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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 ...
Verner's law shifted Proto-Germanic /*h/ > /*g/ after an unstressed syllable. Afterwards, stress shifted to the first syllable in all words. [3] In many Old Norse verbs, a lost /g/ reappears in the forms of some verbs, which makes their morphology abnormal, but remain regular because the forms containing /g/s are the same for each verb they appear in.
A number of consonants regularly undergo change when resyllabified into the coda position of a syllable due to morphological operations that delete following vowels, [1]: 36–37 such as the preterite of class 2 verbs, and the possessive singular of some nouns. Examples of each alternation are given below, with each form broken into its ...
Singular masculine and neuter nouns of the strong declension in the genitive case are marked with -(e)s. Generally, one-syllable nouns favour the -es ending, and it is obligatory with nouns ending with a sibilant such as s or z. Otherwise, a simple -s ending is usual. Feminine and plural nouns remain uninflected:
An apostrophe is used in time and money references in constructions such as one hour's respite, two weeks' holiday, a dollar's worth, five pounds' worth, one mile's drive from here. This is like an ordinary possessive use. For example, one hour's respite means a respite of one hour (exactly as the cat's whiskers means the whiskers of the cat).
PIE also had a class of monosyllabic root nouns which lack a suffix, the ending being directly added to the root (as in *dómh₂-s 'house', derived from *demh₂-'build' [4]). These nouns can also be interpreted as having a zero suffix or one without a phonetic body (*dóm-Ø-s). [3]
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.
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 ...