- The same interpretation of our construction, without explanation, was given a few years before Mätzner by Dean Alford, The Queen's English (1865) p. 287: “The ‘of’ preceding the noun in the genitive is not one of possession, but of partition. “How many servants of my Father's” = “How many servants from among those of my Father” (cited by van der Gaaff, “A friend of mine,” Neophilologus XII [1927], p. 19). And a century before this we find a similar equation (“A soldier of the King's” = “one of the soldiers of the King”) offered by Dr. Lowth in his “Short Introduction to English Grammar” (1762), p. 27–8 (cited by John T. Curry in Notes and Queries, July—December, 1913, p. 314)—though, at the same time, he calls this construction a “double possessive”!
- It is hardly necessary here to discuss the suggestion of Kellner (in the notes to his edition of Caxton's Blanchardin and Eglantine, 1890, p. xix, xxiii), that our construction was “quasi-partitive”—by which he means, indifferent to the distinction between partitive and determinative. This interpretation, which should bridge the gap between the partitive and non-partitive types, offers, actually, no explanation as to the function of of when combined with a possessive: it is surely not the partitive of which would be called upon to form a construction indifferent to the partitive relationship; and I have never heard of a “quasipartitive of.”
- What Keller contributed, however, was a chronology (and classification) of our construction, as he happened to find this in a small number of Middle English texts. He breaks this constuction down into three types: (1) a (any, some etc.) friend of mine, (2) a knight of King Arthur's (both introduced by an undetermined noun) and (3) the type with demonstrative pronoun (and occasionally the definite article), that beard of thine (the knight of King Arthur's). He notes that the first is found already in Chaucer, and rather frequently (on old f elaw of yours): it is not until the Gesta Romanorum that we find the possessive of a noun (a forester of the Emperours), and the type with demonstrative is found only with Caxton, and then very infrequently (two examples: that berde of thyne, that olde skynne of thyne).—Jespersen, however, points out (NEG III, 16) that the construction with the genitive of a noun can also be found as early as Chaucer (an officer of the prefectes, G.368), and states that there is no reason why this type should not have sprung into existence at the same time as that with possessive pronoun. But he agrees that the third type, with demonstrative pronoun, must have come later (evidently because Middle English [like Old English] possessed a simpler way of combining demonstrative and possessive in the form this my friend, which was only gradually driven out by this friend of mine [< a friend of mine]).
- Finally, van der Gaaf, (whose article, published two years before the NEG, is not mentioned by Jespersen) shows that the first two types (a friend of mine, a knight of King Arthur's) are found already by 1300 (and the type more of thine, anything of thine by 1200): the third, (that beard of thine, the knight of King Arthur's) he attests in 1350. His is the most up-to-date chronology I have come across—but he, too, has been unable to find a friend of his in Old English.
- At the end of his article, it is true, he is forced to admit, in a post-scriptum, that he hae come across a thirteenth-century example of our construction (or the prototype of our construction) in French (… la dame seinte Marie, Kenul de seons ne ublie)—and in AngloNorman! However, he now sees in the Anglo-Norman provenience a sign of English influence on French, instead of the reverse. And he ends with the words: “These few ‘finds’ (for he has also attested other later examples in Anglo-Norman) have not changed my views as to the origin of the English idiom.”
- I have been forced to omit from this discussion the theory of Trampe Bødtker, whose article on this subject has not been accessible to me. Jespersen (in the pages which will be immediately discussed) refers us to an article in Christiania Vidsk. Selsk. 1908, no. 6.34, but tells us nothing of its contents; van der Gaaf, referring evidently to the same article (which he cites under the title “Critical Contributions to Early English Syntax,” Christiania 1908, p. 34) states only that Bødtker suggested “that it may have resulted from a ‘tag’ construction, by which he means that of mine was added at first by way of afterthought, so that there was a pause before it. He adduces parallels from Norwegian dialects.” But, from this, we learn nothing of the Norwegian scholar's opinion as to the function of the preposition of, or as to the reference of the possessive pronoun.
- In his grammar, Jespersen simply repeats, without alteration, an article published three years earlier in a series entitled: “On Some Disputed Points in English Grammar,” S.P.E. Tract XXIV (Clarendon Press, 1926).
- This Norwegian type is, supposedly, found only in one part of Norway: on the coast of Nedenes. In Danish, too, Jespersen tells us, the construction af min is infrequent: while to some of his countrymen whom he consulted it “appears quite natural,… others will not recognize it.” This leads Jespersen to the conclusion that it must be of quite recent origin (“the construction with the singular of the possessive pronoun seems to have sprung up quite spontaneously in recent times”; “in recent colloquial Danish we have…”). But this infrequency may just as easily mean that a very ancient construction is becoming obsolete and this is surely borne out by the dialectal nature of the Norwegian type.—But Jespersen considers the Norwegian construction af min to be separate from the Danish av min!
