The principle of Substitution in stipulating the three English Cases

Case	Substitution by Personal Pronoun	Example
Using a noun	Substituted by a personal pronoun
Type	Pronoun
Common	Personal	He, she, it	A student is writing a test.	He is writing a test.
Possessive	Possessive	His, her, its	He looked at mother’s car. I like the colour of the car.	He looked at her car. I like its colour.
Objective	Personal Pronoun in the Objective Case	Him, her	She wrote a letter to a man.	She wrote a letter to him (She wrote him a letter).

Critics.

The approach is quite a reasonable one as it takes into consideration the Lexical Meaning (a propriety to substitute a noun by a proper personal pronoun), the Syntactic Function (the propriety of a noun to serve a definite syntactic function in a sentence) and the analytical character of the English language (to change grammatical forms by an analytical means, not by synthetic, inflective/inflectional ways).

Though Morphologically the English Noun can hardly change: it has an opposition only in the category of the Number, not in the one of the Case. As for the latter (the Category of Case) materially, morphologically it can have an opposition only when the relations concern some possession. Then there is the opposition of the Common Case and the Possessive one (as in the classification introduced by H.O.Jespersen).

2. Contemporary approach to the Category of Case.

Nowadays there is a tendency to think that there is no morphological category of the case in English.

Firstly, there are no definite morphological forms as material expression of the Case. As a result there is no paradigm of the morphological forms of it.

Secondly, there is a certain confusion as for syntactic functions of the Noun in the form of the Common Case and in the form of the Possessive Case.

Thus, in the both forms the Noun can serve the syntactic function of the Attribute, though, naturally in the Objective Case it should serve the function of the Subject or the one of the Object and in the form of the Possessive Case – the function of the Attribute.

For example:

There is the John’s book. The noun in the Possessive Case is an attribute in the sentence.

There is a table lamp. The noun in the Common Case is an attribute (prepositional attribute), too.

Thirdly, the Possessive Case in English has a few definite peculiarities, which makes it different from synthetic ways of word inflection. They are the following.

1). The main Grammatical Meaning of the Possessive Case is to express a certain possession.

For example:

A student’s book; a students’ book

Though there are also other meanings.

For example:

The day’s wait = the wait during a day (the meaning of temporality)

The hair’s width = the width of a hair, very narrow (the meaning of measure)

The snake’s character = the character that resemble peculiar behaviour of snake (the meaning of quality)

2). The Possessive Case has limited functions:

a) limited lexical function:

usually it is used with names of animated objects

For example:

A girl’s prize; a dog’s bed, etc

But not table’s lamp

b) limited positional function:

a noun takes the place before another noun which is attributed (prepositional location)

For example

A table lamp (not lamp table);

A girl’s prize (not a prize girl’s);

A dog’s bed (not a bed dog’s)

3). Singular and Plural forms of the Noun in the Possessive Case differ only in writing, not in oral speech. There are only rare exceptions.

For example:

Boy’s [boiz]; boys’ [boiz] (sounds the same)

Child – child’s; children – children’s’ (an exception)

4). The index ‘s is not fixed only for the Noun; it can also be added to a word-combination or a clause.

For example:

The girl’s father (added to the word);

The dancing with my friend girl’s father (added to a phrase);

The girl I go with’s father (added to a clause).

Conclusion:

the contemporary English Noun does not have the Category of the Case. There is a tendency to consider the Case as the syntactic attributive category (the syntactic category of attributivity) the formal index of which is ‘s.

In the contemporary English Grammar the Possessive case is included also in the grammatical group of Possessives to which nouns in the Possessive Case, possessives without following nouns, the possessive pronouns and phrases with the preposition of are included.

For example:

Mother’s car (the noun in the Possessive Case);

She got married at St Joseph’s. Alice is at the hairdresser’s (the possessive without a following noun).

There is my new coat. That coat is mine (the possessive personal pronoun)

It is easy to loose one’s temper when one is criticized (the possessive impersonal pronoun)

That policemen is a friend of Lucy. His work is no business of yours (phrases with the preposition of )