Double Genitive

The double genitive, also called a double possessive, an oblique genitive, and a
postgenitive, is a phrase in which possession is indicated by the preposition "of" followed
by the possessive form of a noun or pronoun, as in a friend of Eric's. Some linguists argue
that the double genitive is not a true genitive but rather a type of partitive construction.

Generally, what follows the “of” in a double possessive will be definite and human.

For example, we might say “friends of Sue’s,” but not “friends of the university’s”. The use
of the genitive case like this does not exist anymore for abstract entities: “A friend of the
university”, “A friend of the common folks”, “A friend of Switzerland”, “A friend of the
library”.

Another guideline is that what precedes the "of" will usually be indefinite. For example,
“a friend of Sue’s.” When the preceding word indicates something definite, the second
possessive is dropped: “the best friend of Sue,” “that friend of Sue.” On the other hand,
one might say, with some emotion, “That dog of Sue’s is a nuisance.”

The word “Sue’s” is not a possessive, but rather it is in the genitive case. This is a vestige
of the genitive case – one that has nearly vanished in Modern English – and the vestige
comes from Anglo-Saxon. This language did have the genitive case, as did Latin, and as
do many modern European languages.

The vestage of the genitive case is found most often in English personal pronouns: friends
of mine, friends of yours, friends of his, friends of hers, friends of ours, friends of theirs.
The same applies for singular nouns: “He is a friend of ours.”

This usage seems to have fallen out of use with interrogatory pronouns: “A friend of
whom?” instead of “A friend of whose.” (“He is a friend of whom? That’s unbelievable!
He is a rotten scoundrel, and I didn’t think that he had any friends.”)

Sometimes the double possessive is needed to avoid ambiguity

The double genitive is used to precisely denote possession and resolve ambiguity in some
cases — such as the phrase "This is a picture of John's" denoting that the picture is in
John's possession, but that it is not necessarily a picture of John (John being shown on
the picture) or John's picture (a case where it could be a picture of John's, or it could
simply be in his possession); or the phrase "The mansion contains portraits of the
owner’s" where the portraits may be of anyone, but they belong to the owner, compared
to the phrase "The mansion contains portraits of the owner" where the portraits are of the
owner (i.e., they present a likeness of the owner).

However, this construction is also considered to be either informal or not part of Standard
English. Some language liberals argue that in informal and casual contexts the double
genitive is idiomatic and not overkill, but few editors of Standard English will be likely to let
it stand in formal writing.