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Possessives: noun + 's (the genitive)
Forms like Peter's, grandparents', children's are generally called the possessive or genitive case.
Form and spelling
General rules:
singular noun + ’s ➜ my father’s car
plural noun + ’ ➜ my parents’ house
irregular plural + ’s ➜ the children’s room, men’s clothes, women’s rights, an old people’s home
Singular names ending in -s usually have possessive forms in 's, especially in British English:
Denis's new car
Charles's wife
Mr Jones’s dog
With many older, foreign and classical (ancient Greek and Roman) names ending in -s, we just add an apostrophe:
Socrates' ideas
Dickens' novels
Sophocles' plays
Guy Fawkes' night
For more examples see the presentations below.
Possessive form of compound nouns or two or more nouns
The possessive of compond nouns
With singular compound nouns, just add an apostrophe and an s to the final word:
the science teacher's lab
mother-in-law’s cooking
brother-in-law's car
a woman doctor's uniform
the editor-in-chief’s decision
If the nouns are plural with a regular s at the end, add only an apostrophe to the final word:
women doctors' changing room
five-year-olds' games
the students' projects
the lawyers' fees
But with irregular plurals that do not end with an -s, add both an apostrophe and an s to the final word.
policemen's uniforms
brothers-in-law’s opinions
The possessive of two or more nouns
If the possessive form consists of two or more nouns which form a single team or a group, we add the ‘s to the last noun only.
When the nouns do not form a single group we must use ‘s with both nouns.
Joe and Anna’s children (one lot of children: Joe and Anna are their parents).
Joe’s and Anna’s children (two separate lots of children: Joe’s and Anna’s).
The possessive of longer noun phrases
We attach the 's at the end of a longer noun phrase:
the man next door's wife
Henry the Eighth's six wives
the Smiths' new house
the man in the downstairs flat's dog
For more examples see the presentations below.
Several nouns joined by possessives
Several nouns can be joined by possessives, e.g.:
Jane's mother's bank manager's daughter = the daughter of the bank manager of Jane's mother
my father’s neighbour’s student = a student of my father’s neighbour
Double possessive / double genitive / post genitive
The double possessive is a syntactic construction in English in which possession is marked both by the preposition of and a noun or pronoun in the possessive case. It is so called because the preposition of, the possessive pronouns (mine / yours / his / hers / ours / theirs) and the ’s all signal possession.
A friend of Mary's is a friend of mine.
John is a cousin of Jack's.
For more examples see the presentations below.
Measurement of time
The ’s structure (or the plural with s') is often used to say how long things last:
a day' s journey
forty minutes' delay
a three weeks' holiday
a fifteen minutes' walk
Noun + noun structures are also possible in expressions with numbers:
a four-hour journey
a forty-minute delay
a five-minute break
a fifteen-minute walk
For more info and examples see:
Students' presentations below
Students' presentations
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