- It should be stated, for the sake of accuracy, that this theory of apposition, which Jespersen presents as an original contribution (and which I shall continue to refer to as his theory) was already accepted as a possible explanation in 1912—according to information offered in Notes and Queries (1. c. p. 153) by one correspondent, who refers us to the “Modern English Grammar” of J. C. Nesfield (1912). In section 304, Nesfield states of our construction: “Three explanations have been offered—all conceivable: “[(1): partitive theory; (2): double possessive—personally preferred by Nesfield] (3): the ‘of’ merely denotes apposition, as in ‘the continent of Asia’, which means 'the continent, namely Asia'. Similarly, the phrase 'that face of my father's' can mean 'that face, namely my father's [face]'. This explanation is the least satisfactory [!].”
- It is surprising that Jespersen, who went out of his way to consult such mediocre grammars as those of Sonnenschein and Deutschbein, failed to take into account that of Nesfield.
- What of the objection raised by Beekman to the partitive theory: that no one has ever said “a friend of my friends,” “a book of my books”? Jespersen, during his own “partitive” days, found such a construction quite reasonable, and offered, in evidence thereof, an example from Chaucer: “ne no-thing of hise thinges is out of my power.” But it is quite possible that, in this example, the expression no-thing has already come to mean nothing: that is, that it represents an indefinite pronoun ‘naught’ (it may be found already in Old English in this meaning, cf. Bosworth-Toller, s s.v. ping). If so, the construction naught of my things is not quite on the level of no book of my books. I agree with Beekman that such a construction as a book of my books is probably not known to English.
- I hesitate, however, to agree with Beekman's principle: that, just because a book of my books is impossible, therefore “a book of mine” cannot mean 'a book of [from among] my books.” For example one says in French “une femme des plus belles” which must mean “… des plus belles femmes”—yet, surely one would never actually say * “une femme des plus belles femmes.” It is true that in the phrase… des plus belles, it is necessary, for the meaning, to understand the word femmes; yet the moment that this (necessary) word would be overtly expressed, the result would be tautology!
- I would also question the existence of the second type: a friend of me (which Curme must postulate for his theory). While, in Middle English, one may find rather frequently (cf. Einenkel, Streifzüge, p. 85) the type “the friend of me” “the face of you” (a construction which still survives today in a few fixed phrases: “not for the life of me!”), I have not been able to find any example of “a friend of me”—as one does find in German ein Freund von mir and in Dutch een vriend van mij. (One could very probably find the type: a picture of me [objective gen.] but, then, the objective relationship is excluded from our construction.)
- However, I am not absolutely convinced that the three of us represents apposition. Jespersen calls attention to the difference between this (appositional) expression, and the obviously partitive three of us. But is not the second expression the origin of the first? For example, one would begin by saying: “three of us decided to go to the movies” and, later in the account: “the three of us had a wonderful time” i.e. “the three of us just mentioned above.” In such a situation, the difference of nuance would be simply due to the addition of the definite article—being the same as that between “three men” and “the three men.”
- We do find one particular type of apposition, in which the first noun is regularly accompanied by the indefinite article: a monster of a woman, a fool of a boy, a peach of a car, a pigsty of a house etc. But, if only for psychological reasons, it is surely difficult to imagine that this highly affective, hyperbolical pattern, always expressing a personal judgment, could have led to the quite factual type a book of mine.
- As a matter of fact, the emotional nuance that we find with a fool of a boy etc. is often present with (the non-partitive variant of) our construction: that ugly nose of his!; and it may be noted that the two constructions sometimes have the demonstrative pronoun in common: we may also say “that fool of a boy!” Moreover, the two types that ugly nose of his! and that fool of a boy! contain exactly the same type of equation—and one that is the reverse of all other varieties of the appositional of: in the city of Rome, the element of time etc., the first word is a general term further defined by the second: “A is B” (the city in question is Rome, the element in question is time). But in both that fool of a boy and that ugly nose of his—and only here—we have the reverse relationship: “B is A” (the boy is a fool, his is an ugly nose): it is the second noun which is the general term, made more specific by the first. (For an interesting discussion of the particular type of apposition represented by that fool of a boy, cf. Stephen Lyer, ZRPh LVIII, 348).
