's and s' and ‘of’ possessives

's and s' and ‘of’ possessives

1. The use of 's and s' to form respectively singular and plural possessive forms of nouns (a woman's hat / their friends' house / the dog's dinner) is a survival in an altered form of Anglo-Saxon inflections (normally -es) that have otherwise disappeared from English. (For rules see apostrophe 1, ².) Their use is commoner with nouns that represent humans or animals, as in the examples just given; in other cases the alternative construction with of is more usual: the petals of the flower / the windows of the house. There are, however, notable exceptions to this general rule:

a) nouns denoting time or space: a day's journey / a stone's throw / at arm's length.

b) in a number of fixed expressions (in which the possessive noun is often in effect personified): at death's door / out of harm's way / in his mind's eye / for heaven's sake.

c) nouns denoting vessels or vehicles: the car's wheels / the ships' masts / the plane's engines.

d) names (or common nouns) for countries and large places: Russia's tourist industry / London's homeless / the region's wildlife. In all these cases there is probably an element of personification, making the nouns concerned ‘honorary’ living things.

2. Apparent exceptions also occur in uses that are not really possessives at all but denote a looser relationship: the soil's productivity / the painting's disappearance. (Compare uses in relation to people, such as Napoleon's defeat / John's concentration.)

3. Conversely, the type of construction with of known as a ‘partitive genitive’, e.g. a glass of water / a dose of salts, cannot be expressed with a form in 's (☒ a water's glass / ☒ a salts' dose).

4. It should be noted that some 's and s' forms with human or animal nouns cannot be converted into of forms, usually because the relationship is not simply possessive: the man's reward / the writer's criticism / the boys' explanation / Sophie's revelation.

5. For the type a friend of my father's, see double possessive.