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I am a native speaker of AmE. I understand when and where to use their vs theirs, etc. etc. (i.e. Don't migrate this to ELL!). I've searched the site and google, and I have not quite seen an answer to my question.

Etymonline describes the word theirs as:

possessive pronoun, "their own," early 14c., from their + possessive -s, on analogy of his, etc. In form, a double possessive.

And, their:

plural possessive pronoun, c. 1200, from Old Norse þierra [sic] "of them," genitive of plural personal and demonstrative pronoun þeir "they" (see they). Replaced Old English hiera. As an adjective from late 14c. Use with singular objects, scorned by grammarians, is attested from c. 1300, and OED quotes this in Fielding, Goldsmith, Sydney Smith, and Thackeray. Theirs (c. 1300) is a double possessive. Alternative form theirn (1836) is attested in Midlands and southern dialect in U.K. and the Ozarks region of the U.S. Emphasis mine

(Parenthetical question, what do they mean by use with singular objects in this case?)

The entries for our and ours are similar.

Why does English have a double possessive pronoun? And why does modifying it thusly change its usage? Singular-plural possessive pronoun - possessive adjective; double-plural possessive pronoun - possessive pronoun?

Theirs is used when there is not a following noun, but, I don't understand why a double possessive would be used in this way.

The book is theirs.

That is their book.

We cannot say:

The book is their.

nor

That is theirs book.

But, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why making it a double possessive would make this happen!

Laurel
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David M
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  • I think that "possessive s" may also account for the difference between *he / him* and *his*. – FumbleFingers Oct 05 '19 at 16:35
  • @FumbleFingers It does for sure. But, that is a singular possessive, no? It belongs to him. It is his book. The book is his. etc. – David M Oct 05 '19 at 16:36
  • Related - my own earlier question: “Your and my (something)” vs “Yours and my…” Apparently the orthographically explicitly possessive form *your's* was far from unknown a couple of centuries ago. – FumbleFingers Oct 05 '19 at 16:41
  • @FumbleFingers Agreed. But, it doesn't quite explain why a single possessive pronoun becomes an adjective and a double becomes a pronoun . . . – David M Oct 05 '19 at 16:44
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    Nothing does. Pieces of grammar like pronouns get misshapen in the gears as they go around, billions of times a day, year after year. You can't "explain" why one pronoun takes one form and a different one takes another, any more than you can "explain" why two fish have different sizes. Variation is the norm in evolution; it's consistency that's suspicious. – John Lawler Oct 05 '19 at 16:48
  • @JohnLawler This may be as close to an answer as any other. But, is there a historical basis or anything else for this shift? It would even be more satisfying if someone said this came from Old Norse or the like. – David M Oct 05 '19 at 16:51
  • What makes you think it's a shift? New forms occur, they don't have to be conversions. There isn't always a used word with the right characteristics available. – John Lawler Oct 05 '19 at 16:52
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    @JohnLawler Perhaps I'm just seeking order in the universe. – David M Oct 05 '19 at 16:53
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    Another "related" question posted by me: Why is it usually “friend of his”, but no possessive apostrophe with “friend of Peter”? (Personally, I'm okay with both friend of him** and friend of his**.) – FumbleFingers Oct 05 '19 at 17:05
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    Because pronouns don't behave like nouns? – John Lawler Oct 05 '19 at 17:07
  • @JohnLawler I guess it comes down to a larger question. Why do we claim that language follows logical rules, then anytime it doesn't, we claim it doesn't? I guess we should all just run away screaming .... – David M Oct 05 '19 at 17:11
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    Incidentally, theirs and ours aren't "double possessive pronouns". They're possessive pronouns, period. Our and their are the adjective form, but they take -s as pronouns. This is true for all personal pronouns except my and thy, which take -n from the old pre-vocalic variants mine and thine (like the eyes you should drink to me only with). The -s isn't possessive any more than the -n is. It's just a different paradigm. – John Lawler Oct 05 '19 at 17:11
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    As for following rules, it's the same as anything else. It doesn't follow simple rules, but when you look close enough you see patterns. But language rules are complicated by the fact that our culture doesn't look at language clearly. We think it's all letters and words, so sounds and constituents don't get noticed; but language rules work only for sounds and constituents, so it's kind of like trying to paint without noticing color. – John Lawler Oct 05 '19 at 17:14
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    @JohnLawler Clearly you've seen me paint. – David M Oct 05 '19 at 17:15
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    @@JohnLawler: Dialectally, we also have/had *yourn* for *your / yours, which I always assumed was a reduced form of your one. Is that true, and does the same "etymology" also apply to me / my / mine?* – FumbleFingers Oct 05 '19 at 17:21
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    @FumbleFingers OED: Alteration of your pron., after mine pron., thine pron. Compare hern n., his'n pron., ourn pron., theirn pron., and compare also yours pron. Eng.Dial.Dict. comments on the regional distribution: ‘In gen. dialect use in the midl. and s. counties and Amer.’; Surv.Eng.Dial. records the word from the majority of midland and southern counties, with the exception of Cheshire and Nottinghamshire to the north, Norfolk and Suffolk to the east, and Devon and Cornwall to the west. Dict.Amer.RegionalEng. records the word chiefly from New England and southern and south Midland states. – tchrist Oct 05 '19 at 17:24
  • @tchrist: Ah right! I'd forgotten about "Dickensian rustics" with their *her'n / his'n. But does OP's cited Use with singular objects, scorned by grammarians* imply those dialectal *'n* forms were particularly / originally associated with only / primarily with singular referents (This is her'n / his'n, These are hers / his)? – FumbleFingers Oct 05 '19 at 17:32
  • That should be þeirra (ei, not ie). – TimR Sep 24 '23 at 11:46
  • @TimR Copied directly from source. Error is theirs, not mine. I could [sic] it, but it doesn't seem worth the effort. I'll just leave a standing apology for any native speakers of Old Norse. – David M Sep 25 '23 at 16:58
  • @DavidM Yeah, I saw the typo was at Etymonline. Just in case anyone was wondering about the vowel, I've [sic]'d it. – TimR Sep 25 '23 at 17:23
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    You mention theirs and ours. Why not also hers ? – GEdgar Sep 25 '23 at 17:38
  • @GEdgar Yes, that too – David M Sep 26 '23 at 18:52

