His genitive

The his genitive is a means of forming a genitive construction by linking two nouns with a possessive adjective such as "his" (e.g. "my friend his car" instead of "my friend's car"). The construction enjoyed only a brief heyday in English in the late 16th century and the 17th century but is common in some varieties of a number of Germanic languages and is standard in Afrikaans.

In English

In Early Modern English, the orthographic practice developed of marking the genitive case by inserting the word "his" between the possessor noun, especially if it ended in -s, and the following possessed noun. The heyday of the construction was the late 16th and early 17th century. It was employed by John Lyly, Euphues His England (1580), the poem Willobie His Avisa (1594), in the travel accounts under the title Purchas His Pilgrimes (1602), Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall (1603) and John Donne's Ignatius His Conclave (1611). For example, in 1622, the Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador in London "ran at tilt in the Prince his company with Lord Montjoy". The term "his genitive" may refer to marking genitives with "his" as a reflexive or intensifying marker or, much more precisely, the practice of using "his" instead of an -s. Therefore, use of the "his" genitive in writing occurred throughout later Middle English and Early Modern English as an intensifier but as a replacement marker for only briefly.

Origins and history

In Old English, the genitive case was marked most often by an "-es" ending for masculine and neuter nouns, but it was marked with other suffixes or by umlaut with many nouns.