On Apr 18, 12:37 pm, wrote:
On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:05:39 +0100, "Mike Lyle"

wrote:
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 I am not and wasn't after an argument here but has I said it
always riles me when I see and hear people saying this kind of thing
" HIS firm does this that and the other etc etc" wrong in my book it
should be the firm or company he works for does etc etc .

What about "his friend" or "his sister"? What about "my God"? I
don't see anything you can substitute there, but they don't belong to
him.

The "possessive" pronouns have had meanings in addition to possession
since Anglo-Saxon. I had to look through /Beowulf/ longer than I
expected (they used possessives a lot less then, apparently), but line
262 has "min faeder", my father, and line 267 has "hlaford thinne",
thy lord. Neither his father nor his lord belongs to him.

So I think you can stop being riled. It's just how English has always
worked. Incidentally, the few other languages I know anything about
work the same way.

(Quotations 7-bitted from "Beowulf on Steorarume [Beowulf in
Cyberspace]", http://www.heorot.dk/beo-intro-rede.html.)

--
Jerry Friedman