This possessives page brings together information about

  • possessive nouns
  • possessive adjectives
  • possessive pronouns
  • questions
  • reciprocal pronouns  

 

Comments

Adya's's picture Adya's replied on India

Hi
Is there a rule restricting the number of apostrophe 's to be used in a phrase to indicate possession? For example, is the following sentence correct?

My friend's father's friend's house is beautiful.

I have searched a lot on the internet for a reliable page on the topic, but in vain. Can you please suggest one?

Regards

Peter M's picture Peter M replied on Poland

Hi Adya's,

There is no rule for this. However, common sense tells us that multiple examples of possessive 's will make a sentence clumsy, inelegant and possibly hard to follow. It's very unusual to see more than two in a row.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

CascadeGorge's picture CascadeGorge replied on United States of America

Responding to Peter M's comment:

"Both progressive and continuous are used interchangeably in British English. Progressive is the older, more traditional form; continuous has come into use more recently. I'm from the UK and I'm not sure about typical US usage, I'm afraid."

American/U.S. English speaker, here. I have never seen the words, "progressive" and "continuous" used interchangeably in American English. It might be a cultural difference that makes them interchangeable in the UK, but I am at a loss to know how that is possible because their definitions are distinct.

zenger62's picture zenger62 replied on China

Dear Sir,
Susan is one of my friends. or Susan is a friend of mine.

They are all correct. But I'd like to ask you the question: when do we use the first one ? and when do we use the second one?

Peter M's picture Peter M replied on Poland

Hello zenger62,

I don't think there are any contexts in which one of these would be preferred over the other. Neither has any particular stylistic (formal, informal) tone and they can be used interchangeably.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

leonard777's picture leonard777 replied on Armenia

I am really sorry, but I've found some technical problems with this part of the site. The site does't or can't explain-
possessives: nouns
possessives: adjectives
possessives: pronouns
possessives: questions
possessives: reciprocal pronouns

What can I do. I adore this site , that's why I want you to know about these kind of problems. Please solve those problems. I know that you can. It has primary importance for me. I am a teacher and I have to know some materials from your site. Pleas check and notify. Thanks a million!

Kirk's picture Kirk replied on Spain

Hi leonard777,

As Peter said, we are working on this and apologise for the inconvenience. I'm happy to report, however, that although the links are broken, there is another way to get to these pages -- please try the links below and I think they should work for you:

possessives: nouns
possessives: adjectives
possessives: pronouns
possessives: questions
possessives: reciprocal pronouns

All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team

Peter M's picture Peter M replied on Poland

Hello leonard777,

Thank you for flagging this. We are already aware of some problems with the links on the site leading to the wrong pages and we have asked our technical team to address this.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Sad's picture Sad replied on Ecuador

Hi.
Is Progressive same as Continuoues?

They say that progressive is used in American English while Continuoues is used in British English.

Please clarify.

Thanks

Pages