- The similarity just pointed out could, of course, explain only that nose of his, not a friend of mine. Because, however, of the rather striking nature of the parallel in question, I was for a time tempted to see in that ugly nose of his (but only here) the appositional of from that fool of a boy—leaving a friend of mine to be explained by the conventional partitive theory. But, in addition to the awkwardness of assuming two different origins, I soon saw that the three-fold parallel between the two emotional types which had struck me, was still not quite complete enough to be semantically convincing. For, it is still true that, in that fool of a boy, the second term must always be indefinite, referring to a ‘type’ (even when a proper name: “that fool of a Tom”). In order to have a straight path to our possessive type, one would have to start with some such pattern of apposition as * that fool of Tom, *that fool of him, *that ugly boy of him. From *that ugly boy of him to that ugly nose of his one could pass with the greatest of ease. But, unfortunately, the first type does not exist.—There is, then, no one variety of the appositional pattern which offers itself as the model for either of the two main possessive types with which we are concerned.
- It is inconceivable that the idea did not occur also to Jesperson to consult Boswell and Toller: we can only assume that he limited his search to the preposition of (note the hypothetical paradigmatic examples he offered: “an dohtor of minum, of minre”—which was hardly needed for the partitive function in English, given the presence of the inflected genitive.
- —And the third, either of them: a singular may always be interpreted partitively if the reference is to a massword (gepeahte).
- It need hardly be pointed out that the examples above also disprove the “double possessive” theories of Beekman, Poutsma and Curme, all of whom operated with the preposition of—whereas our construction first arose within the genitive case.
- I should state here that my use of the term ‘absolute possessive’ is narrower than that of many grammarians, who mean to imply by this expression only that the pronoun is not followed immediately by the noun to which it refers—as in “your books and mine.” This is the procedure in the NED in regard to the five pronouns: ours, yours, Ms, hers, theirs: only in the case of mine and thine is the ‘absolute use’ limited to the reference ‘my people, my possessions’.
- Cf. also the use of the abs. poss. in Russ. on mnje svoj ‘he is my relative’ lit. 'he is to me a suus, one's own' (the invariable reflexive svoj referring to the subject regardless of person); zdjesǐ vsje svojé, lit. 'here, all are sui.'
- Cited by van der Gaaf, p. 20.
- Cited by van der Gaaf, p. 21.
- For similar non-concrete references in modern English we may compare: “you'll get your's” [you'll get what's coming to you, what belongs to you], “he did it on his own” [on his own initiative], “theirs [their rˆle, their duty] not to reason why.”
- In Latin, we find the neuter possessive used in an extraordinarily wide variety of nonconcrete references: it may designate the ways, the mannerisms or the natural inclination of a person: suum quemque decet ‘one's own way of being is fitting to each one’ (Plaut. Stich. 5, 4, 11), non est mentivi meum ‘it isn't my nature to lie’ (Ter. Heaut. 3, 2, 28), hau nosco tuum ‘now I see what you are really like’ (PI. Trin. 445); to his rôle, duty, affair, concern: vestrum est dare, vincere nostrum (Ov. F. 4, 889) ‘it is yours to give, ours to conquer’, cognoscunt… immobile agmen sua quemque molientem (Liv. 10; 20, 8) ‘each one working at his own tasks’; to his invention: nihil addo de meo ‘I add nothing of my own’ (Cie. Har. resp. 19: cf. also Fr. ne rien mettre du sien);, to his own achievement: meum mihi placebat, Uli suum ‘I liked what I had done, he liked what he had done’ (Cic., Ait. 14, 20, 3); and the idea ‘on one's own’ (by one's own power) is also found in Latin [stellae] quae… inde splendorem trahent caloremque, non de suo clara (Sen. Q.N. 1, 2,6) “… do not shine by their own power'.
- In Latin, sui alone is translated by Harper's as 'one's friends, soldiers, fellow-beings, equals, adherents, followers, partisans, posterity, slaves, family'—and one could, perhaps, make still further distinctions, according to the context. In medieval French and English texts, the masculine plural possessive is chiefly found in reference to one's household, retinue, fighting-men: the feudal concept ‘mesniee’.
- Van der Gaaf is the only grammarian I know of to see the connection between the types ‘aught of mine’ and 'a book of mine'—but this relationship has not given him the clue to our construction. At one moment, he was perilously close to the brink of discovery—when he remarks that in aught of mine, mine = ‘my possessions’. Yet he continues, somehow, to believe that a book of mine is to be explained in the Mätznerian way.
- Thus our construction is also to be found in (late) Latin: mulleres ex nostris!
- The only justification he offers for separating the French un chevalier des siens from the Latin and Old English type, is the existence in French of the construction une femme des plus belles (in older French, according to Damourette-Pichon 677:2, one could also say une femme des belles). Since here the postponed adjective (constructed partitively) must recapitulate the preceding noun in the plural, he argues that the same interpretation is possible for un chevalier des siens.
- But, in the first place, it is possible that in une femme des [pius] belles, the adjective is not used anaphorically, but absolutely: ‘les belles’ meaning (regardless of the preceding noun) ‘beautiful feminine beings’, ‘belles’. And, secondly, it is not enough to point out that an anaphoric interpretation is ‘possible’ for un chevalier des siens: an absolute interpretation (as Einenkel had found it in Old English) is also possible. He should have proved that the latter was impossible for French, in order to be justified in rejecting the parallel with sum wif of urum, quaedam mulleres ex nostris.
