Re: YAEGT: 's (was Re: Standard Average European (was: case system))

Huh? Apostrophe-S on inanimates is perfectly cromulent in English, at
least IML.  The car's wheel, the chest's drawer...



On 4/13/08, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:49:28 -0500, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>
> > I read somewhere that at one time the possessive suffix <'s> was
> > reinterpreted as being a contraction of <his>; some grammarians at
> > that time thus commented that it was illogical to use <'s> for a
> > female possessor, preferring something like "the queen her crown". I
> > think they also sometimes expanded the "contraction", writing things
> > like "the king his castle". I'm not sure how they treated inanimate
> > possessors.
>
> _the house its door_?  But the _'s_ genitive is avoided with
> inanimate possessors generally.
>
> > In any event, that analysis of <'s> didn't last.
>
> Actually, a contraction of "his", later generalized to the
> feminine, seems a more likely origin of _'s_ to me than the
> Old English (< PIE) genitive suffix _-s_.  Modern English _'s_
> is a clitic attaching to the last element of the genitive NP
> (see _the King of England's castle_) rather than a true suffix;
> and clitics usually form from words and not from suffixes.
>
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
>
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>