![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenAll because someone called me on correcting "it's" as a possessive. I went on a bit. Corrections from the linguistically-inclined are welcomed.
The commonplace supposition that the use of an appended apostrophe-s on nouns in English to denote a possessive is generally held to be a vestige of a now dead grammatical *case*, comparable to German's nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases - in this case, the genitive. Or, of course, there are Latin's additional vocative and ablative ones, and the vestigial seventh, the locative.
Finnish rejoices in some 14 or 15:
Nominatiivi - - tuoli chair
Genetiivi -n of, 's tuolin of a/the chair
Partitiivi -a / -ta/ -tta - / some tuolia chair
Essiivi -na as tuolina as a chair
Translatiivi -ksi - / to (change in state, condition, or capacity) tuoliksi to a/the chair
Inessiivi -ssa in (inside) tuolissa in a/the chair
Elatiivi -sta from (inside) tuolista from a/the chair
Illatiivi -an, -en, -in, -on, -un, -yn, -än, -ön, to, into tuoliin (in)to a/the chair
Adessiivi -lla on; at; sometimes with, by tuolilla on a/the chair
Ablatiivi -lta from tuolilta from a/the chair
Allatiivi -lle to, onto; for tuolille (on)to a/the chair
Abessiivi -tta without tuolitta without a/the chair
Komitatiivi -ne- with tuoleineen with his/her chair(s)
Instruktiivi (plural only)
Reference:
http://www.ddg.com/LIS/InfoDesignF97/paivir/finnish/cases.html
In middle English there is on theory that goes that the English possessive case used an appended -es (possibly others, depending on noun gender; I have not seen a scholarly exegesis) to denote possession. Peteres boke, perhaps, for "Peter's book".
Then, goes the theory, the distinct "e" vowel sound was elided into an apostrophied "s".
However, this is, to say the least, disputed.
I am not good with languages with cases, but here is an example to the best of my ability: in German, I might say "one beer" as "ein Bier". A large one would be "ein gross Bier". However, if I were to say that I wanted a beer, then the beer becomes the subject of the sentence, and thus, its case changes: "ich mecht gern eine Bier". Here, the article "ein" declines - takes an ending - to indicate the case. "I'd like a large beer" becomes "ich mecht gern eine grosses Bier" - the adjective shifts as well.
On declensions:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Declension
On cases:
http://phrontistery.50megs.com/cases.html
Declensions can affect pronouns. Old English used the same 4 as modern German plus an Instrumental case. A vestige remains:
Nominative: I, he/she, us, who, they
Accusative/Dative: me, him/her, we, whom, them
Genitive: my, his/hers, our, whose, their/theirs
Even simpler vestiges remain in "it" and "you": there is no remaining difference between the Nominative, Accusative and Dative cases, but the genitive changes: "its", "yours/yours".
Reference:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Declension%20in%20English
"Its" is /a word/, like "his" or "hers" or "theirs" or "yours". Nothing has been omitted. The pronoun takes a declension to denote the genitive case - meaning possession.
"It's" is a totally different item, the compressed noun+verb /phrase/ "it is". Here, the apostrophe denotes that a letter - a phoneme, even; in this case, either an /i/ or a schwa, depending on regional accent - has been omitted in modern speech.
There was never an auxiliary word denoting possession in any documented or known ancestor of English, to the best of my knowledge.
Our modern largely non-inflected language evolved from far more heavily inflected ancestors.
[Inflected languages (technically, Synthetic languages) change the forms of nouns (by inflection) and verbs (by conjugation) to denote grammatical meaning. The other form is Isolating or Analytic languages, where such meaning is carried by word order and helper words.]
Latin is a bugger to learn for that reason, but Finnish is worse, and some contemporary African languages, such as Swahili, do it even more.
Highly synthetic languages are termed "agglutinative" - the inflections become part of the word, changing its meaning, and stop being separate entities with a clear pattern of addition. If the inflections merge together and change form, obscuring the relationships between them, these are termed "fusional" languages.
