The Curious Case of Two Possessive Forms

We can express ourselves through words in innumerable ways: replace/substitute/swap a word with a synonym here, change the order of words/word order there. That’s part of the beauty of English. Or should I say English’s beauty?

English speakers are familiar enough with the fact that we can express possession (and the genitive case more broadly) in either of two main ways: with the clitic ’s or the preposition of. Often these constructions are interchangeable, as in the book’s success or the success of the book. But sometimes, they aren’t so exchangeable: we say a bottle of water, but it feels strange to say *water’s bottle. If we look closer, we can unearth a lot of “unknown knowns”, complex grammatical patterns that we as English speakers don’t realize we’re intuitively aware of. This proves, once again, that language is an endless source of fascination (but not, curiously, *fascination’s endless source). Read on for insights into these competing forms.

Cut From Different Genitive Cloths

The English language’s propensity for borrowing has led to dual ways of expressing possession. English started with the Germanic clitic now spelled as ’s and later added the option with the preposition of during Middle English, by analogy with French de as in eau de cologne.

a dog’s breakfast
a sign of the times

We explain more about how these coexisting forms originated in our article Double Trouble. These two constructions are generally understood to denote possession or ownership (as in Justin’s watch), but they are used in a wider variety of semantic relationships closely related to possession, which fall under the genitive case. In English, the genitive case is used for nouns and possessive pronouns (his, mine, etc.) to represent possession or another close connection between two entities, such as the relationship between a part and its whole, a thing and its origin, a thing and a descriptive attribute, an action and its subject, or an action and its object.

the baby’s chubby cheeks

part-to-whole relationship

a women’s college

description relationship

Aesop’s fables

origin–creation relationship

the company’s announcement

subject–action relationship

the evaluation of the methods

object–action relationship

Opening Our Mind’s Eye

Grammarians have unearthed various properties that dictate whether one form of the genitive is preferred over the other. We’ll start with two of the more prominent properties: animacy (inanimate versus animate entities) and length of the phrase.¹

Animacy

The more animate an entity is considered to be, the more likely it will take the ’s genitive. Linguists have observed an animacy hierarchy, with humans at the top, followed by animals, then collective nouns referring to a group of individuals (like crowd or executive board), and, at the bottom, objects.

I’m Jennifer’s dad.
Less common: I’m the dad of Jennifer.

The possessor, Jennifer, is animate.

The lion’s mane is majestic.
Less common: The mane of the lion is majestic.

The possessor, the animal, is animate.

the squad’s base
Less common: the base of the squad
Also possible: squad base

The possessor, the squad, is a collective noun referring to humans, so it’s fairly animate. Note that it is often possible to replace the possessive form with a simple modifier: the squad base.

Tokyo’s nightlife
Less common: the nightlife of Tokyo
Also possible: Tokyo nightlife

Geographic nouns have a preference for taking the subject position of the noun phrase.

the base of the skull
Less common: the skull’ base
Also possible: the skull base

The possessor, the skull, is inanimate.

Likewise, the structure the X’s Y tends to imply that X is doing an action, whereas the Y of the X tends to imply that X is the target of an action. For example, the man’s story tends to imply that the man tells a story or has a story to tell, whereas the story of the man takes more readily the interpretation that someone else tells or has a story to tell about the man.

Length

When the possessor is a longer noun phrase, the of genitive is preferred, and when the possessed is a longer noun phrase, the ’s genitive is preferred. This results in the more complex information being placed near the end, reflecting a general tendency in English of putting the focus at the end of a sentence. 

the mirror’s ornate handcrafted mosaic frame Less common structure: the handcrafted mosaic frame of the mirror

the frame of the cracked and dusty mirror Less common structure: the cracked and dusty mirror’s frame

Digging Deeper

In addition to these common rules of thumb, a variety of other properties are at play in determining whether ’s or of sounds natural. The following is a sampling of such lexical and syntactic restrictions.

Measurements of quantity typically use the of genitive, with the exception of time measurements, which can use either.

a litre of water

Not *a water’s litre

a pound of sugar

Not *sugar’s pound

a busload of students

Not *a students’ busload

a delay of three hours
a three-hours’ delay

For measurements of quantity, both forms are idiomatic, albeit quite formal. A more common phrasing today is a simple compound adjective: a three-hour delay.

When adding emphasis with a reflexive pronoun like herself or himself, the of form is used. 

I was greeted by the son of the president himself.

Not *I was greeted by the president himself’s son.

Possessive forms bring up other tricky questions of grammar, like how to add ’s to nouns already ending in s, or how to coordinate two possessors in constructions like Moira(’s) and John’s dogs. Antidote’s language guides go into more detail on these topics.

Creative License

The ’s genitive is generally considered more informal. This is likely because borrowings from French, like the of genitive, tend to carry more prestige (compare, for example, Anglo-French pork and Germanic pig). As such, spoken English, which is by nature more colloquial than written English, tends to favour the more casual ’s genitive, even going so far as using it in ways that would feel awkward in written English. For example, a sentence like “This must be that shoe with the green stripe’s missing shoelace” sounds quite natural in spoken, casual English, even though it breaks two of the “rules” outlined above by using the ’s genitive with a possessor that is both long and inanimate.

Even in written English, there is a growing preference for genitive ’s over of, reflecting how written English is becoming more informal and more like spoken English. (See Tuning Your Voice: Trends in Brand Language for more commentary on this trend.)

In poetry and creative writing, we are also more likely to see other unusual phrasings that go against the rules outlined above. For example, the poetic phrasing grief’s tears subverts what we’d expect, infusing animacy into something considered inanimate (a feeling).

The Best of Both Worlds

In the case of embedded clauses, where there are multiple possessors, mixing the two genitive forms together can result in a smoother phrasing, avoiding syntactic repetition and improving clarity. 

the king of France’s declaration

This seems to flow better than using the ’s genitive twice in a row, as in France’s king’s declaration.

Tricks of the Trade

Knowing the nuances between ’s and of can help when choosing which form to use, although the constellation of rules is quite complex. When in doubt, you can get a feel for which phrasing is more idiomatic by comparing the frequencies of competing constructions. This can be done via a search on the web or in a corpus, like Antidote’s combinations dictionary. There, for instance, we find that the call of duty is more frequent than duty’s call, in line with the animacy rule outlined above.

The Heart of the Matter

Grammar rules, while fascinating and instructive, are just approximate blueprints for how language behaves. Our minds, by contrast, are living palaces full of hidden intuition into language’s inner workings. At the end of the day, the choice between equivalent phrasings—like the ’s or of genitive—often comes down to what sounds better to the writer’s ear. As author E.B. White reminds us, in good genitive style, “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”

This article was concocted by

Antidote’s linguists