- And for this he was applauded by B0dtker, according to van der Gaaf (p. 18)—who likewise believes that the Old English example should be considered as a separate construction, because of the interval of time between this and the Middle English examples. But, of course, he did not know that our construction is to be found since Caedmon (except for the use of the simple genitive).
- The same idea of members of a retinue ‘belonging’ to an overlord is seen in such examples of the possessive as li Evruin, les Fromont (mentioned by Meyer-Lübke, Rom. Syntax, p. 93), meaning ‘those [men] of Evruin, those [men] of Fromont’ (here, where the proper name is in the oblique [‘genitive’] case, we have, obviously, a quite different construction from the modern les Fromont). Compare also: “A cui estes, dites le moy.”—”Sire,” fet il, “je suis au roy.” (Tobier-Lomm., s.v. à).
- One may find, in Romanian and in dialectal (Sudeten) German, the same question 'whose are you'? used, in reference to the family group: a cui eşti, copiliţǎ (‘little child’)?: wem's bist dut
- All these (Anglo-French) expressions are cited by van der Gaaf, p. 31 (see note 3).
- It might also be said that we know now how to interpret Jespersen's et lommettørklaede av dit and et hus af dit: ‘a handkerchief, a house, belonging to your possessions’. (However, as we shall see later, grammaticalization has taken place with this construction in the modern language—while the French type has disappeared.)
- We may remember that Jespersen objected to the assumption that the type a friend of my father's must be considered secondary to a friend of mine (since he had found both types in Chaucer); this is also the opinion of van der Gaaf (who has found both types in 1300). We must, however, assume the primacy of the type with possessive pronoun, not only because, in our (admittedly scanty) number of Old English examples, only the pronoun is to be found—but also because the absolute concept (‘that which, those who belong to…’) is to be found in English only with the possessive pronouns: there is no evidence that it has been possible to say “one should respect the King's” meaning ‘the property of the King’ (or perhaps, ‘the royal household’), which might explain directly the example ‘a quentyse of the Kinges owne’ cited above.
- We do find, of course, the type “St. Paul's [church],” “I am going to my sister's [house],” “… to the dentist's [office]” etc.—which is often called an ‘absolute genitive’. This however, represents an elliptical rather than an absolute use: always the word which is omitted has the single reference ‘dwelling’ and the historical development which these examples illustrate has been pointed out by van der Gaaf (“The Absolute Genitive,” Engl. Studien.XIV, [1932] p. 54–65). The ellipsis in question (originally limited to churches) is not found before the thirteenth century (at Seint Poules: 1280): it cannot, therefore (as is theoretically quite simple to imagine) represent the restriction of a general absolute concept (my sister's = ‘anything which belongs to my sister’) to the specific reference ‘dwelling’ (my sister's = ‘my sister's house’). Thus “to go to my sister's” has evidently a different explanation from e.g. “ir a lo de mi hermana,” found so frequently in South American Spanish or the Greek διδασĸλov ‘to the teacher's’; since we find here the neuter pronoun, we must have to do ultimately with the absolute concept ‘that which belongs to…’: ellipsis would have required * la de mi hermana (in agreement with casa).
- Incidentally, it should be noted that if Old English had possessed an absolute or elliptical expression for e.g. ‘my sister's’, it would have been necessary to use a demonstrative pronoun (as in Spanish and Greek): “* ic eom icumen to mîrare sweostor” would be impossible in any language which possessed an ad verbal genitive.
- As we see from pat lond pe he mines hafde, it was also possible for the demonstrative (or article) to be found in Old English. In this example, however, we have to do with a limiting clause: there is no reason to believe that it was found outside this type, since Old English could combine so easily possessive and demonstrative (article): pis mîn sunu etc.
- And it may be noted that in Modern English, it is only before a determining clause that the article may be found in our construction: 'the article of his which I like the best.'
- It is probable that one of the editors of the NED may have shared my conviction as to the origin of our construction: if we look up the article on mine, appearing in one of the volumes edited by Bradley, we find the construction of mine listed as a subdivision of the absolute use of the pronoun: “6: mine = ‘those who are mine’; 6b: mine = ‘that which is mine’; 6c: of mine = ‘belonging to me’ (cf. OF prep., 44)”; the same procedure is followed with thine, in a volume also edited by Bradley. There is, it is true, no reference to the historical development of this construction, nor does the definition ‘belonging to me’ (or, for thine: ‘that is [or are] thine: belonging to thee’) reveal anything of this development. But, because of the manner of listing just described, one is surely given to understand an ‘absolute’ origin.
