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I would like to know which one of these expressions is the most correct and why?

Google´s car

The car of Google

When I refer to the driverless car Google has invented.

Edwin Ashworth
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Ana
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  • 'The Google driverless car' – Edwin Ashworth Apr 05 '14 at 13:34
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    You cannot ask which of two things is the most anything. The superlative degree does not apply to pairs of items; the comparative degree does. Hence, more correct of two things. So one might posit that one version is more correct than the other, but never most correct. In any event, you left out a third possibility, one that @EdwinAshworth proposes: using Google as an attributive noun. That would give you now 3 possibilities, and so you could retain most. However, one risks treading on ice so thin as to be hallucinatory when one poses a false dilemma of correctness in language. – tchrist Apr 05 '14 at 14:38
  • +1 for the modifier in the idiom. I'm going to pinch it. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 05 '14 at 14:42

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They are both correct, but most people would say Google's car in everyday speech.

This is usually used with particular things which are possessed by named people/companies/countries etc

John's car
Anne's job
Britain's coast
America's mountains

Thus: "Let's go in John's car" but never "Let's go in the car of John."

However, you could use it for emphasis: "This car of John's is going to cost him a fortune."

The of construction is used in more general terms.

The climate of the world is changing

There are also various traditional/historic uses:

The Tower of London
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
The soup of the day

But basically they are both correct and you will be understood whichever you use.

Edit

The example "This car of John's..." is incorrect (see Janus comment).

A better example might be:

All the parents were invited to the school play, even the father of John and Anne, although he had been banned from attending on previous occasions

This avoids the difficulty, which confuses lots of people, of whether to say:

John's and Anne's father or John and Anne's father

Mynamite
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  • Note that what you call ‘emphasis’ is really a completely different construction: it is using of as a partitive marker on what is already a possessive (Saxon or pronominal). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 05 '14 at 12:02
  • You're quite right, I didn't think it through :( Can you think of any instance where you would say 'car of John'? – Mynamite Apr 05 '14 at 12:08
  • Nope, none at all, because the of genitive is not used to denote literal possession/ownership with human referents. :-) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 05 '14 at 12:23
  • @Janus : Not normally, but it's sometimes used as a rhetorical device, notably in book, song or film titles: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Eyes of a Child, The Island of Doctor Moreau, etc. – Terpsichore Apr 05 '14 at 13:01
  • @Terpsichore, I wouldn’t call any of those literal ownership. The first two are body parts (which is more partitive in nature), while the latter is a kind of ‘genitive of association’ (the island that is associated with Doctor Moreau) rather than possession (the island that Doctor Moreau owns). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 05 '14 at 13:09
  • @JanusBahsJacquet How about Mary, mother of Jesus? That serves as a title, I suppose, does it count? – Mynamite Apr 05 '14 at 13:17
  • No, that’s a family relation—Jesus doesn’t own Mary as his mother, it’s just a description of their (familiar) relationship to one another. Even if you force an of construction on to something that clearly denotes a relationship of owner and thing owned, the ownership aspect is diminished and a more generic associative relationship is established instead: “Jesus’ sandals” are the sandals owned (and worn) by Jesus, while “the sandals of Jesus” gives a vaguer idea of association between the sandals and Jesus, but less overtly actual ownership. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 05 '14 at 13:26
  • @JanusBahsJacquet As we're on a Biblical theme, what of the phrase The word of God. Whose word is it? – Mari-Lou A Apr 05 '14 at 14:00
  • @Mari-LouA, I’d say that’s similar to the sandals of Jesus, except here I can’t see it as literal possession even with a Saxon genitive “God’s word” (you can’t physically possess a word, it’s not a physical thing). It is a word that originates with God and is intimately associated with God, but there is no literal, physical, “I own this possession and have it in my hand” kind of ownership—to me one of the very few places where one genitive construction simply cannot be used, rather than one just being more common or more natural than the other. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 05 '14 at 14:06
  • And yet, Google books report that God's word is acceptable usage. God may not physically possess a word, but it is being used in a metaphorical sense. "Word" represents the teachings, the guidelines, the moral code of conduct (whatever!) of God. – Mari-Lou A Apr 05 '14 at 14:17
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    The elephant in this room is that corporate names tend to be used as attributive nouns: a Ford sedan, an Audi wagon, a Tesla roadster. Neither the apostrophe-s clitic using Y’s X nor the of preposition form X of Y makes half so much sense in these cases (no pun intended) as does simply saying the Y X. It’s just *the Google car*, that’s all. Short, sweet, simple. If you want to talk about actual ownership, further convolutions will be required. – tchrist Apr 05 '14 at 14:43