Lecture 5 Genitive Noun

1. Lecture 5 Genitive Noun Introduction: Case is a grammatical category. It denotes the changes in the form of a noun or a pronoun showing its relationship with other words in a sentence. Modern English have not a complicated case system like that of Latin, German or modern Russian.

2. 5.1 Formation, meaning and uses of genitive nouns 1) Formation of genitive nouns Rules: (a) ’s singular noun and plural noun which do not end in –s Milton’s poems, my mother’s arrival women’s clothes (b) ’ plural nouns ending in –s the girls’ dormitory a teachers’ college

3. (c) In compound nouns or a postmodified noun phrase, the genitive endings is added to the end of the compound or to the end of the noun phrase. eg. My mother-in-law’s death an hour and a half’s talk somebody else’s opinion • [the teacher of music]’s room

4. (d) Coordinate nouns genitive marker to each element when denoting respective possession, and to the last element when denoting common possession eg. Mary’s and Bob’s books Mary and Bob’s books(两人共有的书）

5. (e) “noun phrase + appositive” the genitive ending is added to the end of the appositive, or both to the end of the noun phrase and to the appositive eg. Basel the bookseller’s Basel’s, the bookseller’s

6. (f) In personal names ending in sibilant /z/, the genitive ending can either be ’s or an apostrophe only, but it can only be ’s when personal names end in other sibilant sounds. eg. Dickens’ / Dickens’s Marx’s, Ross’s

7. 2) Meanings of genitive nouns • Possessive genitive • Subjective genitive • Objective genitive

8. Genitive of origin • Descriptive genitive • Genitive of time, distance, measure, value, etc

9. 3) Uses of genitive nouns Genitive nouns are mostly used as central determiners and therefore Perform the same function as “possessive determiners”.

10. 5.2 Independent genitive and double genitive • 1) Independent genitive A genitive noun can sometimes be used independently, that is, without a following noun. This use of the genitive may be termed as the independent genitive.

11. 2) Double genitive An independent genitive can sometimes be used as prepositional complementation. The prepositional phrase that takes an independent genitive as complementation is called “double genitive”.

12. Assignment Exercise in the Textbook