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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 ...
For plural nouns that do not end in s, add an apostrophe and an s to form the possessive, for example, children's, not childrens'. Kaldari 03:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC) How about getting to the point more quickly, like this: "Possessives of words ending in 's' may be formed with or without an additional 's'." Either is generally acceptable within ...
Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that until the 17th or 18th century, the possessive of proper names ending in S — such as Jesus or Moses — often was ...
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 apostrophe is also used to mark the genitive for words that end in an -s sound: words ending in -s, -x, and -z, some speakers also including words ending in the sound . As Norwegian does not form the plural with -s, there is no need to distinguish between an -s forming the possessive and the -s forming the plural.
Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl.
Prominent sources require that almost all singular nouns, including those ending in an s, a z, or an x, have possessive forms with an extra s after the apostrophe. Examples include the Modern Language Association, The Elements of Style, The Economist, and Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab.
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.