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The possessive case is formed by means of the apostrophe and the inflexion -s added to the stem of the noun in the singular or the apostrophe alone added to the noun in the plural.
| Examples | |
| Nouns in the singular | the boy's mother |
| Nouns in the plural | the boys' mother, the Browns' house |
| Irregular plural nouns | the children's mother |
| Proper names ending with -s (the inflection is pronounced as [iz]) | James' cousin/ James's cousin Dickens' novels/ Dickens's novels Burns' poems/ Burns's poems |
| Compound nouns | the editor-in-chief's orders my mother-in-law's flat |
| Group-Possessive (the use of the group genitive is possible here because the words in the group form a close sense unit) | Jack and Mary's mother cf. Jack's and Mary's mothers Jack and Ann's children the Prince of Denmark's tragedy somebody else's umbrella the man we saw yesterday's son in an hour or two's time |
II. The Pronunciation
In speech there are four forms of pronunciation of the possessive case:
III. The Use
The Possessive case is used:
1) with nouns denoting persons: Tom's car, John's idea, etc.
2) with nouns denoting time, measure and distance: minute, moment, hour, week, month, year, inch, foot, mile, etc.): a moment's delay, a shilling's worth of apples, etc.
Note 1: We can say: We had two weeks' holiday in Spain or We had a two-week holiday in Spain.
3) with substantivized adverbs (yesterday, tomorrow, today, etc.): yesterday's newspaper, etc
4) with the names of countries and cities: Canada's population, etc.
5) with the names of newspapers and nouns denoting different kinds of organizations: the government's policy, the Morning Star's famous column, etc.
6) with the nouns country, world, nation, city, town: the nation's wealth, etc.
7) with the nouns ship, boat, car: the ship's crew, etc.
8) with nouns denoting planets: the sun's rays, etc.
9) with some inanimate nouns in the following set expressions:
Note 2: In general we are likely to use the of + noun phrase:
1) with inanimate and abstract nouns: the cover of the book, etc.
2) when we are talking about the process or a change over time: the destruction of the forest, etc.
3) when the noun is a long noun phrase: She is the sister of someone I used to go to school with, etc.
Note 3: The use of the genitive case with nouns denoting animals is not common though possible, e.g. the cat's tail, a bird's nest. The genitive case is also possible with nouns denoting inanimate things and abstract notions, but it is not common and may be found only in literary style, e.g. Nature's sleep, the play's title.
Note 4: A noun in the possessive case may be used without a head-word. This is called the independent (absolute) possessive. It is used:
1) to denote places where business is conducted: the butcher's, the baker's, the chemist's, etc.
2) to denote institutions where the genitive case is usually a saint's name: St Paul's, etc.
3) to denote places of residence: at my uncle's, etc.
4) to avoid repetition: Our house is better than Mary's, etc.
5) to express a partitive meaning ''one of many''. The indefinite article is used with the noun modified and the absolute possessive is introduced by the preposition ' of': This is a relation of the Whites', etc.
6) to express praise, pleasure, displeasure (with emotional colouring). In this case the construction is used after the demonstrative pronouns 'this-these', 'that-those': I don't like that foolish wife of Peter's.
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| IV. Nouns Used only in the Plural | | | V. Articles with Nouns in the Possessive Case |