Possessive

Change the following expressions from the prepositional phrase form to the possessive:

  1. The ships of Germany and France.

  2. The garden of his mother and sister.

  3. The credit of Jackson & Jones.

  4. The signature of the president of the firm.

  5. The coming of my grandfather.

  6. The lives of our friends.

  7. The dog of both John and William.

  8. The dog of John and the dog of William.

  9. The act of anybody else.

 10. The shortcomings of Alice.

 11. The poems of Robert Burns.

 12. The wives of Henry the Eighth.

 13. The home of Mary and Martha.

 14. The novels of Dickens and the novels of Scott.

 15. The farm of my mother and of my father.

 16. The recommendation of Superintendent Norris.

Possessives

Good morning my dear English learners! Today we are practicing possessives. Looking forward to your comments below with your answers!))))

Write the possessives of the following:

Oxen, ox, brother-in-law, Miss Jones, goose, man, men, men-servants, man-servant, Maine, dogs, attorneys-at-law, Jackson & Jones, John the student, my friend John, coat, shoe, boy, boys, Mayor of Cleveland.

Vocabulary Task

conspicuous	foxglove	an/the aftermath	courtesy
sullenness	noxious	nudge	splutter
spew	scull	soporific	voluble

1.     They certainly had a very _____ effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!

2.     Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get though there it was perfectly _____ in the right- hand corner.

3.     They glided up the creek, and the Mole shipped his _____ as they passed into the shadow of a large boat-house.

4.     Here the Rat _____ the Mole.

5.     Naturally   a _____ animal, and always mastered by his imagination, he painted the prospects of the trip and the joys of the open life and the road side in such glowing colours that the Mole could hardly sit in his chair for excitement.

6.     The woman told the doctor she’d made the remedy from purple _____.

7.     After the discovery, scientists sought ways to mine the minerals that _____ from the hydrothermal vents.

8.     When the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the surface again in a hurry, ______ and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite all you feel when your head in under water.

9.     All of these animals must be adapted to endure the extreme environment of the vents- complete darkness and high concentrations of sulfides and other _____ chemicals.

10.                         The modest acceptance speech of the Academy Award- winning actress revealed a _____ that  contrasted with her uninhibited screen performance.

11.                         If, as _____ of this war, some great old-world power or combination of powers made war on us because we objected to their taking and fortifying Magdalena Bay or St. Tomas, our chance of securing justice would rest exclusively on the efficiency of our fleet and army especially the fleet.

12.                        The editor wishes to express his appreciation of the _____ of Macmillan Company, by means of which he has been enabled to reprint stories from Wonder Book.n

THE POSSESSIVE CASE:

1. Most nouns form the possessive by adding the apostrophe and s ('s). Ex: man - man's; men - men’s, pupil - pupil’s, John - John’s.

2. Plural nouns ending in s form the possessive by adding only the apostrophe ('). Ex: persons - persons’, writers - writers'.

3. Some singular nouns ending in an s sound form the possessive by adding the apostrophe alone.  Ex: for appearance' sake, for goodness' sake. But usage inclines to the adding of the apostrophe and s ('s) even if the singular noun does end in an s sound. Ex: Charles's book, Frances's dress, the mistress's dress.

4. When a compound noun, or a group of words treated as one name, is used to denote possession, the sign of the possessive is added to the last word only. Ex: Charles and John's mother (the mother of both Charles and John), Brown and Smith's store (the store of the firm Brown & Smith).

5. Where the succession of possessives is unpleasant or confusing, the substitution of a prepositional phrase should be made. Ex: the house of the mother of Charles's partner, instead of, Charles's partner's mother's house.

6. The sign of the possessive should be used with the word immediately preceding the word naming the thing possessed. Ex: Father and mother's house, Smith, the lawyer's, office, The Senator from Utah's seat.

7. Generally, nouns representing inanimate objects should not be used in the possessive case. It is better to say the hands of the clock than the clock's hands.

NOTE.

One should say somebody else's, not somebody else’s. The expression somebody else always occurs in the one form and in such cases the sign of the possessive should be added to the last word. Similarly: no one else's, everybody else's, etc.

CASE

There are three cases in English: the Nominative, the Possessive, and the Objective.

The NOMINATIVE CASE; the form used in address and as the subject of a verb.

The OBJECTIVE CASE; the form used as the object of a verb or a preposition. It is always the same in form as is the nominative.

Since no error in grammar can arise in the use of the nominative or the objective cases of nouns, no further discussion of these cases is here needed.

The POSSESSIVE CASE; the form used to show ownership. In the forming of this case we have inflection.