Theoretical grammar of english

meaning	Example
Analysis
1. possessive genitive	John's car My friend's room	key-W - 'to have' (John has a car). Most frequent M
2. subjective genitive	the doctor's advice Mary's beauty	= the doctor advised Mary is beautiful
3. objective genitive	John's surprise The man's release	1) John was surprised The man was released 2) sb surprised John sb released the man
4. adverbial genitive	Two hours' work A month's absence	Sb worked for 2 hours Sb was absent for a month
5. equation genitive	A mile's distance An arm's length	Distance is a mile Length is an arm
6. genitive of destination	Children's books Ladies' dresses	Books are for children Dresses are for ladies

Other meanings of GC are difficult to define and may be individual in each case {yesterday's paper, father's generation, Beethoven's symphony).
The number of cases in modern English:
2or3?
3-case system: in Old English - a universal 3-case system for Ns and proNs
(nominative: boy, he: genitive: boy's, his; objective: boy, him)
BUT: the gr sys of English has changed a lot, if proNs retained their 3-case sys, not
necessarily Ns have it. The form 'his' can hardly be considered to be a case form of a
personal proN.
Curm: case = a form of a N which shows its syntactic function in the S. Includes here certain relations which are shown by prepositions/context/position in the S. Various syntactic functions of a N. Uses old English: there syntactic functions were signalled by
inflections, now they’ve disappeared – not clear why the position of a N should be regarded as its case form. Confuses morphological and syntactic factors as well as facts of modern and old English .
Проф. Воронцова; non-traditional point of view on the number of cases of N - the