Presenters:Nguyen Hai Thuy Duong Nguyen Hong Minh English 3B.04

CONTENT: DEFINITION SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION CLASSIFICATION

DEFINITION

GENITIVE CASE in English conveys the ideas of possession, source, attribution, origin, measurement, and description. Its grammatical function is indicated –by inflection: E.g. Fred’s suitcase, their father, our sisters’ hats. –by the periphrastic genitive with “of”: E.g. the surface of the water, the floor of the house.

DEFINITION In grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun. The genitive case typically has other uses as well, which can vary from language to language: it can typically indicate various relationships other than possession; certain verbs may take arguments in the genitive case; and it may have adverbial uses.

SPELLING & PRONUNCIATION

SPELLING SINGULAR NOUN + ‘S E.g. my father’s car PLURAL NOUN + ‘ E.g. my parents’ house IRREGULAR PLURAL + ‘S E.g. the children’s room, men’s clothes.

PRONUNCIATION The ending ‘s is pronounced just like a plural ending E.g. giraffe’s /d 3 i’ra:fs/ dog’s /dogz/ James’s /’d 3 eimziz/

CLASSIFICATION

1.Subjective and objective genitive ("God's creation") 2.Genitive of purpose ("He has written many children's books.") 3.Survivals of "an old genitive of source" ("hen's eggs") 4.Partitive and appositive genitives (don't exist in English, but we express them with an "of" phrase, as in "some of us," "the state of Ohio," "the title of president")

CLASSIFICATION 5.Classifying or descriptive genitive ("the room's furnishings") 6.Possessive Possessive genitive ("Irene's coat") 7.Genitive Genitive of measures and other adverbial genitives ("At one time the genitive form of certain words could be used as an adverb. Most of our adverbs that end in an 's' (or 'z') sound, such as "nowadays," "since," "sometimes," "upwards," are survivals from this period.)

GENITIVE OF DESCRIPTION We use the structure to classify things. E.g. a women’s college  for women men’s clothes  for men.

POSSESSIVE GENITIVE To talk about possessions, relationships, and physical characteristics. E.g. Alice’s friend Cat’s ear My father’s house. To talk about things that people produce. E.g. John’s story  the story produced by John.

GENITIVE OF MEASURE The ‘s structure (or the plural with ‘s) is often used to say how long things last. E.g. a day’s journey  the journey lasting a day. We can also use the ‘s structure to talk about particular moments and events. E.g. yesterday’s news  the news broadcasted yesterday.