Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!purdue!lerc.nasa.gov!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!gatech!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in2.uu.net!uchinews!ford.uchicago.edu!monsourc
From: monsourc@ford.uchicago.edu (Christopher Monsour)
Subject: Re: Friend of Bill's?
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: ford.uchicago.edu
Message-ID: <DCF8L0.HF4@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: Dept. of Mathematics
References: <jhiggins-2507951012250001@macke.vermeer.com> <3v5qv3$afd@panix2.panix.com> <806890169snz@soft255.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 10:17:24 GMT
Lines: 33

In article <806890169snz@soft255.demon.co.uk>,
J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <3v5qv3$afd@panix2.panix.com> rcpj@panix.com "Pierre Jelenc" writes:
>
>> In article <jhiggins-2507951012250001@macke.vermeer.com>,
>> John Higgins <jhiggins@vermeer.com> wrote:
>> >The phrase "friend of Bill's" is often used to mean "one of Bill's
>> >friends."  It seems that the correct usage would be "friend of Bill" or
>> >"Bill's friend."
>> 
>> Did "of" govern the genitive in Anglo-Saxon?
>[]
>I always thought that that was the _definition_ of the term `genitive'. (I was
>probably always wrong.)

You were wrong.  The genitive of a noun is a particular inflected form
of it (just as are the nominative, dative, accusative, and ablative in
Latin).  The case in which one puts a noun that is the object of a
preposition [resp., verb] is the case governed by that preposition
[resp., verb].  So, for example, in Latin, the preposition `ad'
governs the accusative, `de' governs the ablative, and `in' may govern
either, depending upon what it meant.  So the question is whether the
noun following `of' was put in the genitive case [equivalent of `of
Bill's' in modern English] or some other [equiv. of `of Bill'].  I wonder
whether `of' in Anglo-Saxon may have governed more than one case, just
as `of' does today.

In another sense, you are not wrong.  The entire phrase `of X' is
sometimes considered a genitive of `X' because that is how it
functions.  But this was clearly not the sense in which Mr. Jelenc was
using `genitive'.

--Christopher J. Monsour