There's a sort of family tree here. Some languages use very bare words and convey fine meaning with word order and auxiliary helper words.
(What's an auxiliary word? Think of "do": 'do you want a beer?' The 'do' here is an auxiliary; it's strictly unnecessary. In French, German, Swedish, you'd say 'want you a beer?' Even in English that makes sense but sounds weird and stilted.)
Then there's a trend for these little helper words, which don't mean anything on their own, to get stuck onto the word they modify. These are called morphemes. This is the basis of inflection and declension - of synthetic languages. These can them become polysynthetic, as morphemes pile on morphemes. Then they can become part of the word - agglutination. Then they can shift and change the word into a new one - fusion. (e.g. Inuktitut)
The result is languages with really long complex words that carry as much meaning as a whole sentence in English or Japanese. At which point, it is theorised, remembering all the rules and variations becomes too complex and the language starts to simplify itself again, people invent little words to indicate who did what to whom with what, rather than forming the posh formal high-church proper word for it. And maybe, one day, the language possibly becomes totally noninflected, isolating and analytic.
And you get a really weird family tree which some demented topiarist has made into a worm Ourouboros, eating its own tail. Er, roots.
The thing is, though, that we don't have enough evidence of fossil languages to prove this. If the people didn't have writing, or didn't leave it in permanent form, such as carved on monuments, we don't know. Before the Romans, Italy had dozens of languages, many in a group called the Etruscan languages, but sod-all is known about them because there's nothing much left.
That and weird little survivals, isolated from change by culture or geography, like Basque (Euskara, as the Basques - Euskadi - call it, and they should know), unrelated to anything else in the world. It might have important lessons to teach about linguistic evolutions, but all its relatives are dead and long forgotten.
In the later 20th Century, we've lost hundreds of languages. Maybe 600 or more. Only a few are documented, recorded and studied before their last speakers die, their children speaking some tongue brought by invaders, missionaries, political border changes or migration. It's a tragedy on a par with the loss of biological species.
The commonplace supposition that the use of an appended apostrophe-s on nouns in English to denote a possessive is generally held to be a vestige of a now dead grammatical *case*, comparable to German's nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases - in this case, the genitive. Or, of course, there are Latin's additional vocative and ablative ones, and the vestigial seventh, the locative.
Finnish rejoices in some 14 or 15:
Nominatiivi - - tuoli chair
Genetiivi -n of, 's tuolin of a/the chair
Partitiivi -a / -ta/ -tta - / some tuolia chair
Essiivi -na as tuolina as a chair
Translatiivi -ksi - / to (change in state, condition, or capacity) tuoliksi to a/the chair
Inessiivi -ssa in (inside) tuolissa in a/the chair
Elatiivi -sta from (inside) tuolista from a/the chair
Illatiivi -an, -en, -in, -on, -un, -yn, -än, -ön, to, into tuoliin (in)to a/the chair
Adessiivi -lla on; at; sometimes with, by tuolilla on a/the chair
Ablatiivi -lta from tuolilta from a/the chair
Allatiivi -lle to, onto; for tuolille (on)to a/the chair
Abessiivi -tta without tuolitta without a/the chair
Komitatiivi -ne- with tuoleineen with his/her chair(s)
Instruktiivi (plural only)
Reference:
http://www.ddg.com/LIS/InfoDesignF97/paivir/finnish/cases.html
In middle English there is on theory that goes that the English possessive case used an appended -es (possibly others, depending on noun gender; I have not seen a scholarly exegesis) to denote possession. Peteres boke, perhaps, for "Peter's book".
Then, goes the theory, the distinct "e" vowel sound was elided into an apostrophied "s".
However, this is, to say the least, disputed.
I am not good with languages with cases, but here is an example to the best of my ability: in German, I might say "one beer" as "ein Bier". A large one would be "ein gross Bier". However, if I were to say that I wanted a beer, then the beer becomes the subject of the sentence, and thus, its case changes: "ich mecht gern eine Bier". Here, the article "ein" declines - takes an ending - to indicate the case. "I'd like a large beer" becomes "ich mecht gern eine grosses Bier" - the adjective shifts as well.
On declensions:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Declension
On cases:
http://phrontistery.50megs.com/cases.html
Declensions can affect pronouns. Old English used the same 4 as modern German plus an Instrumental case. A vestige remains:
Nominative: I, he/she, us, who, they
Accusative/Dative: me, him/her, we, whom, them
Genitive: my, his/hers, our, whose, their/theirs
Even simpler vestiges remain in "it" and "you": there is no remaining difference between the Nominative, Accusative and Dative cases, but the genitive changes: "its", "yours/yours".
Reference:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Declension%20in%20English
"Its" is /a word/, like "his" or "hers" or "theirs" or "yours". Nothing has been omitted. The pronoun takes a declension to denote the genitive case - meaning possession.
"It's" is a totally different item, the compressed noun+verb /phrase/ "it is". Here, the apostrophe denotes that a letter - a phoneme, even; in this case, either an /i/ or a schwa, depending on regional accent - has been omitted in modern speech.
There was never an auxiliary word denoting possession in any documented or known ancestor of English, to the best of my knowledge.
Our modern largely non-inflected language evolved from far more heavily inflected ancestors.
[Inflected languages (technically, Synthetic languages) change the forms of nouns (by inflection) and verbs (by conjugation) to denote grammatical meaning. The other form is Isolating or Analytic languages, where such meaning is carried by word order and helper words.]
Latin is a bugger to learn for that reason, but Finnish is worse, and some contemporary African languages, such as Swahili, do it even more.
Highly synthetic languages are termed "agglutinative" - the inflections become part of the word, changing its meaning, and stop being separate entities with a clear pattern of addition. If the inflections merge together and change form, obscuring the relationships between them, these are termed "fusional" languages.
There's a sort of family tree here. Some languages use very bare words and convey fine meaning with word order and auxiliary helper words.
(What's an auxiliary word? Think of "do": 'do you want a beer?' The 'do' here is an auxiliary; it's strictly unnecessary. In French, German, Swedish, you'd say 'want you a beer?' Even in English that makes sense but sounds weird and stilted.)
Then there's a trend for these little helper words, which don't mean anything on their own, to get stuck onto the word they modify. These are called morphemes. This is the basis of inflection and declension - of synthetic languages. These can them become polysynthetic, as morphemes pile on morphemes. Then they can become part of the word - agglutination. Then they can shift and change the word into a new one - fusion. (e.g. Inuktitut)
The result is languages with really long complex words that carry as much meaning as a whole sentence in English or Japanese. At which point, it is theorised, remembering all the rules and variations becomes too complex and the language starts to simplify itself again, people invent little words to indicate who did what to whom with what, rather than forming the posh formal high-church proper word for it. And maybe, one day, the language possibly becomes totally noninflected, isolating and analytic.
And you get a really weird family tree which some demented topiarist has made into a worm Ourouboros, eating its own tail. Er, roots.
The thing is, though, that we don't have enough evidence of fossil languages to prove this. If the people didn't have writing, or didn't leave it in permanent form, such as carved on monuments, we don't know. Before the Romans, Italy had dozens of languages, many in a group called the Etruscan languages, but sod-all is known about them because there's nothing much left.
That and weird little survivals, isolated from change by culture or geography, like Basque (Euskara, as the Basques - Euskadi - call it, and they should know), unrelated to anything else in the world. It might have important lessons to teach about linguistic evolutions, but all its relatives are dead and long forgotten.
In the later 20th Century, we've lost hundreds of languages. Maybe 600 or more. Only a few are documented, recorded and studied before their last speakers die, their children speaking some tongue brought by invaders, missionaries, political border changes or migration. It's a tragedy on a par with the loss of biological species.
