Case
1. The of genitive as an alternative
With inanimates (with some exceptions)
Sometimes with animates to distinguish between subjective and objective use
His wife’s loss (his wife lost something)
The loss of his wife (he lost his wife)
Pragmatically caused by sentence structure
The grandmother of a girl in my class has died
2. Semantic types of the of genitive
Possessive are excluded of this genitive
Subjective the acquisition of knowledge
Objective the purpose of the task
Specifying the analysis of the text
Classifying word of French origin
Qualifying the humming of a bee
Partitive a class of small children
a glass of milk
a whole library of books
Descriptive a man of ambition
a woman of great beauty
Adverbial to consist of ten chapters
Causal to die of hunger
Oppositional the village of Corleone
the fool if her husband
Origin the products of the company
Content to speak of love
The legend of King Arthur
3. The grammatical function of the of genitive
It can be qualifier in the nominal group
It can never be a determiner in the nominal group
It can be prepositional object to think of one’s family
It can be predicator complement the structure consists of two parts