Nicholas Andresen

Indicating possession.

In fact, in Old English, the could take over a dozen forms depending on gender, number, and grammatical case.

And it wasn't alone.

Nouns, adjectives, verbs all wore complex endings declaring their grammatical role.

But those endings were unstressed syllables, exactly the kind that get mumbled away over generations.

By the early 1300s, most case distinctions had vanished.

Grammatical gender went completely extinct.

Today, this entire system survives only in pronouns, he-him, she-her, and the possessive.

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A fossilized remnant of that old English.

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Ending we see in Alfred's.

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Second, representational need shift vocabulary.

Languages adapt to express what speakers actually need to talk about.

New concepts demand new vocabulary.

Try discussing quantum physics using only the vocabulary of an eight-year-old, the very tiny things do weird jumpy stuff when you look at them doesn't quite capture the nuance of quantum indeterminacy.

And fading concepts free up old words for new uses.

Take Alfred's.

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