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genitive construction

Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A phrase using the genitive case to show possession, origin, or association

Detailed Definition
Genitive constructions (“the voice of the wind,” “child of sorrow”) create intimate or symbolic bonds between entities; they enable compact metaphor, suggesting lineage, essence, or emotional ownership through grammatical possession.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The king’s crown” uses the possessive genitive to show that the crown belongs to the king; Keats’s “season of mists” is an of-genitive whose relation is descriptive rather than simple ownership; “The poet’s ink stained the margin” and “the mother’s prayer crossed the room” show how genitives can compress relationships into vivid noun phrases; In “a day’s journey,” the genitive expresses measure, reminding writers that possessive forms serve several meanings
Additional Notes
Genitive constructions show possession: “the poet’s ink,” “the sea’s memory”; they link identity to object or emotion; common in elegies and lyrical verse; use to deepen metaphor: “the child’s first cry” as “the first note of a song”; avoid ambiguity—clarify ownership; related to dative construction and prepositional phrase; effective in poems of inheritance, memory, or legacy.
Also Known As
possessive construction genitive case of-phrase
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