Why, when you are talking about something belonging to "it" does "it" not get an apostrophe before the "s"? For example, "The dog ate its food" - the food belongs to "it". Shouldn't there be an apostrophe, like if you were to say "the dog ate the dog's food"?
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5For the same reason as there is no apostrophe in his.– Colin FineCommented Jul 11, 2022 at 17:39
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@ColinFine That's different because his is a word on its (ha) own and is possessive by definition, whereas it is not - the s makes it possessive– MichaelCommented Jul 11, 2022 at 22:42
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Because (am I really saying this?) its food is the dog's food. Whereas, it's means it is in contracted form....– LambieCommented Jul 11, 2022 at 23:57
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2@Michael However 'her' is a word on its own and takes a unapostrophised 's' to make the possessive pronoun 'hers'. In fact there is an argument that 'his' is just an amended spelling of 'hes' which would be consistent, but where's the fun in that?– BoldBenCommented Jul 12, 2022 at 9:19
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1@Michael what makes you think its is not a word in its own right?– TristanCommented Jul 12, 2022 at 9:53
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2 Answers
English differentiates contracted forms such as it's, he's, she's, I'm etc.
from the possessive pronouns: its, his, hers, its, ours, theirs, yours and the outlier mine.
It's purely conventional.
In linguistics, writing systems are usually considered a separate thing from the language itself—they tend to be deliberately constructed and taught, and can be deliberately modified much more easily than the language can. Centuries of concerted effort haven't dissuaded English-speakers from using "ain't" or singular "they", but a single person's choices in the 1930s gave us "analog" and "catalog" alongside the -ue versions.
In other words, it's pretty easy for spelling to change for pretty much any reason, and it was even easier in the past before the proliferation of dictionaries and spellcheckers. Someone decided that it would be useful to differentiate "its" and "it's" by the apostrophe, and it caught on; since "it's" is an actual contraction (a sound has been removed), it kept the apostrophe, and the other one lost it.
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A further point illustrating convention: In close relatives to English, the genitive -s is still used, but doesn't use an apostrophe. Commented Jul 11, 2022 at 21:46
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@AzorAhai-him- That's different because his is a word on its own and is possessive by definition, whereas it is not - the s makes it possessive– MichaelCommented Jul 11, 2022 at 22:42
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3@Michael I believe he's saying that in e.g. German, "man's" is Mannes or Manns, written with no apostrophe. Many Germanic languages use an -s to mark possession, but most don't put an apostrophe before it.– DraconisCommented Jul 11, 2022 at 23:19
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2There is logic in this madness: its, his, hers, ours, theirs, yours, only mine does not take an s. And it is, he is, she is, etc. it's, he's, she's So, it's not purely conventional. I doubt those all had apostrophes.– LambieCommented Jul 12, 2022 at 0:12
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1@Lambie the thing is, "its" is the newest pronoun -- discounting the gender neutral neopronouns that never caught on -- replacing "his" in the neuter, and is etymologically "it" plus the genitive clitic, which by that time was spelled with an apostrophe. The other possessives, pronoun and determiner alike, are unrelated to the modern genitive construction, with the possible exception of "his" being ancestral. So yes, it is purely conventional, albeit a convention no doubt influenced by what you noticed– No NameCommented Jul 12, 2022 at 3:09