How to parse. ...

Par. 433, 434.] "THAT FACE OF HIS."

249

- the regular construction would be " this news of
John," " a friend of me."
433 In (3) it may be said that "mine" is put for
"my friends;" but this explanation will scarcely
apply to (2), and certainly not to (1): "that ugly
face of his (faces)!"
The truth is that "of him" and "of me," used
Possessively, are intolerably harsh; and ambiguity
also might often result from the regular construction; for " this news of John " would naturally mean
"news about John." Consequently, partly to avoid
the ambiguity caused by the double meaning of
of " (viz. " belonging to " and "about"), and partly
to avoid harshness of sound, we adopt the following
illogical but serviceable device to make our meaning clear; we retain the Possessive "of," but we
also add the Possessive 's. Thus we combine the
French Prepositional Idiom with the English Inflectional Idiom.
434 A similar desire to avoid harshness (III.) has
made us add an illogical but euphonious 's to
"your " and " our," which are severally the Possessive Inflections of " you" and "we." " Your "
sounds harshly at the end of a sentence, and requires
some modification. Then steps in (II.) confusion
between " this is your " and " this is John's," "William's, the man's," &c. " Your " has been treated
as though it were a Noun, and has been changed
into " your's " or yours." But, logically, " your's"