Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 14:34:50 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no> To: Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/dev/dpt dpt_control.c src/sys/gnu/ext2fs... Message-ID: <19980418143450.05176@follo.net> In-Reply-To: <l03020906b15e29822b1d@[194.32.164.2]>; from Bob Bishop on Sat, Apr 18, 1998 at 11:15:38AM %2B0100 References: <199804180411.MAA16043@spinner.netplex.com.au> <3538336F.41C67EA6@whistle.com> <l03020906b15e29822b1d@[194.32.164.2]>
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On Sat, Apr 18, 1998 at 11:15:38AM +0100, Bob Bishop wrote: > At 6:00 am +0100 18/4/98, Julian Elischer wrote: > >[...] > >sorry to contradict you Peter but this is the trick.. > > > >"its" is a single word, the same as: > >"his" and "her" > > > >as in: > > > >his cat, her cat, its cat > > > > > >the other version, e.g. > >"Joh's crow" or "John's VM code", > >shouldn't be confused with this.. > > FWIW, the the trick with the apostrophe is that it indicates something has > been left out. This is obvious in the case of can't <=> cannot. For "John's > cat" you'd have to go back maybe 500 years to hear someone say "John his > cat", but I believe that's more or less how the "'s" possessive originated. Explict possessives in english? Hmm. I was fairly it was derived from the case (ger kasus) of the word; ie, the old genetive case present in latin, greek and the germanic languages. This resulted/results in an s ending for possessives. Where that case originally came from I don't know, but it seems to have been a carry over from the original indo-european, if you look at which places it exist :-) Eivind. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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