This week: the mystery of the missing banister. But first an example of equable temperament, compared with many inquirers into language, from Dr Sylvia Moody. She mildly wonders why we sometimes say ‘a friend of the family’ and sometimes ‘a friend of the family’s’.
The latter construction (like ‘a habit of mine’, ‘a play of Shakespeare’s’) is discussed briefly by the late Robert Burchfield, in his revised Fowler’s Modern English Usage, under the heading ‘double possessive’.
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