"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007, Dave Newt wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:03:01 +0100, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:
Number One Son gets fivers out of the machine at his university.
Now this is something that many people say that really winds me up
it
ISN'T HIS university at all saying "the university he attends would
be
more accurate"
Is English your first language? That seems a little excessively
pedantic.
That's an interesting way of spelling 'completely wrong'.
The OED, on the various subtly different uses of 'his':
"Also used with objects which are not one's property, but which one
ought
to have, or has specially to deal with (e.g. to kill his man, to gain
his
blue), or which are the common possession of a class, in which every
one
is assumed to have his share (e.g. he knows his Bible, his Homer, his
Hudibras, he has forgotten his Greek, his arithmetic, etc.)."
Interestingly, the earliest quotation they have for this sense is from
1709, rather later than the 9th-century first uses for the other major
senses. I wonder if this is an artefact of quotation, or a real change
in
usage, and if so, how this relation was expressed before the change.
Cross-posting to alt.usage.english to see if anyone knows!
Interesting, but I think it's an artefact of quotation - if anything at
all. That 1709+ sense isn't the "his university" one. Earlier in the
entry there are plenty of examples of "his" used for things which aren't
possessions. I think Clavox has the wrong end of the stick. And even if
he _has_ identified a change, it wouldn't be relevant in the slightest
to current formal English, in which "his school" etc are perfectly
idiomatic. If he doubts the validity of this attitude, ask him why he
isn't talking like the first line of OED's examples.
--
Mike.
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