Why do we write whose to indicate possession and not who's, as the apostrophe-s form normally signals possession?
Well, as my grade school teacher responded, "That's because who's is short for who is and so whose is used to avoid confusion."
The culprit here seems to be the apostrophe, which was introduced in the 16th Century as a means of signaling that a letter was being skipped because it was not pronounced. Back when, it was rather common to replace the "silent e" with an apostrophe. But the apostrophe might also replace some other letter, usually a vowel.
You might encounter a sentence like, "The wick'd first mate stood on the fo’c’sle." Seafarers would be unlikely to pronounce out forecastle. (Heaven knows why the final silent e might make the cut.)
So consider the term the king's English. What does the apostrophe replace? Evidently the former way of indicating possession (or was only strong association meant?), was to use es endings, as in kinges English. In any case, the apostrophe-s form gained strength in the 18th and 19th Centuries with the rise of the popular press and the desire for unformity entailed by that rising culture.
Another idea has it that the apostrophe-s form supplanted the word his, as in the king his English. That theory is losing traction, however, says Merriam Webester.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/history-and-use-of-the-apostrophe
But, speaking of grade school teachers, did yours -- like mine -- tell you to avoid the use of whose to imply posession by a non-person. You were not to write "the plane, whose engine was billowing smoke" but rather, "the plane, the engine of which was billowing smoke."
Of course, nearly everyone these days detests the "of which" form as just too prissy. And quite a few copy desk chiefs and writers of style books will tell you to go ahead and use whose with non-persons -- a usage I dislike mainly because I can't get used to a who being a non-person.
Think of the alternative possessive form using of, as in the cross of gold. Here we have a property of a specific cross indicated, which can also be expressed via an adjectival form, the gold cross. (Though we might these days write of the cross's gold, the connotations here differ substantially and so we'll bypass that form in this instance.)
In the cross of gold case we have the idea that the cross is associated with the concept (has the property of) gold. This, I suggest, did not strike our forefathers as implying possession. Only humans, and possibly higher mammals, could own anything. Then along came some philosophers and quite a few ordinary writers who assumed that if an object has a particular property or attribute, then it must possess it -- with the words possession and ownership converging in meaning.
So that leaves us without a good word to indicate that a non-person possesses something.
My usual way out of this dilemma -- barring an occasional barbaric misapplication of whose -- is to "write around it," as we'd say in the city room. That is, restructure the sentence. What of, say: the plane, with an engine billowing smoke... ?
We really could use a new word. But nothing likely to catch on comes to mind.
The culprit here seems to be the apostrophe, which was introduced in the 16th Century as a means of signaling that a letter was being skipped because it was not pronounced. Back when, it was rather common to replace the "silent e" with an apostrophe. But the apostrophe might also replace some other letter, usually a vowel.
You might encounter a sentence like, "The wick'd first mate stood on the fo’c’sle." Seafarers would be unlikely to pronounce out forecastle. (Heaven knows why the final silent e might make the cut.)
So consider the term the king's English. What does the apostrophe replace? Evidently the former way of indicating possession (or was only strong association meant?), was to use es endings, as in kinges English. In any case, the apostrophe-s form gained strength in the 18th and 19th Centuries with the rise of the popular press and the desire for unformity entailed by that rising culture.
Another idea has it that the apostrophe-s form supplanted the word his, as in the king his English. That theory is losing traction, however, says Merriam Webester.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/history-and-use-of-the-apostrophe
But, speaking of grade school teachers, did yours -- like mine -- tell you to avoid the use of whose to imply posession by a non-person. You were not to write "the plane, whose engine was billowing smoke" but rather, "the plane, the engine of which was billowing smoke."
Of course, nearly everyone these days detests the "of which" form as just too prissy. And quite a few copy desk chiefs and writers of style books will tell you to go ahead and use whose with non-persons -- a usage I dislike mainly because I can't get used to a who being a non-person.
Think of the alternative possessive form using of, as in the cross of gold. Here we have a property of a specific cross indicated, which can also be expressed via an adjectival form, the gold cross. (Though we might these days write of the cross's gold, the connotations here differ substantially and so we'll bypass that form in this instance.)
In the cross of gold case we have the idea that the cross is associated with the concept (has the property of) gold. This, I suggest, did not strike our forefathers as implying possession. Only humans, and possibly higher mammals, could own anything. Then along came some philosophers and quite a few ordinary writers who assumed that if an object has a particular property or attribute, then it must possess it -- with the words possession and ownership converging in meaning.
So that leaves us without a good word to indicate that a non-person possesses something.
My usual way out of this dilemma -- barring an occasional barbaric misapplication of whose -- is to "write around it," as we'd say in the city room. That is, restructure the sentence. What of, say: the plane, with an engine billowing smoke... ?
We really could use a new word. But nothing likely to catch on comes to mind.
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