Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/511



"Then from thy lips poured forth a joyful song   To thy Redeemer!--yea, it poured along    In most melodious energy of praise,    To God, the Saviour, he of ancient days." --Arm Chair, p. 15.

RULE IV.--POSSESSIVES.

A Noun or a Pronoun in the possessive case, is governed by the name of the thing possessed: as, "God's mercy prolongs man's life."--Allen.

"Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine;   Touched by thy hand, again Rome's glories shine."--Pope.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE IV.

OBS. 1.--Though the ordinary syntax of the possessive case is sufficiently plain and easy, there is perhaps, among all the puzzling and disputable points of grammar, nothing more difficult of decision, than are some questions that occur respecting the right management of this case. That its usual construction is both clearly and properly stated in the foregoing rule, is what none will doubt or deny. But how many and what exceptions to this rule ought to be allowed, or whether any are justly demanded or not, are matters about which there may be much diversity of opinion. Having heretofore published the rule without any express exceptions, I am not now convinced that it is best to add any; yet are there three different modes of expression which might be plausibly exhibited in that character. Two of these would concern only the parser; and, for that reason, they seem not to be very important. The other involves the approval or reprehension of a great multitude of very common expressions, concerning which our ablest grammarians differ in opinion, and our most popular digest plainly contradicts itself. These points are; first, the apposition of possessives, and the supposed ellipses which may affect that construction; secondly, the government of the possessive case after is, was, &c., when the ownership of a thing is simply affirmed or denied; thirdly, the government of the possessive by a participle, as such--that is, while it retains the government and adjuncts of a participle.

OBS. 2.--The apposition of one possessive with an other, (as, "For David my servant's sake,") might doubtless be consistently made a formal exception to the direct government of the possessive by its controlling noun. But this apposition is only a sameness of construction, so that what governs the one, virtually governs the other. And if the case of any noun or pronoun is known and determined by the rule or relation of apposition, there can be no need of an exception to the foregoing rule for the purpose of parsing it, since that purpose is already answered by rule third. If the reader, by supposing an ellipsis which I should not, will resolve any given instance of this kind into something else than apposition, I have already shown him that some great grammarians have differed in the same way before. Useless ellipses, however, should never be supposed; and such perhaps is the following: "At Mr. Smith's [who is] the bookseller."--See Dr. Priestley's Gram., p. 71.

OBS. 3.--In all our Latin grammars, the verb sum, fui, esse, to be, is said (though not with strict propriety) sometimes to signify possession, property, or duty, and in that sense to govern the genitive case: as, "Est regis;"--"It is the king's."--"Hominis est errare;"--"It is man's to err."--"Pecus est Melib&oelig;i;"--"The flock is Meliboeus's." And sometimes, with like import, this verb, expressed or understood, may govern the dative; as, "Ego [sum] dilecto meo, et dilectus meus [est] mihi."--Vulgate. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine."--Solomon's Song, vi, 3. Here, as both the genitive and the dative are expressed in English by the possessive, if the former are governed by the verb, there seems to be precisely the same reason from the nature of the expression, and an additional one from analogy, for considering the latter to be so too. But all the annotators upon the Latin syntax suggest, that the genitive thus put after sum or est, is really governed, not by the verb, but by some noun understood; and with this idea, of an ellipsis in the construction, all our English grammarians appear to unite. They might not, however, find it very easy to tell by what noun the word beloved's or mine is governed, in the last example above; and so of many others, which are used in the same way: as, "There shall nothing die of all that is the children's of Israel."--Exod., ix, 4. The Latin here is, "Ut nihil omnino pereat ex his quæ pertinent ad filios Israel."--Vulgate. That is,--"of all those which belong to the children of Israel."

"For thou art Freedom's now--and Fame's,   One of the few, the immortal names,    That were not born to die."--HALLECK: Marco Bozzaris.

OBS. 4.--Although the possessive case is always intrinsically an adjunct and therefore incapable of being used or comprehended in any sense that is positively abstract; yet we see that there are instances in which it is used with a certain degree of abstraction,--that is, with an actual separation from the name of the thing possessed; and that accordingly there are, in the simple personal pronouns, (where such a distinction is most needed,) two different forms of the case; the one adapted to the concrete, and the other to the abstract construction. That form of the pronoun, however, which is equivalent in sense to the concrete and the noun, is still the possessive case, and nothing more; as, "All mine are thine, and thine are mine."--John, xvii