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In English,possessive words or phrases exist fornouns and mostpronouns, as well as somenoun phrases. These can play the roles ofdeterminers (also called possessive adjectives when corresponding to a pronoun) or of nouns.
For nouns, noun phrases, and some pronouns, the possessive is generally formed with thesuffix-'s, but in some cases just with the addition of anapostrophe to an existings. This form is sometimes called theSaxon genitive, reflecting the suffix's derivation fromOld English.[1] However,personal pronouns have irregular possessives that do not use an apostrophe, such asits, and most of them have different forms for possessive determiners and possessive pronouns, such asmy andmine oryour andyours.
Possessives are one of the means by whichgenitive constructions are formed in modern English, the other principal one being the use of theprepositionof. It is sometimes stated that the possessives represent agrammatical case, called the genitive orpossessive case; however, some linguists do not accept this view and regard the's ending as either a phrasalaffix, an edge affix, or aclitic, rather than as a case ending.[citation needed]
The possessive form of anEnglish noun, or more generally anoun phrase, is made by suffixing amorpheme which is representedorthographically as's (the letters preceded by anapostrophe), and ispronounced in the same way as the regularEnglish plural ending(e)s: namely, as/ɪz/ when following asibilant sound (/s/,/z/,/ʃ/,/ʒ/,/tʃ/ or/dʒ/), as/s/ when following any othervoiceless consonant (/p/,/t/,/k/,/f/,/θ/, or/x/), and as/z/ otherwise. For example:
In the case of plural nouns ending in-s, the possessive is spelled by only adding an apostrophe and is pronounced the same (for example:Peasants' Revolt). In the case of singular nouns ending in-s (or-z in another sibilant-z or-x sound; or-se,-ze,-ce or-xe. Example,Verreaux's eagle),[citation needed] the possessive was traditionally[2] also spelled by adding only an apostrophe (despite often being pronounced differently):
Singular nouns ending ins also form a possessive regularly by adding's, as inCharles's/ˈtʃɑːrlzɪz/ orboss's. TheChicago Manual of Style recommends this style, while stating that adding just an apostrophe (e.g.Jesus') is also correct.[3]The Associated Press Stylebook recommends thes's style for nouns other than proper nouns, but only if the following word does not begin withs.[2]The Elements of Style and theCanadian Press Stylebook prefer the form ofs's with the exception of Biblical and classical proper names (Jesus' teachings,Augustus' guards) and common phrases that do not take the extra syllabics (e.g. "for goodness' sake").[4][5] For more on style guidance for this and other issues relating to the construction of possessives in English, seepossessive apostrophe.
More generally, the's morpheme can be attached to the last word of a noun phrase, even if thehead noun does not end the phrase. For example, the phrasethe king of Spain can form the possessivethe king of Spain's, and – in informal style – the phrasethe man we saw yesterday can formthe man we saw yesterday's. BothJohn's and Laura's house andJohn and Laura's house are correct, though the latter is more common, especially in idiomatic speech. See§ Status of the possessive as a grammatical case below.
Unlike other noun phrases which only have a single possessive form,personal pronouns in English have two possessive forms:possessive determiners (used to form noun phrases such as "her success") andpossessive pronouns (used in place of nouns either as an object, as in "I preferhers", or as a predicate pronoun, as in "the success washers"). In most cases, these are different from each other.
For example, the pronounI has possessive determinermy and possessive pronounmine;you hasyour andyours;he has his for both;she hasher andhers;it hasits for both;we hasour andours;they hastheir andtheirs. The archaicthou hasthy andthine. For a full table and further details, seeEnglish personal pronouns.
The possessiveits has no apostrophe, although it is sometimes written with one in error (seehypercorrection) by confusion with the common possessive ending-'s and thecontractionit's used forit is andit has. Possessiveits was originally formed with an apostrophe in the 17th century, but it had been dropped by the early 19th century, presumably on the pattern of the apostrophe being omitted from personal possessive pronouns.[6]
Theinterrogative andrelative pronounwho has the possessivewhose. In its relative use,whose can also refer to inanimate antecedents, but its interrogative use always refers to persons.[7]
Other pronouns that form possessives (mainlyindefinite pronouns) do so in the same way as nouns, with 's, for exampleone's,somebody's (andsomebody else's). Certain pronouns, such as the commondemonstrativesthis,that,these, andthose, do not form their possessives using's, andof this,of that, etc., are used instead.