- With the other five pronouns, however, no such clue is given. It has already been noted that only with mine and thine is the term ‘absolute’, as applied to possessive pronouns, used in the same meaning as in this paper: in the articles on yours, ours, his, hers, theirs, ‘absolute’ is applied to any pronoun that is not immediately followed (or preceded: mother mine) by a noun (some editors make the distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘predicative’). In one case (yours), the references to one's people and one's possessions are listed separately (as subdivisions [2b, 2c] of the general ‘absolute’ use/2), but no connection whatsoever is suggested between this reference and the construction of yours. And, as for the remaining four pronouns, no distinction whatsoever is made between e.g. “Then the Lord said unto his [= ‘his followers’]” and “Philip sold his prisoners: Richard hung his.”
- It is, of course, not under the separate pronouns, but under the preposition of that we should expect to find the official interpretation of our construction. But what we read s.v. of 44 is rather ambiguous:
- Followed by a possessive case or an absolute [?] possessive pronoun.
- Originally partitive [?], but subseq. used instead of the simple possessive… where this would be awkward or ambiguous, or as equivalent to an appositive phrase; e.g. this son of mine = this my son; a dog of John's = a dog which is John's, a dog belonging to John. (All the early examples, and many of the later, are capable of explanation as partitive.)
- We cannot be sure what is meant here by the term ‘absolute’; this is probably used in its looser meaning, so that the (also ambiguous) term ‘partitive’ must be understood in Mätzner's sense. (We may also note here the suggestion of an ‘appositional relationship’ [Jespersen!]—though, according to the NED, this would be only a secondary development.)
- This is hardly recognized, however, by grammarians: Mätzner (III, 225–6), Poutsma (II, xxxiii, 284–26) and Curme (“Syntax,” 529) mention no restrictions whatsoever on its use (Mätzner's and Poutsma's examples being drawn from earlier periods of the language, Curme's consisting of a few stock phrases still current today). Jespersen (II, 16, 232) mentions the decline of the absolute use but, according to him, the only restriction is the limitation to the pattern “you and yours” “I and mine” etc. One receives the impression that such examples as “away he fledde, he and his” (Curs. M. 2079), “And he him blessed and alle his” (ibid. 2390), “Lord he seide my self and myne At þi wille al is þine” (ibid. 3088) could still be found in current English!
- It should be obvious however that it is all but impossible, today, to use the possessive absolutely except in crystallized expressions. It is true that we find, as late as 1891 an ‘individual’ use of mine (NED), but it is found inside of quotation marks: “The unhappiness of being here alone is greater than the happiness of seeing things which, if any of ‘mine’ had been with me, I should….”
- Within the crystallized expressions, it is the neuter concept which is mainly to be found (“love to you and yours” being the only exception)—though, in nearly every case, the pronoun has a non-concrete reference (see the examples cited above, note 16): “to each his own” is, however an exception. As for the expression 'not to distinguish between mine and thine' (where we may also find the English pronouns replaced by meum and tuum) we have to do, also, with the idea of ‘possessions’. And yet my feeling is that this expression is felt today as containing a definition of terminology: 'not to know the difference in meaning between the word mine, and the word thine.' This is surely true of the German equivalent of this expression ‘nicht den Unterschied zwischen Mein und Dein kennen’ (where we find the uninflected forms mein and dein, instead of (das] meine, [das] deine): the D.Wb. (s.v. mein no. 14) remarks in this connection: “… das mein als neutr. subst. unterschieden vom vorigen [n° 13: das meine ‘mein Eigentum’], indem es bezeichnet das, was den namen (!) ‘mein’ hat (wie das ich, das mich…)”, and offers the following examples from Freidank (“zer werlde mac niht bezzers sin dan ein wort (!) daz heizet min”) and from Schiller (“nicht worte sinds, die diesen traurgen streit/erledigen!—hier ist das mein und dein, /die rache von der schuld nicht mehr zu sondern”).
- In this connection one may also be reminded of the famous Pensée of Pascal, in which he states that in the mere utterance of e.g. “ce chien est à moi” we have the origin of the ‘usurpation’ of property, and which bears the heading: Mien, Tien—one has the impression that these are abstract words, entries in a lexicon.
- While working on this article, I had, in my classroom, an interesting revelation of how unfamiliar the absolute possessive is to the average English-speaking person today. A group of students, who had had one year of College French, were faced with a sentence in Maurois' Climats containing the expression les miens. All except two took it for granted instinctively that it must refer to the preceding noun (though some of tham had the grace to be disturbed by the fact that this was feminine): one translated it correctly, but only because she had heard les miens used by a Frenchwoman homesick for her family, and had been aided in remembering it by having recently found the parallel expression in German. A second student, quite intelligent, who had to depend upon his English associations alone, and who realized that les miens could not be anaphoric because of the lack of agreement, translated it absolutely in the meaning ‘those things which concern me’ (a meaning which happened not to go against the sense of the paragraph). That ‘mine’ could mean ‘my family’ [or ‘my possessions’] did not enter his head, and he was simply forced to invent.
