There’s also an inalienable possession factor involved.  If I say, “Geoff is a friend of mine”, I’m saying that he is an acquaintance with whom I’m on friendly terms.  If I say, “Geoff is my friend,” then I’m saying that Geoff belongs to that small circle of trusted, close friends.  “A friend of Summers’s” refers to someone in that outer circle of friends.  Because we don’t hear apostrophes, “a friend of Summers” would be ambiguous and probably avoided, at least in careful writing.  “Summers’ friend” would be someone close to Summers, and apparently the reporter is making a careful distinction in his/her choice of genitive construction. 

 

“Inalienable possession,” by the way, is a grammatical term that I’ve stretched a bit to apply to English.  We don’t have a strong alienable/inalienable grammatical marking in English, although it does occur.  Body parts and things closely associated with the body may be inalienable and other objects alienable.  This shows up in contrasts like “The snowball hit me on the knee/my knee” vs.  “?on the briefcase/on my briefcase.  With inalienables we tend to use the article, with alienables the genitive pronoun.   Other languages code alienablility much more explicitly and consistently.

 

This is a truly picky point, but I prefer “genitive” to “possessive.”  “Possessive” is one of the many functions of the genitive but clearly not all genitives are possessive:  “the car’s bumper” (partitive), “my hometown” (associative), etc.  Back in the 80s we hired a new literature faculty member at Ball State, a very good feminist critic.  We were having coffee one morning when I referred to “my wife.”  My colleague objected to my use of the possessive with reference to a spouse, whom I most assuredly do not own.   What followed was a critical discussion of criticism and grammar.

 

Herb

 

 

At 01:49 PM 10/11/2009, Geoffrey Layton wrote:

In this week’s edition of The New Yorker, there is an article that includes these two quotes about Larry Summers:  “According to a friend of Summers’s, Harvard had wanted . . . Two questions arise from these quotes.  First involves the formation of the possessive with a proper name ending in "s." The writer adds “…’s” to Summers’s name in the possessive case - but shouldn't the possessive be Summers' - or didn't it used to be?

DD: Varies by the style book of the publication.

Second, why is the possessive necessary at all?  Why not “friend of Summers” . . .

DD: Would you say, "A former friend of I? A former friend of me?" I suspect you would use the possessive first singular. "A former friend of mine."

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