By Nouns, Genitives

CalifJim wrote:Yes, but they're the ones that take "the"! There's no explanation, is there, except to imitate the usage of others? Or if there is, please tell us! CJ A native speaker is guided by his ear but a foreign learner of English may benefit from the following guidelines. The...

I guess you don't get out much, Anon. Here is a sampling of respectable online sources. Doing a bit of Google research yourself will turn up many, many more.The American Heritage Dictionary: Grammarians have sometimes objected to the so-called double genitive construction, as in a friend of my...

Mister Micawber wrote:This is my wife's photograph. Does she own it? Is she portrayed in it? The only escape is the double genitive: This is a photograph of my wife.This is a photograph of my wife's.Hello, Guru. I don't think that I understand you. Are you suggesting that this last...

That was I, Believer.We must now distinguish between proper names and proper nouns. A proper noun is a single word like Milwaukee, Tuesday, Christmas. Proper nouns (I now quote from Quirk) often combine with descriptive words (descriptors), and which also begin with a capital letter, to make...

However, in quantitative expressions of the following type there is possible variation: a ten day absence With temporal nouns in the plural, the apostrophe is sometimes omitted: several weeks'/weeks vacation Pages 325 &1333, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph...

Hi, 1.He stood by the palace's front door. My doubt is that possesive cas of a noun is only possible for living things except some like time...... We never say chair's leg, or table's leg. Then how is it possible to say palace's fron door? Does the meaning of the palace is something...

Rex wrote:What is the correct preposition in the following sentence? I guess both 'on' and 'of' would be fine. There maybe a shift in the meaning when you change the preposition 'on' to 'of'.Your comments are welcome.1.There are many people and organizations to keep track on the government...

Hello GGI feel the English expression "superior to me" comes from a Latin phrase "me superiorem (elder than me)" where "me" is the ablative case of the pronoun for the first person singular but incidentally the same in form as the accusative "me". On the other hand "my superior" might have its...

Hello Hela 1) So what we call "the genitive case" is the apostrophe s and the relative whose, and the "possessive case" is any expression with of to express possession? Would you please give me sentences where we CANNOT use the 's but rather the of form? — I would use "genitive" to describe the...

Dear MrP and all the other teachers, 1) So what we call "the genitive case" is the apostrophe s and the relative whose, and the "possessive case" is any expression with of to express possession? Would you please give me sentences where we CANNOT use the 's but rather the of form? 2) Would you...