An English Grammar. James Witt Sewell
the indirect object of a verb, naming the person or thing indirectly affected by the action of the verb: "Give the devil his due."
(3) Adverbially, defining the action of a verb by denoting time, measure, distance, etc. (in the older stages of the language, this took the regular accusative inflection): "Full fathom five thy father lies;" "Cowards die many times before their deaths."
(4) As the second object, completing the verb, and thus becoming part of the predicate in acting upon an object: "Time makes the worst enemies friends;" "Thou makest the storm a calm." In these sentences the real predicates are makes friends, taking the object enemies, and being equivalent to one verb, reconciles; and makest a calm, taking the object storm, and meaning calmest. This is also called the predicate objective or the factitive object.
(5) As the object of a preposition, the word toward which the preposition points, and which it joins to another word: "He must have a long spoon that would eat with the devil."
The preposition sometimes takes the possessive case of a noun, as will be seen in Sec. 68.
(6) In apposition with another objective: "The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn."
Exercise.
Point out the nouns in the objective case in these sentences, and tell which use each has:—
1. Tender men sometimes have strong wills.
2. Necessity is the certain connection between cause and effect.
3. Set a high price on your leisure moments; they are sands of precious gold.
4. But the flood came howling one day.
5. I found the urchin Cupid sleeping.
6. Five times every year he was to be exposed in the pillory.
7. The noblest mind the best contentment has.
8. Multitudes came every summer to visit that famous natural curiosity, the Great Stone Face.
9.
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
10.
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink.
III. Uses of the Possessive.
60. The possessive case always modifies another word, expressed or understood. There are three forms of possessive showing how a word is related in sense to the modified word:—
(1) Appositional possessive, as in these expressions—
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.—Byron.
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay.—Shelley.
In these sentences the phrases are equivalent to of the rocky isle [of] Scio, and in the bay [of] Baiæ, the possessive being really equivalent here to an appositional objective. It is a poetic expression, the equivalent phrase being used in prose.
(2) Objective possessive, as shown in the sentences—
Ann Turner had taught her the secret before this last good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder.—Hawthorne.
He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy.—Thackeray
In these the possessives are equivalent to an objective after a verbal expression: as, for murdering Sir Thomas Overbury; an elegy to commemorate yesterday. For this reason the use of the possessive here is called objective.
(3) Subjective possessive, the most common of all; as—
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator's power display.
—Addison.
If this were expanded into the power which his Creator possesses, the word Creator would be the subject of the verb: hence it is called a subjective possessive.
61. This last-named possessive expresses a variety of relations. Possession in some sense is the most common. The kind of relation may usually be found by expanding the possessive into an equivalent phrase: for example, "Winter's rude tempests are gathering now" (i.e., tempests that winter is likely to have); "His beard was of several days' growth" (i.e., growth which several days had developed); "The forest's leaping panther shall yield his spotted hide" (i.e., the panther which the forest hides); "Whoso sheddeth man's blood" (blood that man possesses).
How the possessive is formed.
62. As said before (Sec. 56), there are only two case forms. One is the simple form of a word, expressing the relations of nominative and objective; the other is formed by adding 's to the simple form, making the possessive singular. To form the possessive plural, only the apostrophe is added if the plural nominative ends in -s; the 's is added if the plural nominative does not end in -s.
Case Inflection.
Declension or inflection of nouns.
63. The full declension of nouns is as follows:—
| SINGULAR. | PLURAL. | |
| 1. Nom. and Obj. | lady | ladies |
| Poss. | lady's | ladies' |
| 2. Nom. and Obj. | child | children |
| Poss. | child's | children's |
A suggestion.
NOTE.—The difficulty that some students have in writing the possessive plural would be lessened if they would remember there are two steps to be taken:—
(1) Form the nominative plural according to Secs 39–53
(2) Follow the rule given in Sec. 62.
Special Remarks on the Possessive Case.
Origin of the possessive with its apostrophe.
64. In Old English a large number of words had in the genitive case singular the ending -es; in Middle English still more words took this ending: for example, in Chaucer, "From every schires ende," "Full worthi was he in his lordes werre [war]," "at his beddes syde," "mannes herte [heart]," etc.
A false theory.
By the end of the seventeenth century