Possessive 's'
For intermediate to advanced students
by Viv Quarry (www.vivquarry.com)
In English,
possession is usually expressed by adding an apostrophe and 's' to the noun.
This structure, known as "possessive 's'", often causes difficulty
for learners of English for the following reasons:
1. There is
no equivalent structure in Latin based languages, which use the form "the
sth of sb" (native speakers of these languages should reverse the word
order and replace 'de' with possessive 's' every time it occurs).
2. Learners
may confuse possessive 's' with the contracted form of the verb 'to be' e.g.
Fred's book v Fred's happy.
3. The
pronunciation of possessive 's' is sometimes the same as the plural form e.g. a
hard day's work /DAYZ/ v three
days /DAYZ/. The pronunciation of singular and plural forms may also be
the same (dog's /DOGZ/ v dogs' /DOGZ/ - see below).
4. There
are two accepted forms for plural nouns ending in 's' e.g. the Jones' v
the Jones's.
5. There
are so many exceptions to the following rules, that they are better referred to
as 'guidelines'.
Guidelines:
We
mostly use possessive 's' with:
1.
People
I spent two
weeks at my friend's uncle's house.
I'm going
to my parents' house next weekend. *
You can
sleep in the children's room. *2
2. Animals
Don't eat
those! They're the dog's biscuits! (1 dog)
Don't eat
those! They're the dogs' biscuits! (* two dogs or more - see note 3
above)
The lion
opened its mouth and roared. *3
3. In
some time expressions
I'm taking
a week's holiday in December.
They
offered me three months' salary. *
Difficult
cases:
* With
plural nouns, the apostrophe comes after the 's' (see note 4 above).
*2 If the
noun is irregular the apostrophe stays before the 's'.
*3 There's
no apostrophe in possessive 's' with the pronoun 'it' (it's = 'it is' or 'it
has')
No
possessive 's' with:
places e.g.
Copacabana Beach
Exceptions
to the guidelines above:
Planets
e.g. The earth's natural resources