- It is an interesting inconsistency that Jespersen should omit all reference to the type mine = meum, while over-rating (as we have seen) the vitality of mine = mei. The same inconsistency is apparent in the NED: it has already been noted that, for four of the possessive pronouns, no absolute reference has been distinguished: but, when this is distinguished (as with mine, thine, yours), then little recognition is offered of its decline: only mine = meum is declared to be obsolete—not, for example, yours = vestrum [or tuum] though the last attestation is from 1526 [“I seke not youres but you” II Cor. 12, 14]—and would surely be unintelligible today). Such inconsistencies are, however to be expected, in the case of a general construction which is obsolescent but not quite obsolete.
- Even Poutsma (II, xxiv, p. 80) and Curme (I.e. p. 76), who did not believe in a partitive origin, make the statement that our construction has come to “acquire” a suggestion of partition.
- It is interesting that one of the indignant contributors (p. 91) “explained” a friend of my father's as baeed upon a friend of mine (“which probably has philological grounds into which I should not dare to penetrate”); and, when Mr. Curry finally responds to all his readers three months later (p. 314–5), he takes care to point out that it had never occurred to him to attack the pronominal types a friend of mine etc. “(1) because they are so firmly established, (2) because they do not suggest ambiguity [?], and (3) because their use can be more easily defended [?].”
- This attitude is significant in regard to the unquestionably greater hold that the pronominal type has on the language. I know of no grammarian who has pointed this out—but it is surely true that today the use of the genitive is greatly restricted. We find with van der Gaaf such examples as a banner of the giauntz (Ipom.), an officere of the prefectei (Chauc.), vesselys of the enemyis (Past. L.), a nopere knyзt of the Emperours (Gesta R.)—which would hardly be paralleled today: in modern English, the construction with genitival noun seems to be limited to proper names (a friend of Tom's) or to nouns accompanied by the possessive adjective (a friend of my brother's, of your mother's). I think we would hardly say today: * a tool of the plumber's, * an assistant of the plumber's (though, perhaps, “that tool, that assistant of the plumber's” might go?). As concerns the use of a proper name, I should say that the person in question must always be referred to ‘familiarly’: a friend of Tom's, a friend of Smith's, a play of Shakespeare's, a poem of Shelley's—but hardly * a friend of Mr. Thomas W. Smith's or *a poem of Percy Bysshe Shelley's.
- There is, then, a nuance of intimacy and easy familiarity present, today, with our construction, which is obviously absent from another knight of the Emperor's—and which, it may be added, was also absent from the type every knight of his, a priest of mine. It is surely the evolution of the pronominal type, which has brought about the present restrictions on the use with genitival noun: as the possessive pronouns lost their absolute force, they lost also the overtones of formality which must characterize any reference to ‘my people, my men’: and the new informality of a friend o' mine is paralleled in a friend o' Tom's.
- No such partitive suggestion, however, is present in “a house of my own” (a child of my own etc.). How is this to be explained?
- If Bosworth and Toller are right (s.v. aзen) in listing own as a substantive in the meaning ‘property’ (Aзife man)зam aзen-friзan his aзen ‘let one render to the proprietor his property’), then it could be that, in a house of his own, [= ‘a house of his property’], the plural idea ‘houses’ failed to develop because his own kept its independent meaning, and did not dwindle into the function of a modifier of the preceding noun.
- But is it sure that own kept the meaning ‘property’ until some time after this meaning had been lost by the simple possessive pronoun? Indeed, the NED (s.v. own) denies that it ever had this meaning (i.e. as a full-fledged noun). I, too, am inclined to doubt this, in view of the frequent use of ‘one's own’ in reference to persons.
- Thus, I know of no satisfactory explanation for the isolation of… my own from mine.
- I say purposely 'an indefinite number'. For, if one should happen to be the possessor of a limited number of sable coats or grandfather clocks, then one would probably say “one of my—s,” instead of “a—of mine” (see below).
- One might also ask: if “a—of mine” inevitably suggests plurality, what construction is at hand for occasions when the speaker is ignorant of or indifferent to the question of “one or more than one'? I would say that, in general, this attitude is represented by the phrase belonging to…: “I found a notebook belonging to her, a bracelet belonging to you”: “she lent me an umbrella belonging to the landlady.”
