Possessives

The following is a list of common non-physical relations between nouns:

Ownership refers to the right to possess, control, and use a resource or object. There are several ways to show ownership in English. The most common way is to use possessives, including possessive nouns, pronouns, and determiners.

The preposition 'of' can also be used to show ownership, although this structure is less common:

Sometimes a particular object does not belong to someone per se, but they are using it or occupying it for some time. To indicate this kind of utilization, we can use possessive structures:

We can use possessive forms to refer to parts of a person's body. In this case, possessive forms do not refer to ownership, but to a relation of part and whole.

We can use different structures to refer to a part of an object. Noun modifiers and the preposition 'of' are commonly used for this purpose. For example:

Possessive nouns can also be used in these cases, but they are less common:

To refer an artifact to its creator or producer, we can use possessive forms as well as the preposition 'of'. For example:

To refer to someone's interpretation and understanding of an entity, we can use possessives. For example:

To talk about the material that an object is made of, we mostly use noun modifiers.

To talk about the parts that make up an object, both noun modifiers and the preposition 'of' can be used. For example:

Partitives divide entities into parts or groups. This type of partition is commonly expressed using the preposition 'of'.

To indicate the function and purpose for which an object is used, we mainly use noun modifiers. For example:

We can also use the preposition 'for' to refer to the purpose or use of an object:

To refer a person or an object to a specific type of a more generic group, we can use noun modifiers.

Both possessive forms and the preposition 'of' can be used to refer events to the time they occurred or appeared.

To show how people relate to each other, including family relations, friendship, work relations, etc. we can use possessive forms.

We can also use the preposition 'of' to show such relationships, but this structure is less common and the same meaning can be expressed using the possessive forms.

To refer a noun to its origins we can use noun modifiers as well as the preposition 'of'. For example:

To show that an object, such as a work of art, is derived from or inspired by someone or something, we can use possessive structures as well as the preposition 'of'. For examples:

To refer to physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and other experiences of people, we can use possessive forms.

To attribute some quality or ability to a person, we can use the preposition 'of'. For example:

To refer to titles of people or places, we use noun modifiers, for example:

To indicate someone's job position or affiliation to a certain organization, we can use the preposition 'of', as well as noun modifiers. For example:

We can also use possessive nouns to refer to titles, but this is generally informal and less common:

The following table summarizes the relations between nouns and the main linguistic devices for expressing them.