Grammar as a phenomenon – a subsystem of language as a linguistic discipline

The class of nouns can be described as a lexico-grammatical field. Nouns denoting things constitute the centre (nucleus) of the field. Nouns denoting processes, qualities, abstract notions (predicate nouns) are marginal, peripheral elements of the field.

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  Nucleus and periphery are distinguished on the basis of lexico-semantic properties and morph. characteristics – subclasses of Nouns
  
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  The nucleus -> common- concrete-countable- animate Nouns
  
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  The periphery -> abstract – material- uncountable Nouns
  

The category of case
Case is a morphological category which has a distinct syntactic significance, as it denotes relations, of nouns towards other words in the sentence. Languages of synthetic structure have a developed case-system. Languages of analytical structure lack these morphological variants.
This category is expressed in English by the opposition of the form in -'s [-z, -s, -iz], usually called the "possessive" case, or more traditionally, the "genitive" case, to the unfeatured form of the noun, usually called the "common" case. The apostrophised -s serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the genitive case from the plural noun in the common case. E.g.: the man's duty, the President's decision, Max's letter; the boy's ball.

Common case

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  Wide, too general
  

Genetive case

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  More precise. It has a wide variety of meanings:
  

1. Possessive genitive, e.g.:
Mrs. Johnson s passport —* Mrs- Johnson has a passport (R. Quirk etal.).
2. Subjective genitive, indicating the doer of the action, e.g.: the people's choice —» The people chose (S. Greenbaum).
3. Genitive of source, denoting such relationships as authorship and origin. Cf.:
the general's letter —> The general wrote a letter (R. Quirk et al.).
Australia's exports —» the exports that come from Australia (S. Greenbaum).
4. Objective genitive, indicating the object of the action, e.g.: Kennedy's assassination —> Somebody assassinated Kennedy
(S. Greenbaum).
5. Temporal genitive, denoting a period of time, e.g.:
ten days' absence —> The absence lasted ten days (R. Quirk et al.).
6. Equational genitive, establishing the identity of the referent,
e.g.:
a mile's distance ~+ The distance is a mile (L.S. Barkhudarov).
7. Genitive of destination, e.g.:
a women s college —»• a college for women (R. Quirk et al.).
The semantic classification, in the opinion of R. Quirk and his co-authors, is in part arbitrary. For example, one could claim that cow's milk is not a genitive of origin (milk from a cow) but a subjective genitive (The cow provided the milk). No wonder that L.S. Barkhudarov sometimes finds it difficult to name the kernel sentence from which the construction with the genitive case has been derived, e.g.: Nick's school (L.S. Barkhudarov). Of course, Nick's school could be transformed into Nick goes to school, but such transformations can be regarded only as quasi transformations [Z. Harris] because they do not give an opportunity to clearly formulate the rules of generating constructions with the genitive case. + для практики посм в книге типы генетивов: double, absolute