This provokes the question: how much of the problem was caused by the introduction of Latin names?
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joel Davis
Sent: 08 June 2014 01:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Usage query on possessive construction
Thanks very much to all of you. I'm surprised that there were no other examples of constructions like Dametas-is cited. For what it's worth, it seems definitely to be a contraction of "Dametas his," printed with no hyphen in '90. I don't know what's in '93, because the opening f. 145v - 146r is missing from EEBO -- I'll have a look next week. Perhaps an editor at work on '98 was actually reminding readers that the "Sejanus his" construction was only a sophistication based on a misunderstanding of the Middle English genitive ending.
Joel
Joel B Davis
Coordinator, MA Program in English
English Department
Stetson University
421 N Woodland Blvd Unit 8300
DeLand, FL 32720
386.822.7724
On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Jeanie <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
As a follow-up to Craig Berry's interesting comment on the gloss to January, line 60 and E. K.'s phrase "themperor Augustus his daughter," would it be safe to characterize this expression as learned? Is there any evidence that it is used more in certain regions? Is this use of the possessive a deliberate archaism that we are supposed to associate with an affectation of learning?
On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Dennis Moore <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
As for "Elizabeth her throne," etc., OED "her" 3 is the form in question: "After a noun (esp. a personal name): substituting for the genitive inflection -s," attested from OE and ME, current in our period.
Dennis Moore
On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 9:20 AM, Anne Prescott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I don't think anyone was saying that this is the origin of the possessive, just, perhaps, a version, an expansion, a misunderstanding, and improvement of the Middle English possessive as the old remnants of Anglo-Saxon case endings (for the most part) fell away. And that "his" can be good on the ear, in some cases? What would be interesting might be to see if the "his" vanishes when the apostrophe s comes or if these are totally independent. Since the "possessive" itself is there in A-S and Middle English (and just about everywhere in I-E languages, as Prof. Mueller indicates) I don't think that's the main problem. Eventually, since we all need a possessive, something had to replace the M-E possessive and as early modern English began to forget even the remnants of the M_E possessive, "es" just wouldn't do it. Adding a "his" might have struck some ears as not just good for meaning but good for the ear, less hissy. I like it, although of course nobody said "Elizabeth her throne," or not that I can recall. Anne.
On Jun 6, 2014, at 11:13 PM, Martin Mueller wrote:
I agree with Craig that Purchas His Pilgrimage and similar phrases are not
the origin of the possessive. Masculine nouns in German have an -s suffix
for the genitive, and the same is found in various declensions in Latin
and Greek. Modern NLP programs often split off the apostrophe as a
separate token--encouraging the notion that it is some shortened version
of "his", but this has always struck me as a very convenient abomination,
and it causes a lot of problems with the tokenization and annotation of
Early Modern texts, where the possessive case is rarely marked in this
fashion.
Martin Mueller
Professor emeritus of English and Classics
Northwestern University
On 6/6/14, 21:00, "Craig Berry" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Or E.K, who says in the gloss to January line 60, "Iulia, themperor
Augustus his daughter...." No, I didn't know that. I found it in the
OED, which has this under item 4 of the "His" entry. OED also says this
form was "chiefly (but not exclusively) used with names ending in -s, or
when the inflexional genitive would have been awkward."