UNIT 16: THE EXPRESSION OF POSSESSION

1. Introduction
2. The term of Possession
3. Morphological Possession
4. Syntactic Possession
5. Semantic Possession
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography
Most teachers have seen how a student has accidentally dropped some cribs on the
floor. However, when the student is asked, he emphasized that those cribs are not his
but belong to another classmate. Students are using the expression of possession by
means of verbs, adjectives, nouns and pronouns in order to indicate their innocence.
The present study aims to provide a detailed account of the expression of possession,
especially by the saxon genitive and the ’of’ structure.
To begin with, I would like to justify this topic in the English curriculum. The new
educative system focuses on a competency model based not only on learning but also
on performance and praxis. For this reason, The LOMLOE Organic Law for
Modification of the LOE 3/2020, its royal decree 217/2022, and the decree 39/2022 and
40/2022 which stablish the curriculum in Castilla y Leon have proposed a
communicative approach to foreign language. An approach which implies the
consideration of not only grammatical aspects, but also cultural, historical, and literal
characteristics of the countries where English language is spoken. In this context, topic
number sixteen plays a relevant role in the English curriculum as it deals with the study
of grammar being this an important feature of both linguistic and multilingual
competences.
All topics concerning grammar are interrelated and they should be treated as a whole.
For instance, in order to understand this topic much better, we should take into account
other themes, such as unit number 13,14,15,17,18,19,20,21,22 that deals with the
different forms of words.

I will divide the topic into four sections. To begin with, I will define the term of
possession. Second, I will develop the expression of possession in a morphological
way. Later, I will present a syntactic classification of possession structures. Point
number four will be devoted to the semantic view of possession. Finally, I will give a
conclusion and the notes on bibliography.
1. THE TERM OF POSSESSION.
The idea of ‘possession’ is defined as the fact and action of having or possessing
something, which may be either physical, referring to people, for instance; a brother or
two sisters, also to animals as a dog, and things as money or a house. On the other
hand, abstract nouns can also be expressed by means of possession, as a soul, or
patience.
The term ‘possession’ is intended to answer questions as ‘Whose is this?’, ‘What do
you possess?’ and ‘What are your possessions?’ so as to indicate ‘ownership’ or
‘something possessed’.
Regarding how possession is expressed in English, it is mainly drawn by two devices:
the ‘saxon genitive’ and the of-phrase structure which work at the level of the
grammatical category of nouns since the notion of possession namely implies the
mention of people, things and animals. Moreover, there are other lexically specific
grammatical categories involved, such as possessive pronouns, possessive adjectives,
verbs and prepositions. Finally, it is worth noting that apart from grammatical
categories, we may find other specific clause structures, such as expressions used in
poetry as for goodness’ sake.
2. MORPHOLOGICAL POSSESION
Regarding how possession is express by nouns, it is a general truth that nouns can
make a direct reference to possession with semantically explicit forms, for instance,
‘owner, master, keeper, slave, ruler, property, belongings, etc’ which convey the
meaning of ‘ownership’ to some extent.
When dealing with the formation of the possessive case, we must distinguish two
cases according to the number of possessors.
First, when we are dealing with only one possessor, the structure is as follows:
‘possessor’ + ‘s + the person or thing ‘possessed’; for instance: John’s dog. Notice that
when the genitive saxon is used, the article before the person or thing ‘possessed’
disappears for instance: the daughter of Peter to Peter’s daughter.
Second, when dealing with several ‘possessors’, the structure is as follows:
‘possessors whose ending is an –s) + the apostrophe + the person or thing
‘possessed’. For instance: My sisters’ house. However, if the noun is an irregular plural,
not ending in –s, we apply the structure for only one possessor as in the children’s
toys. Also, when more than two possessors are joined by the conjunction ‘and’, only
the last word takes the possessive ‘s as Peter and Susanne’s house.
Not only can nouns express ownership, but also verbs. Indeed verbs indicate
possession in a more direct way since they do not need any other grammatical
category to express ‘ownership’. Among those verbs whose meaning is strictly
possessive we find: have or have got, own, possess, keep, obtain and belong (to). For
instance, ‘I have a new mobile phone’, ‘She’s got many friends’, ‘He owns an incredible
castle on the mountain”.
The notion of possession is also expressed by means of adjectives. These possessive
are divided into possessive, demonstrative, numerals, interrogative and indefinite
adjectives.
As a general rule, possessive adjectives are: my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their, and
they agree with the ‘possessor’ but not with the person or thing ‘possessed’, for
instance; her mother Ana’s mother but NOT Tim’s mother. Whereas possessive
adjectives function as determiners of nouns, possessive pronouns function as
substitutes of nouns. As a general rule, possessive pronouns are: mine, yours, his,
hers, its, ours, yours, theirs. For instance This is Jane’s hat; This hat is hers.
Finally, prepositions may express ‘possession’ by direct means, such as the
preposition ‘of’ which will be examined in the following sections.
3. SYNTACTIC POSSESSION
After analysing the possession by means of morphology, let us move to the syntactic
level. In English, the expression of possession is mainly drawn by two syntactic
devices: first, by means of the genitive case and second, by means of the of-phrase
structure.
