(linguistics) and at . Some points as they relate specifically to English are discussed below. Actions When possessives are used with a verbal noun or other noun expressing an action, the possessive may represent either the doer of the action (the subject of the corresponding verb) or the undergoer of the action (the object of the verb). The same applies to of phrases. When a possessive and an of phrase are used with the same action noun, the former generally represents the subject and the latter the object. For example: Fred's dancing (or the dancing of Fred – Fred is the dancer (only possible meaning with this verb) the proposal's rejection or the rejection of the proposal – the proposal is rejected Fred's rejection of the proposal – Fred is the rejecter, the proposal is rejected When a gerundive phrase acts as the object of a verb or preposition, the agent/subject of the gerund may be possessive or not, reflecting two different but equally valid interpretations of the phrase's structure: I object to Ralph destroying the barn. (Ralph is the subject of the gerundive verb "destroying".) I object to Ralph's destroying the barn. (Ralph is the genitive of the verbal noun "destroying".) Time periods Time periods are sometimes put into possessive form, to express the duration of or time associated with the modified noun: the Hundred Years' War a day's pay two weeks' notice The paraphrase with of is often un-idiomatic or ambiguous in these cases. Expressing for Sometimes the possessive expresses for whom something is intended, rather than to whom it physically belongs: women's shoes children's literature These cases would be paraphrased with for rather than of (shoes for women). Appositive genitive Sometimes genitive constructions are used to express a noun in apposition to the main one, as in the Isle of Man, the problem of drug abuse. This may be occasionally be done with a possessive (as in Dublin's fair city, for the fair city of Dublin), but this is a rare usage. History The s clitic originated in Old English as an inflexional suffix marking genitive case. In the modern language, it can often be attached to the end of an entire phrase (as in "The king of Spain's wife" or "The man whom you met yesterday's bicycle"). As a result, it is normally viewed by linguists as a clitic – that is, a morpheme that has