Is the Double Genitive Overly Possessive?
British novelist Henry Fielding used the construction in A Journey From This World to the Next (1749):
At seven years old I was carried into France . . . , where I lived with a person of quality, who was an acquaintance of my father's.
A century later it showed up in Anne Brontë's second (and final) novel:
Shortly after, they both came up, and she introduced him as Mr. Huntingdon, the son of a late friend of my uncle's.American writer Stephen Crane slipped it into a short story:
(The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848)
"Oh, just a toy of the child's," explained the mother. "She's grown so fond of it, she loves it so."And contemporary author Bil Wright doubled up on the construction in a novel published just last year:
("The Stove," in Whilomville Stories, 1900)
He'd already proved he was a liar. And he had a girlfriend even though he wasn't divorced. No, not a monster. But definitely an enemy of my mother's and mine.
(When the Black Girl Sings, Simon and Schuster, 2008)
The combination of the preposition of and a possessive form (either a noun ending in -'s or a possessive pronoun) is called the double genitive. And it's been around for centuries.
But watch out. If you stare at it too long, you may convince yourself that you've found a mistake. That's what happened to one of the original language mavens, James Buchanan. Back in 1767, he tried to outlaw the double genitive:
Of being the sign of the Genitive Case, we cannot put it before a Noun with ('s) for this is making two Genitives.As we're reminded by the editors of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, "The 18th-century grammarians simply had a horror of anything double, because such constructions did not occur in Latin."
(A Regular English Syntax)
Despite its apparent redundancy, the double genitive is a well-established idiom--a functional part of the language dating back to Middle English. But if the construction continues to trouble you, simply follow the example of grammarians Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum and call it something else: "The oblique genitive construction is commonly referred to as the 'double genitive.' . . . [H]owever, we do not regard of as a genitive case marker, and hence there is only one genitive here, not two" (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, 2002).
More Double Troubles:
Image: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Comments
Even though this is the first time I have come across such usage, I have to say I am finding it difficult to assign a reason to it, or to give it a proper explanation which would allow me to use it in a reasonable manner, if the need be. Considering the intervals between the first quoted use and the subsequent reappearances, it seems that even the most literate of them find the need to use this particular form almost nonexistent.
Having said that, what I would like to mention is that for a learner, which would be me in this case, a few references really do not prove to be quite convincing. Unless one can assign a proper reasonable definition to a particular usage, or a form, it becomes really difficult to assimilate that particular piece of information.
For example, as far as I am concerned, the clause, ‘who was an acquaintance of my father’s’ can be rephrased as, ‘who was my father’s acquaintance.’ Now most probably not as pretty as the first one, but if correct, as I do not consider my self to be a grammarian hence I will leave that option open, renders the ’s in the first sentence useless, or so it seems to me. Same could be said for, ‘the son of a late friend of my uncle’s.’ I believe it can be rephrased with the same effect as, ‘the son of my uncle’s late friend,’ hence, once again rendering, what has been mentioned as the double genitive, excessive.
Whether my reasoning itself is good enough or not is something I am not sure about, what I most definitely would like to mention is that attributing a particular usage to a few people who themselves were nothing more than novelists or play-writers, does not do a lot when it comes to learning a new or, for that matter, an obscure part of the language.
Thank you for your note, Irfan.
The quotations from Fielding, Brontë, Crane, and Wright are random examples of the double genitive (or oblique genitive), not isolated specimens. If you do a Google search for, say, “a friend of my father’s,” you’ll find many more examples of this common construction.
I apologize if I misled you with my examples, which were intended to show that the double genitive is neither new nor obscure.
All the best–
Richard
That brings me to two questions about possessives I’ve always had. Who can help me with this one?
1) Why do we say ‘a friend of mine’ instead of ‘a friend of me’?
and
2) What is the correct way to express that these two named people own the same house?:
Bob’s and Jane’s house
Bob and Jane’s house
and how about:
Bob’s and my house
etc.?
Thanks!
Do we expect too much absolutism in English? A language can’t be syntactic-didactic programming code.
As readers and writers, we like uniformity for the sake of clarity, but inconsistencies are inevitable, often serendipitous.
We’ve cobbled together a remarkably expressive language using infusions from many other languages. Now and again, let this wonderful animal make its own path.
You can always recast any sentence that annoys you, an editor or enough readers. That’s half the fun.