- Again, it is possible to use the simple possessive adjective (usually accepted as a determining word) in an equally ‘indifferent’ reference: “I should like you to meet my son,” “Is this your pen?”, “his horse won the race.” This non-committal use of my, your etc. is possible only when a particular object has just been singled out (as in the first two cases), or when it is given (individualized) by the context (as in the last). Thus, in such cases, the determining force of my etc. is spent on individualizing the only son (etc.) of mine that could be in question—not the only son that is ‘mine’ (just as the use of the determining article in “don't slam the door like that!” determines the only door that could be in question, not the only door in the house).
- Now, it may be noted that in some of Jespersen's Danish examples with av min [mit], which he translates by ‘of mine’, he would better have resorted to one of the two constructions just mentioned: surely, the already-cited Er det et lommetørklæde av dit? would go over into English more easily as, simply: “Is that your handkerchief?”; and, on the other hand, “an old loaded gun belonging to the game-keeper” is a better translation for en ladt gammel bosse av skyttens. Indeed, Jespersen himself translates with this expression the last of his examples: jeg har en sparekassebog av din: ‘I have a savings bank book belonging to you’. He does this, supposedly, to prove the non-partitive emphasis of of mine (“en sparekassebog av din may be the only bankbook he has”)—but, obviously, he succeeds only in showing the non-partitive reference of av din, which must often be translated otherwise than by of mine. It seems very likely that the Dano-Norwegian construction is, indeed, non-partitive (otherwise et hus af mit would hardly be possible), and this fact has slightly corrupted Jespersen's feeling for of mine.
- Poutsma (I.c. p. 80) distinguishes a difference of nuance between the two constructions, noting with “a—of mine,” only a “vaguely” partitive idea: it suggests, rather than insists upon, the concept of partition (but then Poutsma is not properly an advocate of the partitive theory).
- The two movements (from individual to indefinite mass—from definite group to individual member) are clearly illustrated by the two sentences: “I found a handkerchief of yours in this book” (A HANDKERCHIEF—your handkerchiefs [I dare say you have more than one handkerchief]) and “looking through my bureau drawer this morning I saw that one of my handkerchiefs was missing” (MY HANDKERCHIEFS—one of them).
- It should be obvious that the distinction just offered between “a—of mine” and “one of my—s” can be exactly paralleled by “a—” and “one of the s”. One would say: “I heard a child crying down the street” but “one of the children was crying as I came into the nursery.” In the second case, we have to do with a fixed group (the children); but, when the indefinite article is used ('a child'), the only group to which the individual child can be assigned, is the ‘indefinite plurality’ of the class: ‘children’.
- Before this development took place; while the absolute force of the possessive was still felt, neither of the two connotations just described could be characteristic of our construction. In the first place, there was no necessary suggestion of plurality-of-the-object-pos- sessed, since the idea of partition involved only the possessions at large. Thus, for example, we find in Middle English: “He set oute a banner of the giauntz” (already cited) and “I will that Chace have a habirion of mine” (1420: cited by van der Gaaf, p. 23), where it is quite possible to assume a reference to unique possessions.
- Secondly, when plurality is given by the context, our construction was as easily used in reference to a closed series as to an open series. We find innumerable cases of “a—of mine” used in Middle English, which, today, would be replaced by “one of my—” (cf. the examples to be found with Jespersen, van der Gaaf, Kellner): “a man of the Duke's, a man of his” [one of the Duke's men, one of his men], “a knight of his, every knight of his” [one, every one, of his knights], “an officer of the prefects, a forrester of the Emperor's, a knight of King Arthur's” [one of the officers, forresters, knights of the prefect, the Emperor, King Arthur]. Such constructions strike a (more or less) jarring note today, because the nuance of vagueness suggested by… of mine does not concord well with the idea of a body of knights etc. But there was, of course, in the earlier language no such ‘fluid’ suggestion with our construction: a knight of his meant ‘a knight belonging to his retinue’; his had a meaning of its own, and carried the idea of a fixed (social, military etc.) group, a closed series, forever set apart from ‘your group’, ‘my group’ etc.
- It is perhaps assumed too readily by most grammarians that the main function of the demonstrative is to single out an individual from others of the same class. While this is surely its function in “Don't take this book, take that one,” such a reference is comparatively infrequent. For the most part, no other representative of the class is in question: when one says, in exasperation, “that piano drives me crazy!” this is never for the practical purpose of distinguishing one piano from another: it is taken for granted that there can be only one piano involved: the speaker simply wishes to focus our attention on a particular object, not on a particular representative of the class ‘pianos’. And the same would, obviously, be true of “that piano of yours.”
- Incidentally, in our construction, the demonstrative is never used today in the first function: would anyone say: “I like this article of his [but not that one]”? (Poutsma, however [p. 79] cites from Bacon one example similar to this, which he calls “rare and improper,” “And for his government civil, though he did not attain to that of Trajan's…”)
- We might, of course, find a ‘double beat’ in such an emotional utterance as “What!—you'd receive—a friend—of his—after that!”, where rhythmic pauses are scattered throughout the sentence for greater impressiveness—our construction being affected, like the other elements of the sentence.
