Why is "Two friends of my parents' have just left..." grammatically correct?

Question

I just trying to solve this, but my English is not so good. Could anyone help me? Why is the letter a) correct?
thanks a lot in advance

Complete the following sentence: "Two ________ have just left for Argentina".

a) friends of my parents'
b) my parents' friends
c) friends of my parents
d) friends' my parents

Try to Google "double possessive" and read the links. If you still don't understand it, please edit with what you understand and what you don't. — , Jun 26 '16 at 07:30
Hint #1: "friends of my parents" = "my parents' friends", and "Two friends of my parents" = "Two of my parents' friends". Hint #2: Option (a) is not correct. — Sven Yargs, Jun 26 '16 at 08:06
now i've understood the sentence , i didn't know "double possessive" .. thank you ranthony for your time! — iamgiulio, Jun 26 '16 at 08:15
@Sven Yargs According to articles in the implied links of Rathony's, the double possessive should not be labelled 'not correct'. — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 26 '16 at 23:43
Possible duplicate of Why is it usually "friend of his", but no possessive apostrophe with "friend of Peter"? — Lawrence, Sep 09 '17 at 14:07

Mari-Lou A · Answer 1 · 2017-09-14T11:43:50.910

2

It is questionable whether letter a) should be correct. I would argue that the answer is, in fact, c)

Two friends of my parents

The possessive apostrophe in parents' which answer a) contains, is redundant. We have the preposition "of" which tells us that the "owners" of these two friends are the speaker's parents, i.e. the parents of the speaker.

edited Sep 14 '17 at 11:43

answered Sep 14 '17 at 11:38

Mari-Lou A

91,183

Why is "Two friends of my parents' have just left..." grammatically correct?

1 Answers1