English possessive pronouns agree with the gender of their antecedent or referent, whereas in other languages, such as Italian, the possessive pronoun agrees with the gender of the head noun of the noun phrase in which it appears. To exemplify these differences, comparehe lovedhis mother, in whichhis is masculine in agreement withhe, toamasuamadre, in whichsua is feminine in agreement withmadre (mother).
English possessives play two principal roles insyntax:
Possessive noun phrases such as "John's" can be used as determiners. When a form corresponding to a personal pronoun is used as a possessive determiner, the correct form must be used, as described above (my rather thanmine, etc.).
Possessive determiners are not used in combination witharticles or other definite determiners. For example, it is not correct to say *the my hat,[note 2] *a my hat or *this my hat; an alternative is provided in the last two cases by the "double genitive" as described in the following section –a hat of mine (alsoone of my hats),this hat of mine. Possessive determiners can nonetheless be combined with certain quantifiers, as inmy six hats (which differs in meaning fromsix of my hats). SeeEnglish determiners for more details.
A possessive adjective can beintensified with the wordown, which can itself be either an adjective or a pronoun:my own (bed),John's own (bed).
In some expressions the possessive has itself taken on the role of a noun modifier, as incow's milk (used rather thancow milk). It then no longer functions as a determiner; adjectives and determiners can be placed before it, as inthe warm cow's milk, where idiomaticallythe andwarm now refer to the milk, not to the cow.
Possessive relationships can also be expressedperiphrastically, by preceding the noun or noun phrase with the prepositionof, although possessives are usually more idiomatic where a true relationship ofpossession is involved. Some examples:
Another alternative in the last case may bethe system failure, usingsystem as anoun adjunct rather than a possessive – this is common when the possessor is moreabstract in character.
Possessives can also play the role of nouns or pronouns; namely they can stand alone as anoun phrase, without qualifying a noun. In this role they can function as thesubject orobject of verbs, or as a complement ofprepositions. When a form corresponding to a personal pronoun is used in this role, the correct form must be used, as described above (mine rather thanmy, etc.).
Examples:
The genitive can be combined with anof construction to produce what is often called adouble genitive, as in the following examples:
Some object to the namedouble genitive because the "of" clause is not a genitive. Alternative names are "oblique genitive",[9] "post-genitive",[10] "cumulative genitive", "pleonastic genitive",[11][12] and "double possessive".[13]
Some writers have stigmatized this usage.[13][14] However, it has a history in careful English. "Moreover, in some sentences the double genitive offers the only way to express what is meant. There is no substitute for it in a sentence such asThat's the only friend of yours that I've ever met, since sentences such asThat's your only friend that I've ever met andThat's your only friend, whom I've ever met are not grammatical."[15]Cf. "That's the only one of your friends that I've ever met" "[T]he construction is confined to human referents: comparea friend of the Gallery / no fault of the Gallery."[16]
TheOxford English Dictionary says that this usage was "Originallypartitive, but subseq[uently became a] ... simple possessive ... or as equivalent to anappositive phrase ...".[17]
Because a possessive is itself adeterminer phrase, possessives can be nested arbitrarily deep, as inLincoln's Doctor's Dog or *John's friend's mother's ... lawyer's brother.[18]: 178
When they are used assubject complements, as inthis is mine andthat pen is John's, the intended sense may be either that of a predicate pronoun or of apredicate adjective; however, their form (mine,yours, etc.) in this case is the same as that used in other sentences for possessive pronouns.
The following sentences illustrate the uses ofwhose:
Possessives, as well as their synonymous constructions withof, express a range of relationships that are not limited strictly to possession in the sense of ownership. Some discussion of such relationships can be found atPossession (linguistics) and atPossessive § Semantics. Some points as they relate specifically to English are discussed below.
When possessives are used with averbal noun or other noun expressing an action, the possessive may represent either the doer of the action (thesubject of the corresponding verb) or the undergoer of the action (theobject of the verb). The same applies toof phrases. When a possessive and anof phrase are used with the same action noun, the former generally represents the subject and the latter the object. For example:
When a gerundive phrase acts as the object of a verb or preposition, the agent/subject of the gerund may be possessive or not, reflecting two different but equally valid interpretations of the phrase's structure:
Time periods are sometimes put into possessive form, to express the duration of or time associated with the modified noun:
The paraphrase withof is often un-idiomatic or ambiguous in these cases.
