From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 44492
Date: 2006-05-07
>On 2006-05-07 04:19, Andrew Jarrette wrote:But I'd suspect that "Gruppenflexion" genitives like "the
>
>> I find it funny that you have suggested this, since it is identical
>> to the reason why English spells its genitive singular with an
>> apostrophe before the /s/: it was held to be a reduced form of
>> /his/, e.g. "The King's English" was held to actually stand for "The
>> King his English". But I believe most scholars have rejected this
>> idea, and believe that the apostrophe-s is the modern reflex of the
>> Old English genitive singular ending -/es/. I could be wrong, however.
>
>There was a partial confusion between gen.sg. <-(e)s> (regionally also
><-is, -ys>) and enclitic <his>, but of course forms like <queen's> or
><children's> can't be explained in that way (one would expect <queen
>'er> and <children their> instead), not to mention genitives like
><wives> 'wife's' (with the historically word-medial treatment of the
>fricative), common before the late 18th c.