[tied] Re: Verner's Law (Germanic)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

>
> On Sun, 07 May 2006 15:37:22 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> >On 2006-05-07 04:19, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
> >
> >> 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.
>
> But I'd suspect that "Gruppenflexion" genitives like "the
> king of England's" _do_ originate in enclitic "his" (and
> analogically "the queen of England's" as well).
>

That's not what my native Sprachgefühl tells me about 'medlemmerne
af folketingets' "the members of the Folketing's". It's a genitive
suffix, or vowel-less word.


Torsten