case of the appositive pronoun is determined by the objective relation of the preceding noun. But such usage is rare in English and it can be treated simply as a matter of relationship without ascribing an “objective case" to the noun itself.

To sum up our conclusions: If the element of visible form were wholly lacking we should not speak of "case" in English. The only cases that the elementary student needs to consider are the three case-forms of seven little pronouns, and the possessive form which belongs to nouns. When the student is sufficiently advanced to deal with abstract questions and is familiar with other languages in which case has a somewhat different bearing, he may perhaps profitably discuss the question whether case is (as it has been variously defined) an "inflection," a "property," a "relation," or a "condition;" or whether, as one grammarian has laboriously informed us, "Case is the medium of distinction used to describe by the relation of a name or a substitute to other words, the relation of an object or idea to some fact or event, or of one object to another."

XIX

THE POSSESSIVE CASE

The Possessive Case is really another part of speech. It does not represent the noun in its strict use, as the subject or object of a sentence. It is purely a qualifying word, and makes the nearest approach to the Adjective, although we may also view it as having passed through the stage of the adverb.-BAIN.

The s interposition seemed likely to derive great assistance from the concurrence of the his construction. To the popular feeling the two genitives were then identical or nearly so, and as people could not take the fuller form as coming from the shorter one, they naturally supposed the s to be a shortening of the his.—JESPERSON.

The extreme range of the possessive gives rise to ambiguity. For many of its remote extensions the preposition of is better.-BAIN.

The "signs of possession" (not in a demoniacal but a grammatical sense) have received some curious treatment at the hands of writers on language.

The most common genitive termination in old English was es, which was pronounced as an additional syllable and sometimes was written apart from its noun. It belonged at first to the singular of some masculine and neuter nouns, and was afterwards extended to the feminine. Other forms of this termination were as, us, ys, is, and simply s.

These genitives in s were not found in the oldest English, but made their appearance in the Northern dialects first and are due to Scandinavian influence. These genitive forms continued down to the fifteenth century. As late as 1420 such phrases as "vynes rootes," "strengthes qualitie," were used. Later came the elision of the vowel and the introduction of the apostrophe which marks our modern possessive case; but this sign did not come into general use much before the end of the seventeenth century. Indeed, Lowth's grammar of 1763 speaks of the use of 's as "a late Refinement, and what I really think a corrupt custom," adding, "The genitive case in my opinion might be much more properly formed by adding s, or when the Pronunciation requires it es, without an apostrophe.' Before the 's became established as the final form of the possessive, some other experiments were also tried. As the Anglo-Saxon endings dropped out of use a genitive value was sometimes given to a noun by simple juxtaposition without any added termination, as, Venus beauty. This method is still practically employed to avoid sibilants, though in the printed form we indicate the possessive character by an apostrophe, as "for righteousness' sake," "Moses' law," "boys' hats." Thus the Bible of 1611 had "Mars Hill," while later editions have "Mars' Hill."

Another way of indicating possession that came into frequent use, was by placing the pronoun his after the noun. Thus Shakespeare has "Mars his guantlet." A similar idiom is found in other languages,

though in English the usage may have been strengthened by its similarity to the original genitive termination when written apart from its noun, as in the line:

"And preysed Reynard is (his) wysdom."

The use of his after the noun appeared in early printed literature and continued for several hundred years. The older English literature abounds in such phrases as, "the egle hys nest." In the eighteenth century it was a common practice for the owner of a book to write his name upon the fly-leaf thus, "John Smith, his book." A well-known example of this use of the pronoun occurred in the English Book of Common Prayer, in which the last phrase of the Prayer for all Conditions of Men was formerly printed "for Jesus Christ his sake."

From the time of Ben Jonson to that of Addison, the theory prevailed that the 's (which was also in use) was a contraction of his. Ben Jonson did not himself favor the theory, but declared in his grammar that the idea that 's was a contraction of his would be "monstrous syntax." But the idea seems to have taken deep root, and has even been repeated in modern text-books.

Although the Anglo-Saxon genitive in s belonged only to singular nouns, modern usage has established 's as the plural possessive termination also, with the apostrophe alone when the plural already ends in s. A rule at one time crept into the grammars for the placing of the apostrophe after the s as a means of distinguishing the plural possessive from the singular in

nouns whose singular and plural are alike, as "a sheep's tail," "four sheeps' tails." But this is not sustained either by modern usage or by historical reason. When there is danger of ambiguity it can be avoided by the use of a prepositional phrase.

Since 's is the modern possessive termination, it is well that the exceptions to the rule should be as few as possible. Usage is not entirely uniform on the question of adding 's to a singular noun that already ends in s. But the general practice and tendency seems to be wholly in favor of the regular termination. There is usually no difficulty for either the ear or the eye in adding 's to a noun ending in s, though it must usually be pronounced as a separate syllable, as James's hat, Thomas's ball.

The possessive sign is seldom added to names other than those of persons. A few special combinations have become in a measure stereotyped as a day's work," "the sun's rays," "life's end," etc. Modern journalistic writers are also fond of adding the termination to the names of places, as "New York's new mayor,' "Boston's grain shipments." Such expressions are concise and vigorous but are generally avoided in prose literary writings.

The possessive sign is sometimes added to a phrase instead of to a single noun, as "Longfellow the poet's home." An ambiguity that may arise from such usage is suggested by the old conundrum, "Since Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, he was the daughter of Pharaoh's son, wasn't he?"