Hi folks –
The belief that the {‘s} stands for his is mistaken, but has a very long history, as is shown by
the Shakespeare quote. The breakdown of the OE case system resulted in the phonetic
merger of {-as} (nominative & accusative plural of masculine a-stems} and
{-es} (genitive singular). By Middle English, things were a bit messy, since
there were a number of competing ways of making a genitive (not all nouns in OE
were masculine a-stems, and the reflexes of the other declensions were there as
competition). The system we have now is the result of one pattern, the –s
genitive, out-competing the others except for in certain fixed expressions
(e.g. Lady Day).
However, I don’t know of any
evidence (yes, I’m hedging here!) that speakers of Middle English thought
there was a “missing vowel” – after all, literacy in Old
English virtually disappeared after the Norman Conquest, so by the time people
were writing Middle English, the vast
majority of them would have had no idea what the Old English form would have
been in the first place. Also, stable use of the apostrophe is a much, much
later development (and may be temporary, judging by my students’
writing); MidE writers definitely used contractions, but more as a paper-saving
device. Even in the early 1800s, people frequently omitted predictable parts of
high-frequency words to save space (hence, “y’r obn’t srv’nt”
as a letter closing). Since using an apostrophe to show possession actually increases the amount of space necessary, it isn’t
motivated in the same way.
Bill Spruiell
Hi,
I think that rather than either/or, we may
have a case of two different currents feeding into our current apostrophe form
for the genitive. In the Old English of over one thousand years ago, the
genitive (possessive) singular suffix form for what is termed “the
masculine a-stem nouns” (the largest noun class in their elaborate case
language) was –es. I have seen it explained that our modern apostrophe
plus “s” comes from that earlier case form (the “e” was
dropped, and the apostrophe marks that deletion) .
But I have also seen the explanation that you gave. Given that both forms
“his” plus the noun that is possessed, and the earlier form
“-es” inflected on the noun preceding the possessed noun, I think
it is possible that both forms may have contributed to our current form.
Dallin D. Oaks
From:
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007
8:49 AM
To:
Subject: his genitive
A colleague has sent us the following query, and I thought I'd see what
the experts of this body have to say on the matter:
Folks, I was enmeshed in Shakespeare's sonnet #54 and pointed out that
"Mars his sword" reminds us the possessive apostrophe is there to
show letters have been omitted, whereupon one student said he understood that
was an urban legend. "John's Mini Cooper" did not historically replace
"John his Mini," he said. I love it when students teach the teacher,
but this one is new to me. Anybody know the real scoop???
Jane Saral
The Westminster Schools
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