Genitive Semantic Types

Many associate genitives with possession, but in fact only a fraction of genitive constructions express a possessive relationship. Five genitive types can be identified. They are possessive, subject, object, part/whole and measure.

The following sentences provide examples of possessive genitives:

The child's bicycle was stolen.
Their yacht is beautiful.
Mary's shoes are new.

Subject genitives express a relationship similar to that of a subject and predicate. Here are examples:

William Shakespeare's plays are famous.
The professor's lecture was boring.
The man's explanation was not credible.

In object genitives, the relationship of the genitive to the noun that it modifies is like the relationship of a direct object and its verb. Here are examples:

Carl's promotion made him happy.
She was shocked by her friend's murder.
The city's devastation was unprecedented.

The following sentences provide examples of part/whole genitives:

The roof of the house was damaged by the storm.
The top of the table is new.
The cover of the book is torn.

With genitives of measure, the term of measurement is the noun head. Here are examples:

The circumference of the earth is 40,075 kilometres.
He forgot the weight of the package.
The length of the trial surprised many.

Genitives are often identified with possession. Possessive genitives can be further divided into two types, alienable and inalienable. Besides possession, however, four other types can be expressed. English used to mark all genitive nouns with the inflection suffix -s but after the Norman invasion, Modern English uses both inflection and the preposition of to mark genitive relationships.