Finally we take the opportunity of this Preface to pay tribute to members of the Longman staff and editorial team who have steered this project from its inception to the final stages of publication. Sheik Dallas, although she came late to the project, played a crucial role in seeing the book from final draft stage through several proofs into print | 298 NOUNS PRONOUNS AND THE SIMPLE NOUN PHRASE Group genitives The genitive suffix is attached to the last word of a genitive phrase. In the great majority of cases the last word is the head of a noun phrase the prince s brother the clerk s office etc. When the head of the genitive phrase is followed by a postmodifier the suffix is attached at the end of the phrase the so-called group genitive She would be pleased to get back to her mother-in-law s house fict I have to accept the clerk of the course s decision news Preference is to a racecourse The father of five s face was so badly busted he had to be fitted with a metal cage to keep the bones in place until they set. news The group genitive is chiefly used with more or less fixed collocations. When there is postmodification the more common alternative is to resort to an o -phrase rather than an s-genitive . Other examples of group genitives are found with coordinate constructions The new girls that were meant to be sleeping in there slept in Zoey and Lucy s room conv He had to take a minute or two s rest to recover his breath fict The choice between a group genitive and two coordinated s-genitives may correlate with a difference in meaning. Compare 1 Sir David did not comment on Britain and China s war of words over Hong Kong s future. news 2 To set the tone for our discussion and to put planning and evaluation into proper perspective we present Berg and Muscat s definition of planning acad 3 Not only do the World Cup organisers have to keep England s and Holland s supporters apart they will also have to cope with Ireland s peaceful green army which could number 20 000. news 4 The reason that Schrodinger s and Heisenberg s versions of quantum mechanics had seemed at first sight different from each other see p. 14 was that they had chosen to use contrasting extreme possibilities acad The group genitives in 1 and 2 clearly define the same phenomenon. By contrast the reference of the coordinated .
