Investigating the Ability of Iraqi University Learners of English to Recognize the Semantics of the English ’s Genitive

The marked genitive case as distinguished from the unmarked common one is one of the forms accompanied with the noun phrase in English to express grammatical/semantic relationships within sentences in texts. In many instances in complex noun phrases, there is a similarity of function and meaning between ’s-genitive or a genitive construction and its equivalent with ‘of phrase’ or ‘of-construction’. In many cases, the two forms are equivalent in meaning and are both perfectly acceptable, in other cases either the ’s-genitive or the of-construction is the only nappropriate choice regarding the factors affecting the best choice.