By English grammar, Genitives

I agree with Yankee. Yet, it must be said that there is a tendency among today's grammarians to standardize the often entangled genitive of English. That may deprive English of some of its most fascinating ways to denote possession. This charming jumble wouldn't be there if a Language...

Grammar Geek wrote:Singing is a gerund, a noun, so it takes the possessive my. This is rather peculiar, I think. I have encountered the same thing on these forums many times. Native speakers say: "A gerund is a noun." Do they teach it that way in American schools and universities? Grammatical...

Welcome to EF, Cla! Grammatically both are possible in English. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with the genitive version Einstein's equations as he is the father of his equatuions and nothing in English grammar prevents us from using the genitive. However, it is also possible to use a proper...

Hi guys, What do you expect, she's Britney Spears sister. Apart from the 'genitive' consideration, I'd expect this to be written as What do you expect? She's . . .' As a wild generalization, I wouldn't necessarily expect people who are interested in Britney's sister's pregnancy to be greatly...

Kooyeen wrote:Anyway, I'm not sure I'm right, because I just looked for some video about that, on Youtube, because I wanted to "hear" it. It turned out on CBS they said "Britney Spears sister", not "Spears's".Hi KooyeenYou may be interested in what Otto Jespersen says about the genitive in his...

I always thought it was a remnant of the French (Norman Invasion, 1066). There is a handful of verbs in French conjugated with "to be" rather than "to have" in the passé composé (past) tense. Rise, born, arrive, leave, go (all "coming and going" verbs) are some examples. We also sing "He is...

J Lewis: Thank you for the explanation of 'soccer'. I knew it had been coined from 'association', but didn't know it had been done by the British.Words like 'clothesline' are in dictionaries, so it's understandable that the plural s is there. A United Nations assembly is not in dictionaries and...

Paco -- I'm sorry English is so frustrating! A few comments come to mind: First, I can see how it seems to you that the current chaotic state of English is a result of generations of laziness regarding grammatical rules, but I would prefer to think of it this way: the current flexibility of...

Davkett, thanks, that was a silly mistake("came over")! Thank you all, it's clear to me about structures with a hyphen. As for the other variant, possessive (or genitive?) is probably a wrong term. I came across these examples - ten minutes' break, an hour's drive etc. in...

Hi Paco - glad I could clear up a misunderstanding. Yes, the most common meaning of "he has not lived here for 5 years" would be "he has been gone for 5 years." I think your explanation of why you didn't understand it this way is really interesting. And I think, as usual, you're being too hard...