-2

I learned that the possessive apostrophe -s is used for living beings and the "of" form for non living things:

  • The dog's name is Sherlock
  • The color of the flower is yellow

However, I have noticed that these rules are often ignored in spoken language:

  • The road's name is Privet Drive
  • The name of the dog is Sherlock

Are these mistakes made by non-native speakers or are these just theoretical grammatical rules that are not really strictly applied by native speakers in their spoken language as well?

Does one stand out directly as a non-native speaker with these errors?

Andrei Herford
  • 97
  • Duplicate of several questions including this and this. There are also questions about whether a dog/cat/baby counts as an animate being if you search for them. – Stuart F Sep 18 '23 at 09:14

1 Answers1

1

Whoever told you that the possessive apostrophe -s is used for living beings and the "of" form for non living things is obviously talking nonsense...

enter image description here

I rest my case.

FumbleFingers
  • 140,184
  • 45
  • 294
  • 517
  • The duplicates have already been pointed out. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 18 '23 at 11:17
  • There's probably much more that could be said about this issue than even the very long answers in the question you linked to. I don't care if no-one upvotes my picture, but I think the OP's initial assertion here is so ridiculous it needs to be clearly and unambiguously refuted by a very common counterexample. I'd rather see questions at this level migrated to ELL anyway. – FumbleFingers Sep 18 '23 at 11:26