as an adjective, but encourage her to parse it as a noun in the future.

This problem comes up even more with participles. They're formed from verbs and can be parsed as such, but they're acting like adjectives and can be parsed that way as well. Both parsings can be helpful.

[Kim in FL]

Oh, I am encouraged we are on the right track and she is putting some good thought into her parsing. These message boards are SO helpful. Thank you for all your time.

Sincerely,
Kim