- The relationship between partitive meaning and single stress (a dress-o'-mine); be-/tween non-partitive meaning and double stress (a house—of my own) is apparently also illustrated by Dano-Norwegian. In this language, as has already been stated, the suggestion of partition seems to be excluded; and, according to Trample Bsdtker, as cited by van der Gaaf, we also find a double beat!
- We may remember that he suggested that our English construction originally contained… of mine “added at first by way of afterthought, so that there was a pause before it”—and this was surely true (see the following paragraphs), but for quite different reasons from those he had in mind. What interests us here, however, is not his attempt to explain the English construction, but the fact that he must have gotten his idea of double stress from the intonation that he heard in his native language; for, as van der Gaaf says: “He adduces parallels from Norwegian dialects.” Thus, one says in Norwegian (and doubtless also in // Danish, though Jespersen has nothing to say of stress): “et hus—af mit”: there is no tendency for the possessive to coalesce with the noun, which means that there has been no tendency to postulate the type ‘my-house’, or the class, the vague plurality, ‘my-houses’. We have said above that this phrase must have the meaning ‘a house—belonging to me’, ‘a house—of my own’: we see now, that it also has the same intonation of these (non-partitive) expressions.
- According to Curme, however, it is not of that is expletive, but his (i.e. of him > of his).
- It is quite possible that this development has happened more than once in Latin—perhaps also in reference to possessions: in any language which could say ‘nothing of mine’ (cf. “the nihil addo de meo,” already cited) and ‘two dollars of mine’ (“an, cui de meo sestertium sedecies contuli, huic…” (Ter., cited in Georges s.v. meus), it need not be impossible to find the extension to ‘two books of mine’. We have, perhaps a borderline case in the following example, cited by Forcellini, s.v. meus: “Obsonat, potat, olet unguenta de meo,” Ter. Adelphi, 1.2.37. Here, of course, de meo is connected also with obsonat and potat so that the line could be translated ‘he eats, drinks, and smells of ointments at my expense’, as Forcellini does: ‘del mio, a mio costo’. But it is also possible to interpret: ‘he eats of mine, drinks of mine, and smells of ointments of mine’: at least, in the group olet unguenta de meo, the de meo is connected not with the verb olet, but with the unguenta.
- I am indebted for this example to Mr. Rafaele Urciolo of the Romance Language Department of Johns Hopkins, who offered this construction as characteristic of the dialect spoken in his native village, Caetelnuovo di Conza, Salerno.
- Wagner cites this example (for Oristano) from Bottiglioni, Legende e tradizioni di Sardinia, Bibl. arch. rom. II, 5, 93; normally the idea ‘of mine’ (etc.) is rendered in Sardinian by ‘of me’ (etc.): sa domo de issos ‘the house of them’.
- According to the DWb, this example contains the noun eigen ‘property’ (as in der una nichts gibet… weder zu lehen oder zu eigen). It is also possible, however, to interpret eigen as an adjective used, together with the possessive, in an absolute sense: for the partitive use of the absolute possessive may be found in Middle High German, cf. aus dem seinen geben (DWb. s.v. seiner, pron. poss.).—As concerns the uninflected form of eigen in our example, the adjective, too, could be left uninflected when in combination with the possessive (cf. DWb. s.v. eigen, adj.).
- In una casa de mio the lack of the article is also at variance with the form of the absolute possessive (lo mio). This, however, represents not a variation but the maintenance of the original form of the absolute possessive: meum, not illud meum; de meo not de ilio meo. It is well known that the article was late in making its appearance after a preposition.
- We find, however a familiar use of il mio, i miei [the more popular form being i mia] in the Florentine dialect (Petrocchi, I.c.): M'anno rubato, portato via tutto il mio “… took away everything I possess”; Andrei a Nàpoli, ma i miài dicon di nà “…but my folks say no.”
- This nuance varies, of course, from language to language. Outside of English, it is perhaps in German that the construction is felt to be least natural today—except in a military connection: die unsrigen may easily be used in reference to ‘our troops’. The same is doubtless true in other languages. In Spanish, one may note its rather frequent use in a political reference: los nuestros, los vuestros ‘our [your] party’. In both cases, we have to do with a formal organized unit—which the family, in modern times, has largely ceased to be.
- I should like to thank Professor Spitzer for the help he has given me on the Romance material, and Mr. John Allee, of the English Department of J.H.U. for carefully checking the Old English examples.
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Original Articles
The English Construction A Friend of Mine
Anna Granville HatcherThe Johns Hopkins University.
Pages 1-25
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Published online: 04 Dec 2015
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