Category of number of the noun

needle’s eye, at a stone’s throe, to move at a snail’s pace, at the water’s edge

The syntactical function of the genitive –attribute. It’s always used as a premodifier & sometimes called the depend genitive.

The absolute genitive – when the genitive case is not followed by the headword & when it stands for the whole noun phrase:

It is used:

1) to avoid repetition(our house is better than Mary’s(house))

2) after the preposition of(an old frend of my mother’s)

3) to denote shops(the grocer’s, the baker’s)

4) saints’ nameSt Paul’s(cathedral)

5) places of residence(at my uncle’s, at Timothy’s)

Double genitive

1) My mother’s father’s people

2) The boy’s half-hour’s run