2. The legends of Sonia's book are fantastic
AV - Reflexión
Important
Remember that the of-construction or the Norman Genitive is formed in the following way:
| thing possessed |
+ | of | + |
possessor (thing) |
| The colour |
of | the travel brochures |
Further knowledge
- If you need to read more about the Saxon Genitive and the of-construction, click here. Don't forget to practice by doing the exercise at the end of the page.
- If you want to do more exercises before facing the Self-Assessment exercise below, click here.
- Finally, click here if you feel like doing one more exercise on the Genitive Case.
Fill in the blanks by means of a Genitive Case. Pay attention to possessors and articles in front of proper nouns!!! Remember that before proper nouns the definite article the is not normally used except to refer to a whole family, e.g. The Simpsons. So, we can say The Simpsons'car if we mean that the car belongs to the whole family.
The lottery prize of Paco -
The legendary books of Sonia -
The car keys - The
The books of a person - A
That book has bright colours - The are bright
Have a look at this sentence
|
| By Emilio Pereira. C. Commons |
In it, the noun phrase (The legends of Sonia's book) is formed by an of-construction and a Saxon Genitive. This structure is known as Double Genitive.
Instead of the Saxon Genitive we can also use possessive pronouns. So, we have, for example sentences such as
| These are Paco's travel brochures |
or These travel brochures are Paco's | or These travel brochures are his. |
| This is Sonia's legendary book | or This legendary book is Sonia's | or This legendary book is hers. |
| Those are Sonia's and Paco's books | or Those books are Sonia's and Paco's | or Those books are theirs. |
Curiosity
Typical mistake: There is a typical mistake students make. It occurs when we refer to one or more friends among my/your/his friends. It is common to use the noun phrase A friend of me, or Some friends of him. These phrases are completely wrong. We need the double genitive with a possessive pronoun, so, we must say A friend of mine (that is, A friend of my friends), or Some friends of his (that is, Some friends of his friends).
In this topic, Paco has learnt a lot about the Genitive Case and probably he won't have more problems with it. Besides, he has decided to visit some "legendary" places in the United Kingdom, the first stop in his travel around the world. We really hope you have learnt as much as him!