syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase. An identical form of the clitic exists in the North Germanic languages, and in the North Frisian sister language of Old English. But the accepted linguistic history of the clitic possessive in these languages is very different. In Old English, -es was the ending of the genitive singular of most strong declension nouns and the masculine and neuter genitive singular of strong adjectives. The ending -e was used for strong nouns with Germanic ō-stems, which constituted most of the feminine strong nouns, and for the feminine genitive singular form of strong adjectives. In Middle English the es ending was generalised to the genitive of all strong declension nouns. By the sixteenth century, the remaining strong declension endings were generalized to all nouns. The spelling es remained, but in many words the letter e no longer represented a sound. In those words, printers often copied the French practice of substituting an apostrophe for the letter e. In later use, s was used for all nouns where the /s/ sound was used for the possessive form, and when adding s to a word like love the e was no longer omitted. The s form was also used for plural noun forms. These were derived from the strong declension as ending in Old English. In Middle English, the spelling was changed to -es, reflecting a change in pronunciation, and extended to all cases of the plural, including the genitive. Later conventions removed the apostrophe from subjective and objective case forms and added it after the s in possessive case forms. See Apostrophe: Historical development In the Early Modern English of 1580 to 1620 it was sometimes spelled as "his" as a folk etymology, e.g. "St. James his park"; see his genitive. The verse Genesis 9:6 shows the development. The Wycliffe Bible (1395) contains the word "mannus" ("Who euere schedith out mannus blood, his blood schal be sched; for man is maad to the ymage of God."). In the original King James Bible (1611) there is "mans" ("Who so sheddeth mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."). In the plural, the 1611 King James has mens, but the older Wycliffe Bible uses of men. Another remnant of the Old English genitive is the adverbial genitive, where the ending s (without