November 2, 2006
Okay, I might come across as an idiot, but I really want to know this:
Why, in the English language, do we use the apostrophe and s to show posession? (ex. Stephanie's yellow boots)
The French de and other languages (like the Chinese de 〔的〕, for example) show possession expressed by a word. Some languages have possessive suffixes that latch on to the noun, like Hebrew and Latin.
Why & when did English start using punctuation to do this?
Why, in the English language, do we use the apostrophe and s to show posession? (ex. Stephanie's yellow boots)
The French de and other languages (like the Chinese de 〔的〕, for example) show possession expressed by a word. Some languages have possessive suffixes that latch on to the noun, like Hebrew and Latin.
Why & when did English start using punctuation to do this?
posted by Mr. Horton at 3:38 PM
7 Comments:
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It seems, according to my huge volume The Grammar Book (An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course), the 's possessive is a form of the genitive case, from synthetic languages. It is a type of inflection, but there is no reference to the time of the original occurence. It does mention that when the head noun is an inanimate object, English natives prefer a "periphrastic" possessive, i.e. the foot of the bed.
Isn't that the kind of shit that keeps you up at night?
Phan.
It's a simple, straight-forward enough question.
David
Lynn,
Unfortunately, yes. Up at night and thinking about language. That or radical, bloody revolution or Judgement Day, whichever happens first.
What I still don't get is the jump to punctuation. Some languages have possessive suffixes that latch on to the noun (like Hebrew and Latin for example), some use possessive words (like the aforementioned de), but I can't think of any other language that goes for the punctuation approach to possession.
It seems like there'd be a good, clear reason.
David
According to: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwheret.html
" Back in the days when English had many more inflections than it
now has, the most common suffix for the genitive singular was -es.
(There were several noun declensions, so that not all nouns fitted this pattern; but this could be considered to be the "most regular" case.) For example: mann (=man), mannes (=of the man). Over time there developed a tendency to stop pronouncing the unstressed "e",
so that "mannes" became "mann's". The apostrophe stands for the
omitted letter."
K. Lorraine,
This cuts to the heart of things and answers the question.
Was this pre or post printing?
Thanks,
David
Diane Cady responds:
"The issue of ownership is an interesting one since authorial ownership (or at least some scholars claim) is an early modern phenomenon. I'm not 100% convinced by that (we have some examples of medieval authors making very strong ownership claims for their work), but it makes me wonder if the development of the apostrophe is somehow related to that.
People tend to think of philological matters as boring.
I''m the first to argue that they definitely can be. But they can also be more insightful than some would initially think.
dc"
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