# Objective Possessive **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 16, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113 "2011-05-16T17:47:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nom\_de\_Plume](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/85f322/32.png) [@Nom\_de\_Plume](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nom_de_Plume)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/1 "2011-05-16T17:47:41Z")
In American English, at least conversational English, it seems common to use a phrase like “…a friend of mine” or “…a friend of Bob’s.” To my ear it _sounds_ right, but my mind says the object of a preposition should take the objective case, rather than possessive. However, “…a friend of **me** ” just sounds odd. Is this type of usage (objective possessive?) some sort of exception to prepositional clause construction. Or is it incorrect grammar that’s been accepted in conversation? ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/2 "2011-05-16T18:04:04Z")
[Double Genitive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case) Apparently there’s a long history of both its usage and nitpickery. ---
**Author:** ![Nom\_de\_Plume](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/85f322/32.png) [@Nom\_de\_Plume](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nom_de_Plume)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/3 "2011-05-16T19:10:33Z")
This is why I love this board _of ours_. I have a question that I’ve wondered about for years. When I post it here, someone has an answer in less than twenty minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/4 "2011-05-16T20:12:35Z")
With the cikkectuin if insane grammar-as-mental-construct theories out these days, I hesitate to say Wikipedia’s article is BS, but… The usage is traditionally called the _partitive genitive_ (or for pedants insisting that English’s other case is not a true genitive, “the partitive possessive”). The significance is that you are referencing one or more items from an implied, notional group. Thus “a portrait of Churchill” would be one for which he sat as model; “a portrait of Churchill’s” would be one from among the group of portraits which he painted. “A friend of mine” is one from among my group of friends; “a friend of me” is awkward, non-standard usage. The idea of being an element (or elements) set out from a group is key to the partitive; sometimes it is used in cases where any sense of possession gets downright metaphysical to attribute. But note it is never used of attribution to the whole group: “He was a friend of all mankind.” In passing, we should note that most English possessive pronouns exist in two forms, depenjding on whether they are used pre-nominally or disjunctively, and this is purely syntactic, not a grammar function: my \> mine your \> yours her \> hers our \> ours their \> theirs thy \> thine (_His, its_, and _whose_ do double duty though.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/5 "2011-05-16T21:05:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Or is it incorrect grammar that’s been accepted in conversation? There is not and cannot be such a thing. If it’s accepted in conversation, then it is, by definition, correct grammar. EDIT: By the way, **Polycarp** , what did you mean by “cikkectuin”? I can’t make it out as being a misspelling of anything, and the only Google hits for it are this thread (damn, Google’s fast) and a few nonsense pages. EDIT AGAIN: Wait, never mind, it’s a transposed-keyboard typo for “collection of”, I think. ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/6 "2011-05-16T21:40:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There is not and cannot be such a thing. If it’s accepted in conversation, then it is, by definition, correct grammar. > > EDIT: > By the way, **Polycarp** , what did you mean by “cikkectuin”? I can’t make it out as being a misspelling of anything, and the only Google hits for it are this thread (damn, Google’s fast) and a few nonsense pages. > > EDIT AGAIN: > Wait, never mind, it’s a transposed-keyboard typo for “collection of”, I think. Correct colloquial grammar, but not acceptable in formal writing. Good code cracking for **Polycarp’s** words. ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/7 "2011-05-16T22:12:10Z")
A “[friend of Dorothy](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=a%20friend%20of%20Dorothy)” is different than a “friend of Dorothy’s.” ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/8 "2011-05-16T22:16:17Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There is not and cannot be such a thing. If it’s accepted in conversation, then it is, by definition, correct grammar. > > EDIT: > By the way, **Polycarp** , what did you mean by “cikkectuin”? I can’t make it out as being a misspelling of anything, and the only Google hits for it are this thread (damn, Google’s fast) and a few nonsense pages. > > EDIT AGAIN: > Wait, never mind, it’s a transposed-keyboard typo for “collection of”, I think. Exactly. I’ve mentioned eye problems here before, I think – often I miss typoes like that, even truly ugly ones such as that one was. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/9 "2011-05-16T23:06:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > EDIT: > By the way, **Polycarp** , what did you mean by “cikkectuin”? I can’t make it out as being a misspelling of anything, and the only Google hits for it are this thread (damn, Google’s fast) and a few nonsense pages. > > EDIT AGAIN: > Wait, never mind, it’s a transposed-keyboard typo for “collection of”, I think. Wow, nice catch! It really should be “cikkectuib” though. Speaking of possessives, does it seem that “its” is no longer a word? Even on SDMB, its is spelled “it’s” more than half of the time. On YouTube comments, for example, I’d guess that’s more like 90% of the time. Also, is there an equivalent of “whose” for non-humans, or has there ever been? “The house whose walls are painted red belongs to me.” “The house thats walls are painted red belongs to me.” “The house whiches walls are painted red belongs to me.” ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/10 "2011-05-16T23:33:29Z")
To begin with English does not have a genitive “case” since the 's (hard to quote and remain readable) can be attached to a noun or an entire phrase. E.g. “The hound of Baskerville’s absence”. Of the four possible parsings of “The daughter of the king’s son is the son of the king’s daughter”, two are contradictory and two are tautological. As said, the double possessive (or partitive possessive, someone called it) has a long and honorable history in English and cannot be called ungrammatical in either informal or formal English. I use it regularly in my own published papers (“By a theorem of Hilbert’s…”). ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/11 "2011-05-17T01:10:18Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Exactly. I’ve mentioned eye problems here before, I think – often I miss typoes like that, even truly ugly ones such as that one was. BTW, it’s “typos.” ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/12 "2011-05-17T03:11:56Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There is not and cannot be such a thing. If it’s accepted in conversation, then it is, by definition, correct grammar. > > EDIT: > By the way, **Polycarp** , what did you mean by “cikkectuin”? I can’t make it out as being a misspelling of anything, and the only Google hits for it are this thread (damn, Google’s fast) and a few nonsense pages. > > EDIT AGAIN: > Wait, never mind, it’s a transposed-keyboard typo for “collection of”, I think. By your own reasoning, isn’t “cikkectuin” the correct spelling? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/13 "2011-05-17T03:15:28Z")
“Cikkectuin” was a northern suburb of Chicxulub which was destroyed utterly, with no remains of its existence surviving, 65 million years ago by the Dinosaur Killer asteroid strike. Or at least that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/14 "2011-05-17T10:58:55Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > By your own reasoning, isn’t “cikkectuin” the correct spelling? Um, no? It’s not an accepted word in any sense. We didn’t even know what it meant until **Chronos** figured it out. How could it be accepted? He’s right. By definition, if a language accepts a certain way of talking, it is grammatical in that context. And, assuming it doesn’t die out, it will soon spread to other contexts. All formal English is is conservative English. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/15 "2011-05-17T12:39:15Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Um, no? It’s not an accepted word in any sense. We didn’t even know what it meant until **Chronos** figured it out. How could it be accepted? Because it’s the standard strawman pulled out by people who don’t (want to) understand descriptive grammar (or, in greater generality, modern linguistics as a scientific field). In reality, some linguists are very interested in errors as errors, as you learn more about a machine when it misfires than when it works correctly: In this case, the machine is the human linguistic process, from the cognitive machinery on down to the specific muscles and joints and so on of the vocal tract. Even if they aren’t interested in the neurology and physiology of language, they’re still prodding at the limits of new rules and the way you do that is to determine what words or sentences could be generated by the rule but aren’t. For example, ‘kite’ is pluralized to ‘kites’ but not ‘deer’ to ‘deers’. These limits open doors into new areas of study (in this case, irregular pluralization) and are a lot of what keeps the field interesting. So errors are recognized as errors. The difference is that real linguists don’t decide that certain things are errors arbitrarily, just because we don’t like how they sound or because they clash with the rules of a totally different language. (If you want a look at the mechanics of how this is actually done, you’d do well to look up ‘corpus linguistics’ and see how statistics and massive great gobs of text combine into a fairly interesting field.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/objective-possessive/582113/16 "2011-05-17T19:39:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Of the four possible parsings of “The daughter of the king’s son is the son of the king’s daughter”, two are contradictory and two are tautological. I dunno; with as inbred as royalty are, I wouldn’t call any of the parsings contradictory.