OK, this maybe something well-known in the word world but I couldn’t find it via Google and it’s not something I remember ever learning. Is the history of possesives related to the verb “to be”? I’ve just started teaching an ESL class and a student pointed out a pattern I’d never noticed before. This student always wants to say “he is” for “his” as in “That is he is spoon” and I noticed a lot of posessives sound like a combination of pronoun and “to be”
Examples:
They are - their
You are - your
He is - his
John is - John’s
Obviously,
I am - my
She is - hers
We are - our
don’t fit (although maybe a case could be made for “our”). Anyway, can anyone enlighten me about the history of posessives?
The possessives come for Old English declensions, and it is primarily coicindence that they are close to “is”
Essentially, the genetive (i.e., possessive) case in Old English masculine nouns was generally an -es ending (e.g. strong was “stan-es” (two syllables)) as possessive. That -es was slowly changed to 's
The personal pronoun “his” dates all the way back to Old English, but probably was formed the same way, with the “iz” sound added to “he.” But the -iz sound indicated possession; it was not connection with the verb “is.”
Hmmm, thanks for the info. How about “their” and “your”? Do you know where they came from? (Dang, I thought I had rediscovered something really interesting)
In North Nottinghamshire (just below µYorkshire) you can still here the dialect versions "yourn’ and ‘theirn’ - no idea how to spell them, they could have an ‘e’ before the ‘n’ which dsitances them from ‘to be’.
It’s interesting to note, however, that the possessive in Modern English is not a case at all, per se. It’s a bound morpheme but it can attach to other words than the noun it modifies: “The last czar of Russia’s pants” doesn’t refer to the last czar of the trousers of Russia, but instead to the trousers of the last czar of Russia.
