Mind Your Language | 21 May 2005

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’. It is called ‘post-genitive’ in the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language edited by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik. One of the rules that we unconsciously apply to its use is that the doubly possessive word must be personal and definite. We say ‘a play of Shakespeare’s’ but not ‘a play of the theatre’s’ or ‘a play of a playwright’s’.

The useful function of the double possessive is to distinguish between, for example, ‘a portrait of the artist’ and ‘a portrait of the artist’s’ (one belonging to him). That, though, is not why the construction is used. It is an idiomatic accident of history. Although we say ‘his friend’, we say ‘a friend of his’, not ‘a friend of him’ (hence the ‘post-genitive’ nomenclature). Moreover the possessive pronoun is in the absolute form: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs.

The usage is very well established. Chaucer has ‘a friend of his that Pandarus was called’. Shakespeare has: ‘Look, here comes a lover of mine.’ You may find other examples in the OED under the word of (in the 44th of the 63 senses distinguished there). There is a more or less hot debate about whether the possession in this construction was, once upon a time, always partitive. ‘That friend of yours’ seems to indicate one among your several friends, but ‘that nose of yours’ does not indicate one among your collection of noses.