hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2024-10-24

■ #5659. 2重属格表現 a friend of mine をめぐる議論の略史 (2) [double_genitive][genitive][syntax][french]

　「#5656. 2重属格表現 a friend of mine をめぐる議論の略史」 ([2024-10-21-1]) の続編．2重属格 (double_genitive) の研究史をゆっくりと追いかけている．前回の続きの箇所として，Jespersen (§§1.5₂ [pp. 15--16]) を引用しよう．

   1.5₂. Kellner recognizes three historical stages:
     I. a castell of hers (from 14th c., Chaucer, &c.).
    II. a knight of the dukes (not yet Chaucer, frequent in Caxton)
   III. that berde of thyne (rare in Caxton, frequent later).
   But he overlooks the fact that stage II is really found just as early as I (see Chaucer G 368 an officere of the prefectes), nor is it easy to see why stages I and II should not have sprung into existence at the same time, while there is nothing strange in the later occurrence of III. But Kellner rightly lays stress on the fact that only a few of the constructions admit the partitive explanation; he therefore suggests the name 'pseudo-partitive genitive', but both he and other scholars evidently think that those applications which cannot be explained partitively have developed through analogical extension starting fro the partitive use.
   The partitive explanation is the only one recognized by Professor Sonnenschein, who says, §184: 'In sentences like He is a friend of John's there is a noun understood: of John's means of John's friends, so that the sentence is equivalent to He is one of John's friends. Here of means out of the number of.
   Sonnenschein does not mention constructions like that long nose of his; but even if we omit them for the moment, the explanation cannot be strictly maintained, for an enemy of ours cannot be the equivalent of an enemy of our enemies, which would be taken in a different sense, just as an enemy of the French is not to be explained as an enemy of the French enemies. And if I say he is a friend of mine, I need not at all imply that I have more than the one friend, though of course it will often be understood in this way. To express the partitive sense we have the unambiguous expression one of my friends. There is a difference between the two sentences 'The General and some of his friends left the house' and 'The General and some friends of his left the house': while the former implies that he had other friends, the latter means only: 'the General and some people who were on friendly terms with him'.
   If Einenkel is right that the English expression a friend of his is due to direct imitation of French, where he has found examples like un chevalier des siens, the ultimate beginning of the idiom is partitive, as shown by the French plural. Unfortunately there seems to be no English example old enough to go back to a period when it was possible to distinguish between the singular and the plural of the pronoun: in Old English it would have been, for instance, an dohtor of minum with the plural, and therefore, necessarily, a partitive sense, or an dohtor of minre with the singular, and therefore not partitive. The modern a daughter of mine may be either, as far as the forms is concerned.
   But it is not at all certain that the construction came to England from France: it may just as well have come into existence independently of the French idiom. The construction with the genitive of a substantive, as in a friend of my wife's cannot, at any rate, be due directly to French influence, for the French have no such genitive.

　この節の議論の要点を書き出すと，次のようになるだろう．

　1. 部分属格説が主流
　　・ Kellner は3つの歴史的段階を指摘
　　・ しかし，Kellner の分析には疑問も残る
　　・ 多くの研究者が部分属格の用法から他の用法が類推的に発展したと考えている
　2. 部分属格説の限界
　　・ Sonnenschein は部分属格説のみを認めている
　　・ しかし，この説明はすべての用法には適用できない
　　・ a friend of mine の mine は必ずしも複数の友人を含意しない
　3. その他の論点
　　・ フランス語からの影響説も
　　・ 一方，独立して発展した可能性は排除できない
　　・ そもそも a friend of my wife's のように of の後ろに代名詞ではなく名詞句が来る構文に関してはフランス語の影響はあり得ない

　・ Jespersen, Otto. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part III. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1954.

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