We are able to change the statement “house of brick house “ to the “brick house.” This is mainly because the first statement refers to a particular house and the material used to set up the structure (Strumpf and Douglas 2004). We cannot however equate the statement “ the home of elephants” to the statement the “elephants’ home” because from experience we know that a home can only be made of certain materials and in no way can living creatures be part of these materials.
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This is the main reason why we need to add an extra ‘s’ to make the statement the elephant’s home make sense. This is because the latter statement does not necessarily refer to the material used to build the house but to the ownership and occupancy of the structure (Hurford 1994).
The extra ‘s’ is used to indicate that a number of elephants own the place in question and this serves to get rid the dispute between ownership and structural components. This is mainly a grammatical statement and like many statement’s of its nature it refers to a given item (Murphy 2007).
As it is in this case, the statement tries to set up a clear distinction between the physical characteristics of a structural component and its other features. In essence, the latter statement tries to create a sense of ownership while the earlier statement creates an idealistic view of the materials used to build the house. This is a grammatical paradox and would in essence call for an extensive detailing of the statements’ components just to make sure that the issues of contention are well addressed (Elliot 2006).
Elliot, R. 2006. Painless Grammar. United States: Barron’s Educational Series.
Hurford, J. 1994. Grammar: a student’s guide. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, R. 2007. Essential grammar in use: a self-study reference and practice book. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Strumpf, M. and Douglas, A. 2004. The grammar bible: everything you always wanted to know about grammar but didn’t know whom to ask. Maryland: Holt.