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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 ...
The word there is used as a pronoun in some sentences, playing the role of a dummy subject, normally of an intransitive verb. The "logical subject" of the verb then appears as a complement after the verb. This use of there occurs most commonly with forms of the verb be in existential clauses, to refer to the presence or existence of something.
Many languages have verbs that can be used to form clauses denoting possession. For example, English uses the verb have for that purpose, French uses avoir etc. There are often alternative ways of expressing such relationships (for example, the verbs possess and belong and others can be used in English in appropriate contexts: see also have got).
[4] Today, relative whose can still refer to non-persons (e.g., the car whose door won't open). The spelling 'who' does not correspond to the word's pronunciation /huː/ ; it is the spelling that represents the expected outcome of hwā , while the pronunciation represents a divergent outcome – for details see Pronunciation of English wh .
In active–stative languages, there is a case, sometimes called nominative, that is the most marked case and is used for the subject of a transitive verb or a voluntary subject of an intransitive verb but not for an involuntary subject of an intransitive verb. Since such languages are a relatively new field of study, there is no standard name ...
A few English verbs have no special forms that indicate subject agreement (I may, you may, he may), and the verb to be has an additional form am that can only be used with the pronoun I as the subject. Verbs in written French exhibit more intensive agreement morphology than English verbs: je suis (I am), tu es ("you are", singular informal ...
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French also correlates possessive determiners to both the plurality of the possessor and possessee, as in notre voiture (our car) and nos voitures (our cars). In Modern Spanish , however, not all possessive determiners change to reflect the gender of the possessee, as is the case for mi , tu , and su , e.g. mi hijo y mi hija ("my son and my ...