Status of The Possessive As A Grammatical Case
English possessives are sometimes said to represent a grammatical case, called the "possessive case" or "genitive case". Historically, the possessive morpheme represented by -'s was a case marker, as noted in the previous section. In Modern English, however, many grammarians consider it to be a clitic rather than a case ending. This is evidenced by phrases like the king of England's horse – if the -'s were a true case ending, it would be expected on king rather than England (*the king's of England horse), since the horse belongs to the king and not to England. (Compare the German das Pferd des Königs von England, where König "king" takes the genitive case. Older English provides constructions like the King's dochter of Noroway, from the ballad "Sir Patrick Spens", meaning "the daughter of the King of Norway".)
Because the ending is in fact separable from the head noun (king) and attaches to the noun phrase as a whole, it is more likely to be analyzed as a clitic. It is claimed that traditional grammarians are uncomfortable with this analysis because they like to view English grammar through the lens of classical languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, which had well-developed case systems.
Read more about this topic: Saxon Genitive
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