THE PROBLEM OF GENITIVE CASE IN ENGLISH

Abstract

This paper describes the theory of genitive case which actually derives from the concept of case in several European languages like Latin. In Latin there are six different cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, and ablative cases. This article deals with only genitive case as it is most frequently used in English articles. The aim of the description of the preposition is to help students of English translate the phrases or sentences containing the genitive case. English has a set of prepositions and prepositional idioms (Wood, 1974). This paper deals with only preposition of, which is assumed to cover several meanings or ideas and then invites difficulties on the part of the learners. Wood proposed sixteen different meanings of the preposition under investigation. The preposition is followed by the genitive case as in Latin grammar. I gave the examples of the sixteen meanings in the form of phrases and sentences. At the last part of this article I include several texts as the teaching materials to be translated. Hopefully, those meanings will be of great help for teachers of reading class and translation class. Key words: case, genitive case, English