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

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 13:54:16 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:

>Keith Gaughan wrote:
>
>>
>> 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
Oh, very interesting, I didn't know that this construction exists in English
too. It's all parallel to German:

dem König seine Armee
the-DAT king(-DAT) his army

I suppose this isn't considered to be correct standard English? Does it have
an archaical flavour?

>> 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.
>
>
>
>It's a long established folk etymology, which was given some grounding
>in the 17th century by hypercorrect writers(Ben Johnson, I think, for
>instance).
>
>Hawever, in fact, it comes from the Old English '-es', on Strong
>Masculine Verbs.  It's attested throughout the Middle English period, up
>to the present day.
I suppose you mean "strong masculine nouns", not verbs, do you?

g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust

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