Re: CHAT: Being taken for a furriner ...

David Barrow wrote:

>
> Keith Gaughan wrote:
>
>> David Barrow wrote:
>>
>>> In the Spanish spoken in the jungle here in Peru a construction similar
>>> to the first one above is often used. The standard would be for example:
>>>
>>> la tapa de la botella
>>> the top of the bottle
>>>
>>> the colloquial would be
>>> de la botella su tapa
>>> of the bottle its top
>>
>> Isn't that essentially how the English genitive arose?
>>
>> K.
>>
> Hi Keith
>
> You replied to me rather than the group. I think people there might be
> better qualified than I am to confirm your theory. English genitive
> comes from the Germanic genitive which in turn comes from the
> Indo-European genitive
I keep forgetting to change my list settings so that Thunderbird doesn't
screw up the reply address. Replying to the list now.

I think this was discussed back in the depths of the list's history. I
think it's a coincidence that they have the same form, but I'm pretty
sure the origin of -'s is from constructions like:

     the king his army

and the like. It is, after all, a clitic. I think it generalised under
some influence from the germanic genitive, but it's not actually the
genitive.

 > How IE got it, I don't know

Ah, that's lost in the depths of all those proto-languages we know
nothing about unless you believe in Patrick Ryan's Proto-Language and
Santa Clause... :-)

K.

--
Keith Gaughan -- talideon.com
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

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