Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 02:06 PM 11/6/1999 +0000, Mike Johnston wrote: > >What they don't realize is that the apostrophe replaces missing letters >in these cases, too. Originally, possession was indicated by the word >"his." Thus, to say that an axe belonged to John, in Middle English one >would write "John, his axe." This is absolute nonsense. In Old and Middle English, possession is indicated by the ending "-es", so that "Marc's book" would have been "Marces bucu" or somesuch. In the Early Modern period, during the Tudor reigns, one of the sound changes which afflicted British English (not all of these changes ran north of the border in Scotland) was to slur over the full inflected ending, so that "Marces" (pronounced 'Marc-ehs" became pronounced "Marx". The result was the spelling convention we have today of spelling this "Marc's", the apostrophe indicating the missing "-e-". Citations available to those who are interested. I'd suggest starting with Quirk & Wrenn, probably. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!