Types of the Genitive Case

Possessives usually replace articles before nouns. We can say the car or Sue’s car but not Sue’s the car or the Sue’s car.

The dependent genitive. In this case a noun in the genitive case generally precedes another noun which is its head-word. The dependent genitive may be of two kinds:

1) the specifying genitive.

It may be replaced by the of-phrase. This genitive case is used with proper names, as a rule. The common meanings are those of:

a) possession: Mary’s doll, Mary’s new doll;

b) personal or social relations: John’s wife;

c) relation of the whole to its part: the cat’s tail, the aspen’s leaves;

d) subjective relations: the doctor’s arrival = the doctor arrived;

e) objective relations: Peter’s arrest = Peter was arrested;

f) authorship: Byron’s poems;

g) the genitive of origin: the girl’s story = the girl told the story.

The specifying genitive may also be used with:

a) collective nouns: the government’s decision;

b) the names of countries, towns and continents: Britain’s population, Europe’s future;

c) the names of newspapers and nouns denoting different kind of organization: the company’s plans, the Gardian’s analysis, the Geographical Society’s gold medal, the school’s history;,

d) nouns of special interest to human activity: the mind’s activity, science’s influence, the brain’s cells;

e) such nouns as: ship, boat, car: the ship’s crew, the car’s wheel.

Note. Differentiate between the following structures containing a proper noun used prepositively: Nelson’s tomb, the Nelson Column; Shakespeare’s birthday, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; Queen Victoria’s reign, the Queen Victoria Memorial; Lincoln’s speech, the Lincoln Memorial. The noun in the genitive case denotes possession. The proper noun in the common case denotes the name of the person to whom something is dedicated.

2) The classifying (descriptive) genitive

The noun in the genitive case here completely loses its meaning of possession and comes to denote a quality and refers to a whole class of similar objects: a girls’ school (= a school for girls), sheep’s eyes, man’s blood, a doll’s face, a doctor’s degree, woman’s work, a soldier’s uniform.

The classifying genitive is also used with nouns denoting time and distance, such as: an hour’s trip, a moment’s delay, a week’s time, a few minutes’ silence. We don’t use the indefinite article with a plural possessive: a two-hour lecture but two-hours’ lecture; a four-day journey but four-day’s journey.

This type of the genitive case is also used in set expressions: at a snail's pace, to our hearts' content, to keep out of harm's way, at my wit's end, in my mind's eye, to keep others at arm's length, by a hair's breadth, for one's country's sake, to have at one's fingers' ends, within/at a stone's throw, the lion's share.

3 ) Thegroup genitive

This type is considered to be a specific feature of the English genitive case ― ’s may be added not only to a single noun, but to a whole group of words:

a) to a group of co-ordinate nouns: Jack and Ann’s house (the house belongs to Jack and Ann); cf: Jack’s and Ann’s houses (= Jack has a house and Ann has a house);

b) to an extensive noun phrase: the Prime Minister of England’s residence;

c) to a noun + possessive pronoun: somebody else’s umbrella;

d) to a group ending in a numeral: an hour or two’s walk.

Note that the group genitive is not normally used with a nominal group when the head-word is postponed by a phrase or relative clause: The name of the man walking in the street/who arrived yesterday.

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