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

On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:42:26 +1000, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>In fact, if my recollection is correct, "its" is a fairly modern
>possessive pronoun/adjective. Earlier, the word was "his".
That's interesting. Then this is fairly similar to an Alemannic innovation
of a neutrum accusative pronoun, which is quite uncommon because if I
remember correctly, Indoeuropean languages generally or at least originally
don't distinguish betwenn neutrum nominative and accusative, and furthermore
Alemannic has merged nominative and accusative except in articles,
adjectives and substantives, that is to say, in all paradigms except in
pronouns. The stressed neutrum accusative pronoun is "ihns", contrasting
with nominative "�s". That accusative form is readily analyzable as "ihn",
the stressed masculine accusative pronoun, + s-ending -- remarkably similar
to English "its", which is also composed with an s-ending.


>> 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.
>
>That is an interesting point, but doesn't explain why the masculine and
>feminine are the same.
But the genitive doesn't either -- unless the Old English genitive was very
different from the modern German one. In modern German, feminine genitives
don't feature the s-ending. The s-ending is only found on masculines and neutra.


---
gr�ess
mach

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