John Leland wrote:
>In a message dated 6/10/04 3:59:08 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR writes:
>
><< Dutch, a way of handling possession by people (which is not considered
> "standard" but present in many dialects) is to put the possessive adjective
> (usually in shortened form) between the noun of the possessor and the
> possessed thing >>
>This sounds like the 17th century English possessive:"Purchas his pilgrims"
>etc.
>I believe I was told that was an erroneous back-formation by people who
>thought the 's possessive had originally been"his" which was not true.
>
>
It isn't. But it is in many existing Germanic languages(I know of
Norwegian for certain). But the English Posessive comes from the same
root as the Germanic Genitive - Proto-Germanic '-es'.