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The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as ' s (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely, as / ɪ z / when following a sibilant sound (/ s /, / z /, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / tʃ / or / dʒ /), as / s / when following ...
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning.
Some singular nouns are pronounced with a sibilant sound at the end: /s/ or /z/. The spelling of these ends with -s, -se, -z, -ze, -ce, -x, or -xe. Most respected authorities recommend that practically all singular nouns, including those ending with a sibilant sound, have possessive forms with an extra s after the apostrophe so that the spelling
For example, English uses a possessive clitic, 's; a preposition, of; and adjectives, my, your, his, her, etc. Predicates denoting possession may be formed either by using a verb (such as the English have) or by other means, such as existential clauses (as is usual in languages such as Russian). Some languages have more than two possessive classes.
The personal pronouns of many languages correspond to both a set of possessive determiners and a set of possessive pronouns.For example, the English personal pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we and they correspond to the possessive determiners my, your, his, her, its, our and their and also to the (substantive) possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, its (rare), ours and theirs.
"In a return to Chicago’s earlier practice, words and names ending in an unpronounced s form the possessive in the usual way (with the addition of an apostrophe and an s). This practice not only recognizes that the additional s is often pronounced but adds to the appearance of consistency with the possessive forms of other types of proper nouns."
The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition): "The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an s, and the possessive of plural nouns (except for a few irregular plurals that do not end in s) by adding an apostrophe only...The general rule covers most proper nouns, including names ending in s, x, or z, in both their singular and ...
Finnish uses possessive suffixes. The number of possessors and their person can be distinguished for the singular and plural except for the third person. However, the construction hides the number of possessed objects when the singular objects are in nominative or genitive case and plural objects in nominative case since käteni may mean either "my hand" (subject or direct object), "of my hand ...