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When expressing ownership of something with apostrophe + s, is there a "full name" for it?

English Language & Usage Asked by Su Excelle on December 25, 2020

When saying "it’s", that’s an abbreviation of "it is" or "it has".

When expressing ownership using the same pattern, "something’s", what’s the "full name" of the " ‘s " expression?

One Answer

Possessive forms of nouns, pronouns, and noun phrases are not abbreviations of anything.

It doesn't matter whether it's Peter's or those cats' suppers or yours or mine. It's always its own thing. There is no unabbreviated version that would somehow be the "full name".

I suppose you could swap it around and have the suppers of those cats, but that's something altogether different. Plus it doesn't always work: a picture of me and a picture of mine are two completely different things even though both are my picture.

Answered by tchrist on December 25, 2020

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