Re: A friend of John's

On Nov 9, 9:38 pm, Ron Hardin <rhhar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
J. Sommers wrote:

What's with the apostrophe in sentences like "A friend of
John's"? Is this a vestige from Old English usage?

There's an apostrophe because it's genitive.

``A friend of his'' is the same.

Called a post-genitive.

The construction, called the "double possessive" in _Fowler's_
(3rd ed.) and the "post-genitive" in_CGEL_(eds. R. Quirk et
al.), consists of "of" "followed by a possessive case or an
absolute possessive pronoun, [and was] originally partitive,
but subsequently used instead of the simple possessive (of the
possessor or author) where this would be awkward or ambiguous,
or as equivalent to an appositive phrase" (_OED_, 2nd ed.; also
O. Jepperson [_Mod. Eng. Gramm._, 3.19], who says that such
_of_-phrases should be called "appositional" rather than
"partitive"). It serves in many instances to clarify meaning:
"a recording of the musician" (= a recording by the musician);
"a recording of the musician's" (= a recording possessed by the
musician). Double possessive phrases are always definite, while
the phrase preceding_of_is usually indefinite. The earliest
citations in_OED_are from the fourteenth century.

In regard to simple possessives, the genitive affix is applied
usually to nouns specifying persons and the higher animals,
while inanimate nouns take the_of_-genitive formation; varia-
tions occur depending on style and other considerations.

Christopher Ingham

.

Quantcast