English possessive

These can play the roles of determiners (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 the suffix -'s, but in some cases just with the addition of an apostrophe to an existing s. This form is sometimes called the Saxon genitive, reflecting the suffix's derivation from Old English.

Possessives are one of the means by which genitive constructions are formed in modern English, the other principal one being the use of the preposition of.

[citation needed] The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as 's (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely, as /ɪz/ when following a sibilant sound (/s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ or /dʒ/), as /s/ when following any other voiceless consonant (/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /θ/, or /x/), and as /z/ otherwise.

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 in s also form a possessive regularly by adding 's, as in Charles's /ˈtʃɑːrlzɪz/ or boss's.

[3] The Associated Press Stylebook recommends the s's style for nouns other than proper nouns, but only if the following word does not begin with s.[2] The Elements of Style and the Canadian Press Stylebook prefer the form of s's with the exception of Biblical and classical proper names (Jesus' teachings, Augustus' guards) and common phrases that do not take the extra syllabic s (e.g. "for goodness' sake").

For example, the phrase the king of Spain can form the possessive the king of Spain's, and – in informal style – the phrase the man we saw yesterday can form the man we saw yesterday's.

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.

"[16] The Oxford English Dictionary says that this usage was "Originally partitive, but subseq[uently became a] ... simple possessive ... or as equivalent to an appositive phrase ...".

When a possessive and an of 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 with of 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 with for rather than of (shoes for women).

Sometimes genitive constructions are used to express a noun in apposition to the main one, as in the Isle of Man, the problem of drug abuse.

[19] The 's clitic originated in Old English as an inflexional suffix marking genitive 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").

[21] 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.

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.

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 the foot/feet vowel mutation of the nominative plural.