Talk:His genitive

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An entry from His genitive appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 7 November 2006.

Um, what was wrong with:

This remains the practice in modern English, although some linguists argue that this is not a genitive case at all, but just an enclitic "-'s" used as a possessive particle.

Isn't this saying that the "'s" is just a morpheme added to the end of a noun to indicate possession, rather than indicating a separate noun case? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be a participle (presumably present participle), it would be "Ned possessing house," but that's pretty strained. At any rate, the reason that I cut it is that it was unsourced in the genitive article. I.e. it said that "some" argue, but we had no idea who they were or where they made their argument. Given that it's a minority view, and a somewhat strained reading, I wanted to know who they were. For example, were they structural linguists, comparative linguists, or synthetic linguists. I can see how some structuralists might want to deprecate the -s genitive, but it's kind of ... well... sort of artificial to argue at this point. So, because it was a minority view and we couldn't go hold those people to account, I cut the sentence, figuring that people interested in the genitive itself can go to the genitive article. Also, that sentence was drawing questions and edits. Geogre 12:08, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Partic_le_ - i.e. a random bit of text - not partic_ip_le_. As I understand it, a clitic is a separate lexical element that it half-way towards becoming a simple suffix, or vice versa. But I am no linguist / grammarian.

I have seen references to "English genitive apostrophe" and this article is interesting - it calls the possessive apostrophe "a vestigial case marker - appropriately shaped like a human appendix".

This paper has examples from 1458 and 1482, and also "Lucilla hir company" and "Pallas her Glasse", and discussion of some prescriptive grammarians who insisted that "of" was the only way to form a genitive in English. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

That argument I'm aware of. What can I say? You can look at it either way. Some people suggest that English has no nominal case at all, just as it has only two tenses in verbs. I don't think those historical features are dead, though. At what point do you say that it has no meaning? That's a judgment call, and I think that people are aware enough, unconsciously perhaps, that there are cases involved that they can yet develop the nominal morphology in syntax. In other words, if you want to argue about whether case is vestigal or real, look at novel combinations of nouns and adjectives in new speech. If they follow case rules, then case still exists as a functional matter. I would say that it does. Some say it doesn't. My point is that I just didn't want to go there on this article on the his genitive as opposed to a general discussion of the -s genitive. Geogre 12:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[ Nominal case = nominative? ] Well, English declension says "Modern English morphologically distinguishes only one case, the possessive case — which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic (see the entry for genitive case for more information)." Shrug. It would be difficult to argue with the contention that inflection in Modern English is pretty weak. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

"Nominal" = "name-ish" = "noun-ish." The declension article is incorrect, then, because we also identify the dative in our personal pronouns, and we recognize the accusative ("objective case") as well, although generally only in the personal and impersonal pronouns. I would never argue that inflection is really weak. It's just that a morphological case is not the same thing as a syntactic case. The function of case still exists, and we coin and run together phrases as if the markers were still present. My point was that I didn't want to get into this sort of argument here, and I thought that a reflection on the weakness or archaism of the genitive was inviting, if not demanding, it. We're stronger with our verb inflections, but I keep running into books saying things like, "English has no future tense." It does, but the tense is formed by helping verbs with the main verb: an ending is not the same thing as a case or a tense. Geogre 16:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, proper declension of nouns in English is the exception rather than the rule; and there is no simple future tense in English (that is, formed directly by conjugating a word stem, like in French, without adding auxilliary verbs) - taken together, this, to my mind, indicates that English is only weakly inflected.

But I agree that this is probably not the article to be discussing it in. Perhaps the first part of that sentence should come back, though: adding "'s" is still the way that most possessives are formed in English. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

An example would help. Korandder 09:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Several examples can be found in Shakespeare.

Contents 1 Afrikaans 2 More immediately clear example 3 Old Norse and Old English mentions 4 Victory her dance

[edit] Afrikaans

There is an example for afrikaans in this article. My first language is afrikaans and people would rather say die man se kinders which translates to the man's children. The example might have been used in old afrikaans, I'm not sure, but it is definitely not standard as claimed by the article. - FredStrauss 10:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, sorry, I guess I misunderstood what I read about Afrikaans then. I confused the se (which is some sort of particle, I take it?) with the possessive pronoun sy. —Angr 10:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I am a native Dutch speaker with some passive knowledge of Afrikaans. When I copyedited the article, I let the Afrikaans example stand as I thought it to be correct. It should, of course, be 'se' not 'sy', but correct me if I'm wrong, that's still a possessive pronoun cognate with Dutch 'zijn' (and so, the corrected example would still be valid)? -- Curt Woyte 11:49, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you're right Curt, se could be considered a different form of sy. However, we do use sy, for example. This is his bike would be Dit is sy fiets. Die man se kinders just naturally translates better to The man's children for me, rather than The man his children, but I guess that's kind of the point the article is trying to make. I'm happy with the example as Die man se kinders. As a matter of interest, se is also used for the feminine form, as in Die vrou se kinders, which is The woman's children. Rather than using sy, you would use haar, like her, for example, Dit is haar fiets, which translates to This is her bike. - FredStrauss 06:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I see! If I'm correct, then "sy" translates to "zijn" in Dutch and "se" to the Dutch enclitic, unstressed form "z'n" / "d'r" (which, incidentally, is pronounced "se" for the masculine version in many parts of the Netherlands). So it is a valid example; I shall re-include it. Thanks! -- Curt Woyte 08:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Cool, I'm just going to change it to kinders, kinders is the plural and kind the singular. - FredStrauss 14:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More immediately clear example

