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Possessive or genitive Case
After revising possessive adjectives and pronouns, we're going to review the use of the genitive case, also called 'possessive case', which is often ill-treated by learners.
1) The GENITIVE CASE: construction.
The Genitive Case or Possessive Case is used when the possessor is a living being, a group or an Institution. You must then add 's to singular nouns or to plural ones which are not ending with an - s . You simply add ' to nouns in the regular plural.
ex: Olie's birthday party. The children's toys , the company's Headquarters, Manchester's football team.The boys' hats.
2) Should we put an article or not?
It must be noticed that ‘the possessed object ' is NEVER preceded by an article.
ex: Mom's necklace; Tom's new car; Mr Pierce's house.
On the contrary, if there is an article in front of the possessor, it MUST be used in front of the English genitive, unless you're dealing with a generalisation :
ex: The scientist's new computer; a poor man's rags; the teacher's books.
BUT : Young people's problems. Rich people's luck.
3) The ‘Possessive Case' or Genitive Case is also used to express a date or a duration:
ex : A ten minutes' crossing; an hour's waiting.
ex : Yesterday's paper; next week's meeting.
4) If there are two (or more) possessors:
ex : His parents' car => His parents have one car only.
BUT Paul's and Susie's kids... => Paul and Susie each have different kids.
5) Whose = questioning or giving information about the possessor ...? :
Whose? can be used before a noun=> Whose car is this ? = (it then behaves like a possessive adjective.)
Whose? can also be used as a pronoun => Whose is that car? = (whose is then followed by verb).
Now that you know a lot about possessive adjectives and the 'possessive case', you should notice the parallelism ot the constructions between the 3 structures : Whose car... , Teddy's car, and his car = possessive indicator + noun (WITHOUT A DEFINITE or INDEFINITE ARTICLE).
Let's talk about Mr and Mrs Richard, and Mr and Mrs Ford in the exercise.
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