Sometimes the possessive expresses for whom something is intended, rather than to whom it physically belongs:
These cases would be paraphrased withfor rather thanof (shoes for women).
Sometimesgenitive constructions are used to express a noun inapposition to the main one, as inthe Isle of Man,the problem of drug abuse. This may be occasionally be done with a possessive (as inDublin's fair city, forthe fair city of Dublin), but this is a rare usage.[19]
The's clitic originated in Old English as aninflexionalsuffix markinggenitive case. In the modern language, it can often be attached to the end of an entire phrase (as in "The king of Spain's wife" or "The man whom you met yesterday's bicycle"). As a result, it is normally viewed by linguists as aclitic – that is, a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase.[20]
An identical form of the clitic exists in theNorth Germanic languages, and in theNorth Frisian sister language of Old English. But the accepted linguistic history of the clitic possessive in these languages is very different.
InOld English,-es was the ending of thegenitivesingular of moststrong declensionnouns and themasculine andneuter genitive singular of strongadjectives. The ending-e was used for strong nouns with Germanic ō-stems, which constituted most of thefeminine strong nouns, and for the feminine genitive singular form of strong adjectives.[21]
| Gender | Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strong | masculine | -es | -a |
| feminine | -e | -a | |
| neuter | -es | -a | |
| Weak | m. / f. / n. | -an | -ena |
InMiddle English thees 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 spellinges remained, but in many words the lettere no longer represented a sound. In those words, printers often copied the French practice of substituting anapostrophe for the lettere. 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 likelove thee was no longer omitted. The's form was also used forplural noun forms. These were derived from the strong declensionas ending in Old English. In Middle English, the spelling was changed to-es, reflecting a change in pronunciation, and extended to allcases of the plural, including the genitive. Later conventions removed the apostrophe from subjective and objective case forms and added it after thes in possessive case forms. SeeApostrophe: Historical development
In the Early Modern English of 1580 to 1620 it was sometimes spelled as "his" as afolk etymology, e.g. "St. James his park"; seehis genitive.
The verse Genesis 9:6 shows the development. TheWycliffe 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.").[22] In the originalKing 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.").[23] In the plural, the 1611 King James hasmens, but the older Wycliffe Bible usesof men.
Another remnant of the Old English genitive is theadverbial genitive, where the endings (without apostrophe) forms adverbs of time:nowadays,closed Sundays. There is a literary periphrastic form usingof, as inof a summer day.[24] There are also forms in-ce, from genitives of number and place:once, twice, thrice;whence, hence, thence.
There is also the "genitive of measure": forms such as "a five-mile journey" and "a ten-foot pole" use what is actually a remnant of the Old English genitive plural which, ending in /a/, had neither the final /s/ nor underwent thefoot/feet vowel mutation of the nominative plural. In essence, the underlying forms are "a fiveof miles (O.E. gen. pl.mīla) journey" and "a tenof feet (O.E. gen. pl.fōta) pole".[25]
Historically, the possessivemorpheme represented by's was a case marker, as noted in the previous section, and the modern English possessive can also be analysed as agrammatical case, called the "possessive case" or "genitive case". However, it differs from the noun inflection of languages such as German, in that in phrases likethe king of England's horse the ending is separated from thehead noun (king) and attaches to the last word of the phrase. To account for this, the possessive can be analysed, for instance, as a clitic construction (an "enclitic postposition") or as an inflection of the last word of a phrase ("edge inflection").
For instance,
Other views are (1) that the possessive can be regarded as having elements of an affix and elements of a clitic, which are seen asidealized categories, and (2) that the possessive form can be an affix or a clitic, but only one of the two in any given example.[30][31]
Also see entryof.3 page 680.
In speech the genitive is signalled in singular nouns by an inflection that has the same pronunciation variants as for plural nouns in the common case
In writing, the inflection of regular nouns is realized in the singular by apostrophe + s (boy's), and in the regular plural by the apostrophe following the plurals (boys')
We conclude that both head and phrasal genitives involve case inflection. With head genitives it is always a noun that inflects, while the phrasal genitive can apply to words of most classes.