1 Answers1

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I don't know why etymonline calls theirs 'a double possessive', but it's not.

The unfortunate terminology of 'the double possessive', aka 'the double genitive', is not due to the pronoun theirs itself but to the common construction like a friend of theirs where traditional grammar treats the preposition of as another possessive on top of the possessive pronoun theirs.

So in a construction that doesn't contain of, theirs itself is no double possessive:

The book is theirs.

This example of yours, for example, doesn't contain of, so there's only one possessive, the possessive pronoun theirs, which means their book. (Note the subject of the first clause does contain of, so you can call it a double possessive.)

Now, some grammarians don't like the term 'the double possessive/genitive' even for constructions like a friend of theirs.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Page 468), for example, treats She's a friend of Kim's not as a double possessive/genitive but as a oblique genitive:

...we do not regard of as a genitive case marker, and hence there is only one genitive here, not two.

As for the distinction between their and theirs, CGEL classifies the former as a dependent genitive (possessive) and the latter as an independent genitive (possessive), which easily explains why these don't work:

*The book is their.

*That is theirs book.

Community
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JK2
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  • Thanks, that's actually quite helpful! – David M Oct 05 '19 at 17:31
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    Etymonline's wording is correct, and explains what it means: "In form, a double possessive". It just means that the form "theirs" was created by combining the possessive word their and the possessive suffix -s. Likewise, "children" can be described as a "double plural" in form (but obviously not as a "double plural" in any syntactic sense) because it was created by adding the plural suffix -en to the plural form childer. The CGEL's terms "dependent" and "independent" are of course appropriate for the purposes of synchronic description of the grammar of English. – herisson Oct 06 '19 at 08:55
  • @sumelic Forgive me about my total ignorance about "early 14c. English" discussed there, but did it use "-s" without an apostrophe as the possessive suffix back then? – JK2 Oct 06 '19 at 10:14
  • I don't know the history very well, but the use of the apostrophe in the genitive is complicated and has not consistently followed the same usage as modern English. Related questions: When did it become incorrect to use apostrophes with possessive pronouns?, Origins of possessive pronouns, Why is an apostrophe used in the genitive “-’s”? – herisson Oct 06 '19 at 10:54
  • @sumelic Aside from the issue of whether an apostrophe is required as part of the possessive marker, I don't quite understand where this notion of viewing the '-s' in theirs as the possessive marker came from. If the '-s' were really the possessive marker, why wouldn't mine end in '-s'? Moreover, it's clear from my own answer that theirs isn't a double possessive. So why would anyone think of the '-s' as the possessive marker in theirs? – JK2 Oct 06 '19 at 15:12
  • Mines exists (the OED describes it as "regional (chiefly Scottish)"), but did not become standard, possibly because the forms my and mine were already differentiated without the presence of a final /z/. As tchrist mentioned, hern, yourn, ourn, theirn, hisn also used to exist, or exist dialectally, as alternatives to the independent genitive forms ending in -s. It isn't necessary for modern English speakers to view the -s in theirs as the same morpheme found in the suffix -'s; the only thing I'm saying is that they are etymologically the same in origin. – herisson Oct 06 '19 at 22:15
  • What other explanation is there for the origin of the forms hers, theirs, yours and ours? The final s in these words is not inherited from Old English. Regarding why we would only see the possessive suffix added to the independent forms, I'd guess that could be explained by one of or a combination of the following factors: dependent forms are in a weaker phonological position, and so tend to be shorter; and dependent forms have a a fixed position relative to the possessed noun phrase, which makes their meaning fairly clear even without the addition of an ending. – herisson Oct 06 '19 at 22:25
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    I wonder if this is a generalization of a transformation needed for "her", which can be an objective pronoun as well (as in "I went with her"). We use the -s suffix to distinguish "X is her" (meaning X is the same as her) from "X is hers" (meaning X belongs to her). But we don't need that for the masculine form, which has objective "him" versus possessive "his". – Barmar Oct 07 '19 at 19:17