POSSESSION

POSSESSION. The grammatical concept of one person or thing belonging to another, shown in English in four ways: (1) By verbs such as have, own, belong to. (2) By possessive pronouns that function as determiners: my house. (3) By the genitive or possessive case of nouns marked in writing by the possessive APOSTROPHE: John's book; the Smiths' farm. (4) By the of-construction: the end of the road. These cover a wide range of meaning from practical ownership (my clothes; I have a dog) through kinds of association (their parents; our country; Shakespeare's birthplace), to more general and often figurative and idiomatic relationships (have an appointment; a day's journey; a lover's quarrel; the story of his life). The genitive is also used to introduce the subject of a gerund, as in It's funny your saying that. In some instances, a genitive and an of-construction are both possible, though not interchangeable in all contexts. The genitive construction is likeliest when the possessor is personal or at any rate animate, or is in some way perceived as having personal aspects: Dr Johnson's house; a dog's breakfast; God's love; Scotland's national poet; the world's pressing needs. The of-construction is preferred with things not considered capable of possessing anything: the lid of a box rather than a box's lid. See GENITIVE CASE, GERUND, SAXON GENITIVE.