Ad
related to: possessive vs plural nouns
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 / ɪ z / when following a sibilant sound (/ s /, / z /, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / tʃ / or / dʒ /), as / s / when following ...
The plural is used for pluralia tantum nouns: a glasses case is for eyeglasses, while a glass case is made of glass (but compare eyeglass case); also an arms race versus arm wrestling. The plural may be used to emphasise the plurality of the attribute, especially in British English but very rarely in American English: a careers advisor, a ...
The personal pronouns of many languages correspond to both a set of possessive determiners and a set of possessive pronouns.For example, the English personal pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we and they correspond to the possessive determiners my, your, his, her, its, our and their and also to the (substantive) possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, its (rare), ours and theirs.
Third, irregular plural nouns may be regularized and use the –s morpheme. This may happen when the plural is not otherwise marked (e.g., sheeps for sheep), when the plural is typically marked with a morpheme other than –s (e.g., oxes for oxen), or when the plural is typically formed through vowel mutation (e.g., foots for feet).
Possessive determiners may also be taken to include possessive forms made from nouns, from other pronouns and from noun phrases, such as John's, the girl's, somebody's, the king of Spain's, when used to modify a following noun. In many languages, possessive determiners are subject to agreement with the noun they modify, as in the French mon, ma ...
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl.
Although English pronouns can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her), nouns show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction (e.g. chair, chairs, chair's, chairs'); there is no manifest difference in the form of chair between "The chair is here." (subject) and "I own the chair."
Singular masculine and neuter nouns of the strong declension in the genitive case are marked with -(e)s. Generally, one-syllable nouns favour the -es ending, and it is obligatory with nouns ending with a sibilant such as s or z. Otherwise, a simple -s ending is usual. Feminine and plural nouns remain uninflected: