“A.N.," Colorado Springs, Colo.— "Your parsing of 'mine,' in the expression ‘a friend of mine,' is interesting. Would 'John's' be also in the objective case in the sentence 'That is a hat of John's?"

In the sentence "That is a hat of John's," the word John's is in the possessive case, possessing a noun understood. That is not an exact parallel of the phrase '' a friend of mine "; for mine can not here be said to possess a noun understood, because mine is never so used to precede a noun. The grammarian Smart says: "Mine, thine, hers, ours, and yours are always used substantively," and it was with this view in mind that we so parsed the word in the phrase "a friend of mine." Cooper, Webster, and Wilson, grammarians of note, say that mine, thine, hers, ours, yours, and theirs are pronouns of the nominative or objective case. Another authority says: “Mine, thine, hers, yours, and theirs are usually considered as [being of] the possessive case. But the first [two] are either attributes, and used with nouns, or they are substitutes." The "Philosophical Grammar," p. 35, says: "That mine, thine, etc., do not constitute a possessive case is demonstrable; for they are constantly used as the nominatives to verbs and as the objectives after verbs and prepositions, as in the following passage: 'Therefore leave your forest of beasts for ours of brutes, called men.' " Davis, Felch, Goodenow, Hazen, Jaudon, and others also hold that "these pretended possessives are uniformly used as nominatives or objectives." "Wells's School Grammar," p. 71, says: "Mine, thine, etc., are often parsed as pronouns in the possessive case . . . Thus in the sentence, ' This book is mine,' the word mine is said to possess book. That the word book here is not understood is obvious from the fact that when it is supplied the phrase becomes not 'mine book,' but ‘my book,' the pronoun being changed from mine to my ; so that we are made, by this practise, to parse mine as possessing a word understood before which it can not properly be used." In opposition to the views of these authorities, Goold Brown says ("Grammar of English Grammars," p. 314): "Respecting the possessive case of simple personal pronouns there appears among our grammarians a strange diversity of sentiment." and beholds that thine, mine, etc., are possessive pronouns agreeing in person, number, and gender with the nouns for which they are substitutes, giving many authorities in favor of this decision and also citing many opposed thereto.