I added an example in the first paragraph. I find it to be needlessly time-consuming to have to hunt the main text just to get an examle of the phenomenon I am reading about. Learning by example is a much faster way for me to get understanding than actually have to think about a description - it makes the text more accessible and user-friendly! :-) 195.24.29.51 12:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

There is also a Shakespeare example that I can dig up, but Shakespeare used both genitives. The article is trying to delineate the era when the his genitive was used instead of or in competition with the -s genitive, and that's after Shakespeare. That's why I hadn't had an example right off the bat. Geogre 12:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I changed the example to "Caxton his ink" (the first example I ever saw of the "his genitive"), which is a more appropriate example to the time period than "John his bicycle". —Angr 12:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I changed the lead to reflect the point that the "his" genitive was used more widely that just those 20 years (perhaps it needs further clarification?)

The Allen paper (cited above) has some interesting before/after examples, and of the "her" genitive.

I have found one Shakespeare example - with both the "his" genitive and the "'s" genitive in the same line, no less - Sonnet LV, 7 and 8 - "Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn // The living record of your memory" (we have an article at Sonnet 55). -- ALoan (Talk) 12:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

ALoan, I would prefer your Shakespeare example, because it demonstrates pretty clearly the fact that the earlier use was as an alternative rather than replacement, where a "his" or "her" is used as an intensifier. I love the use as an intensifier, myself, but it's a separate matter from the hypercorrective impulse to replace -s genitives with "his" genitives. Geogre 14:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

A suggestion: perhaps the tragedy Sejanus, His Fall by Ben Jonson (1603) should be mentioned? This play was performed as recently as January 2006 at the Whitehall Theatre in London. Jmas13 17:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Or Catiline: His Conspiracy? -- ALoan (Talk) 17:49, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think in both those cases the punctuation seems to indicate that the "his genitive" was not intended. —Angr 18:49, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree, yes. —Nightstallion (?) 19:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old Norse and Old English mentions

An Anglo-Saxon "his" genitive occurs occasionally, along with a "her" genitive and "their" genitive, but not as a widespread feature of syntax (Curme 71). This "his" genitive continued and developed in other Germanic languages, while it died out quickly in Old English. Therefore, although there are analogous "his" genitives in Old Norse descendants, the Old English "his" genitive is not the source of the early Modern English form.

This reads as slightly confused to me. There is a "his genitive" in Norwegian, which is an Old Norse descendant, but the construction is not from Old Norse, which has no such thing. It came to Norwegian from Low German some centuries ago.

Arrgh! You see, I originally had it as simply Germanic and Low German (e.g. in Dutch), but then all sorts of questions came in and changes, and so I backtracked. Ah, well. This is proving to be a pickle. I cannot cite for this, so please feel free to change it. Geogre 19:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of a "his genitive" in Old English - do you have any examples? Haukur 18:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Baugh had the examples. I can look them up. He regarded it as a brief feature of OE and noted that it had a /hir/ genitive as well. Geogre 19:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

If you can be troubled I'd be interested. Haukur 19:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

It's from Curme, p. 71:

"he his-genitive occurs occasionally in Old English: 'Enac his bearn' ( Numbers, XIII, 29) = 'Anak's sons.' In older English alongside of the his-genitive were a her-genitive and a theirgenitive: 'Mary her books,' 'the boys their books.' Also these genitive forms occur in Old English. The genitive with his, her, and their became common between 1500 and 1700: 'my lord his gracious letteres' ( Thomas Cromwell, Letter to Thomas Arondell, June 30, 1528); 'Mars his true moving' ( Shakespeare, I Henry VI, I, II, 1); ..."

The examples are somewhat few, and I think Curme was trying to say that it was brief. Geogre 11:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Victory her dance

You know, folks, I hesitate to say it, but this is a pretty darned good article now. What's more, it got that way through the wiki- process. It isn't that often, after all, that a dozen hands contribute a piece at a time, sand and plane and clear and varnish together, and end up with a coherent, expressive, and scholarly whole, but it has happened here. Of course, there might be new discoveries that will render all of it worthless, but it's...pretty good. Congratulations and thanks to absolutely everyone. Geogre 16:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)