The saxon genitive is the one of the only noun inflections surviving from Old English.
Since Old English was an inflectional language as it changes the form or ending of
some words according to grammatical function, this genitive is often described as a
case form, and it is related to the idea of possession.
The saxon genitive is not used with all nouns equally but tends to be namely
associated with those of animate gender and to a lesser degree, with inanimate nouns,
such as things, geographical names and temporal nouns. Therefore, we shall use the
possessive genitive case to refer to the following eight cases:
Personal names as Salamanca’s pupils, Beethoven’s house.
Personal nouns as the boy’s new computer, my little sister’s doll
Collective nouns as the police’s meeting, the crew’s style.
Higher animals and pets when not specifying gender as the horse’s tail, the cat’s
whiskers.
Geographical and institutional names as Spain’s party.
Temporal nouns as today’s dinner.
Measurement expressions of time and distance as ten minutes’ break and the arm’s
length.
On the other hand, the of- genitive structure is namely used with nouns of inanimate
gender, especially with those having object reference; for instance the last page of the
book and, to a lesser degree, with animate nouns, especially lower animals as the tail
of the rat. However, since it often overlaps with the –s genitive, it is possible to replace
the sequence noun + of + noun by the sequence noun + noun omitting the preposition
“of”. For instance, the walls of the room by the room walls.
Moreover, this structure of is also used for adjectives with a plural connotation, for
instance; the lifestyle of the rich.
Other syntactic structures that deal with the expression of possession are the following:
The genitive ellipsis deals with cases in which the noun that is modified by the –s
genitive, may be omitted if the context makes its identity clear. For instance, ‘He has a
car like John’s. They are clearly referring to John’s car. The genitive ellipsis can also be
done by using the pronouns ‘that’ or ‘those’ which usually replace the corresponding
items in the following examples: ‘The population of New York is greater than that of
Chicago’ and ‘The cars of Italy are more expensive than those of Greece’.
Ellipsis is especially used in the ‘local genitive’, that is, expressions relating to homes,
businesses and establishments. For instance, ‘You can find me at Tom’s tonight’, It
refers to the house of Tom.
Another common structure is called the double genitive which refers to an of phrase
which can be combined with an –s genitive construction. For instance, Ana is a sister of
Mary’s. The main difference between this sentence and Ana is a sister of Mary, is that
here we do not know if Mary has more than one sister, though the double genitive
structure implies that there is more than one sister.
Since the –s genitive has a determiner role, this must be definite and personal, for
instance An opera of Verdi’s, but not an opera of a violinist’s.
 4. SEMANTIC POSSESSION
All in all, we shall offer a semantic classification of genitive meanings following similar
criteria and are classified as follows:
Firstly, the possessive genitive which is the commonest as it expresses the
possession of an object. One of its main features is that it is normally placed in often
paraphrased with the verbs ‘have’, ‘own’ For instance Jane’s house instead of Jane
has a house.
Second, the subjective genitive has a specific syntactic structure, where the noun of
the genitive is actually the subject and it is performing an action. Instead of the boy
applied, we can say the boy’s application form , or instead of the girl screamed, we can
say the girl’s screams.
Third, the objective genitive which also has a particular syntactic structure, where,
unlike the subjective genitive, the noun of the genitive is actually the object of the
sentence. Instead of saying someone supports the friends we can say the friends’
support or instead someone reported the news, we can say the news’ report.
Fourth, the descriptive genitive involves a description of the noun following the
genitive, and therefore, it is often paraphrased with modifiers. For instance, sport
clothes are especially designed for children can be translated to children’s sport
clothes, and the degree is a doctorate to a doctor’s degree.
Fifth, the partitive genitive is usually expressed by the of-construction since it is far
from denoting literal possession. As its name indicates, this type of genitive denotes
partition as ‘parts of a whole’; for instance the brain’s two hemispheres.
Sixth, the genitive of measure usually overlaps with the partitive genitive since they
share similar characteristics. As its name indicates, this type of genitive indicates
measure regarding time, height, weight or distance. For instance, the height of the
tower the length of the river.
Finally, The genitive of origin, as its names indicates, addresses directly to the origin
or source of the noun preceding the genitive, as in your grandmother’s letter or Italy’s
pizza.
CONCLUSION
In order to sum up, this study has looked at the expressions of possession, especially
by means of the Saxon genitive and the of structure. I have deeply analysed and
classify the expression of possession by three different levels; morphological, syntactic
and semantic
Our students should be able to properly express themselves in order to communicate
and exchange information. The expression of possession plays an important role on
language as we are able to create relationships among people and objects and
express ownership, belongings and purchases. Otherwise how would an English
student convince his teacher that he is not the owner of the cribs?
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Jespersen, O. 2006. Essentials of English Grammar. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
Murphy, R. 2019. English Grammar in Use. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Stockwell, R. 2001. English Words: History and Structure. Cambridge. Cambridge
University Press
Swan, M. 2005. Practical English Usage. Oxford. Oxford University Press.