RE: [Leica] That idiot Johnston again

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Well, excuuuuuuuse me...But Mike is indeed correct. And no, Marc, I can't
site texts. What I can tell you, however, is that about a billion years ago,
when I was just starting out as a reporter at the Washington Post, I had a
Metro Editor - later played by Jack Warden in All The President's Men - who
got a bug wedged where the moon don't shine about the question of
apostrophes and why some place names have them while others don't - i.e.
Harpers Ferry, Va., St. Elizabeths Hospital, in D.C....

He, in fact, had me write a story about the question, and said story not
only got big play in the Post, it was picked up all over the country,
running, as I recall, in the shape of an apostrophe on page 1 of the St.
Petersburg paper....

The why some don't has to do with the U.S. Postal Service, which, a some
point - I don't remember when - decided to drop them from various place
names...

But more on target, I specifically remember speaking with several
linguists - including someone at the Folger, who explained that the
apostrophe was indeed replacing the "hi" in "his," as in, Marc's cameras, or
Marc, his cameras....

I know we can all argue about this until the cows return to where
ever...but.....

This, you'll be thrilled to know, is my one and only contribution to, or
comment upon, this utterly no Leicaholic thread...

B. D.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of
> Marc James
> Small
> Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 3:58 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: Re: [Leica] That idiot Johnston again
>
>
> At 08:40 AM 11/7/1999 +0000, you wrote:
> >Right. Which meant WHAT? Why add "-es"? "Marces" = "Marc
> his." I don't
> >believe most linguistic scholars (great ones or not) rely entirely on
> >textual evidence of early language, since illiteracy was the common
> >condition and written notation was both rare and entirely
> >unstandardized.
>
> It's an inflected ending, Mike.  It has nothing directly to
> do with "his".
> Old English was an inflected language, like German, Latin, Russian, or
> Ancient Greek.  I'm relatively well read in Old and Middle
> English, and the
> construction you suggest -- "Marc, his bucu", simply does not
> exist, while
> "Marces bucu" is relatively common, though a dative of possession is
> encountered on occasion, as well.
>
> In other words, the inflected ending, "-es" (cognate,
> incidentally, to the
> original Indo-European genitive in "-s", as seen in Sanskrit
> and Greek and
> in frozen Latin forms such as Pater Familias) became slurred and the
> apostrophe indicates the missing vowel.  It's just that clear
> and clean.
> (For that matter, the "-s" genitive ending can still be found
> in modern
> German and, I believe, Dutch, the closest cousins to English.)
>
> Occam's Razor slices only one way here, Mike.  No reputable
> scholar has
> ever even considered your suggestion, and heaven only knows whence you
> derive it.  The entire body of students of Old and Middle English for
> several hundred years has explained the possessive apostrophe
> in Modern
> English as being derived from the residual inflected ending in "-s".
>
> See, inter multa alia, Quirk & Wrenn, AN OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR,
> Sweet's OLD
> ENGLISH PRIMER, Wrenn, THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,  Blakely, TEACH
> YOURSELF OLD
> ENGLISH, Mallory, IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS, and Shiller, A NEW
> COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF GREEK AND LATIN, for discussion.
>
> Marc
>
> msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
> Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
>
>