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This is Konrad.
He has a dog.
Hence, it's Konrad's dog.

This is someone else.
He has a cat.

  1. Hence it's someone else's cat.
  2. Hence it's someone's else cat.
  3. Hence it's someones else cat.
  4. Hence it's someone elses cat.

I know that I can say "it's a cat of someone else" or "it's a cat belonging to someone else" but that dodges the issue, not answering the question.

Konrad Viltersten
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    In addition to the answers already given, it is also not correct to say, “This is a Konrad” (unless a Konrad is some species of animal I’ve never heard of); you just say, “This is Konrad”. And you cannot say, “it’s a cat of someone else” unless the cat has actually been made from the chopped up pieces of someone else’s body (which is somewhat unlikely in most non-psychopathic circumstances). The ‘of’ construction is not used for actual possession/ownership with animate beings. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 21:44
  • @JanusBahsJacquet What?! In Sweden we chop up corpses and build cats all the time. :) Seriously, though - good point. I corrected "a" for Konrad. It was "a house" from the beginning. – Konrad Viltersten Jul 26 '13 at 21:48
  • To paraphrase for Swedish, whose genitival clitic -s functions in the same way as the English one: ‘someone else’ = en annan. ‘Someone’s else cat’ = ens annan katt (clearly wrong). It must be ‘someone else’s cat’ = en annans katt. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 21:48
  • Duplicate of http://english.stackexchange.com/q/4226 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/4626 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/63104 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/92506 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/107727 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/111458 – tchrist Jul 26 '13 at 21:50
  • possible duplicate of "My wife and I's seafood collaboration dinner" – tchrist Jul 26 '13 at 21:53
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Kudos for Swedish reference. Although, you're mistaken on the sameness part. "Konrad - Konrad's dog" but "it - its dog" (not apostrophe). In Swedish it's always sans, while in English, it depends. Or am I confused by all the body chopping? – Konrad Viltersten Jul 26 '13 at 21:53
  • ‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun, and possessive pronouns do not necessarily follow the normal rules used to form possessives of nouns. Consider in Swedish, det but dess (unlike in Danish, where the word is written dets)—the exact same word with a similarly ‘irregular’ genitive form. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 21:57
  • possible duplicate of How to indicate possession by e.g. passers-by, mothers-in-law – Tim Lymington Jul 26 '13 at 22:01
  • @Janus, I'm fascinated by your erudite citations of Swedish language, really instructive in order to learn English language better. However, en annan sounds [to my ear] like Arab language, so I'm wondering if there are connections between Swedish and Arab. Are there? –  Jul 26 '13 at 23:06
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    @Carlo_R., no, not at all. Swedish (like English) is a language belonging to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family; Arabic is a Semitic language. En annan is in no way Arab. It is, in fact, an exact cognate to English ‘another’ (except ‘other’ is an old nominative, where Swedish annan is an old accusative). The fact that something looks or sounds like something in a different language in no way implies that the languages are related (compare how Greek θεός theó-s ‘God’ is very similar to teō-tl in Nāhuatl, even though they are obviously completely unrelated languages). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 23:10
  • @Janus, thank you, I'm pleased to see you are very competent and I often upvoted your answers. You are welcome. –  Jul 26 '13 at 23:14
  • possible duplicate of Usage of "of" in genitive: "The queen of England's crown" or "The queen's of England crown"? – TrevorD Jul 27 '13 at 00:30

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The Modern English possessive suffix -'s is not a case any longer. Cases inflect nouns, but the -'s attaches to the end of noun phrases, rather than to their head nouns.

Technically, an affix that attaches to a syntactic construction instead of to a word of a particular type is called a clitic (a clitic can be either an enclitic or a postclitic, just like an affix can be a prefix or a suffix; respectively).

So, as an NP postclitic, -'s attaches to the end of the last word of the noun phrase whose head noun is the possessor. Thus, the Queen of England’s first great-grandson or the guy at the door’s keys, as tchrist points out -- it's not England's g'grandson, it's the Queen's; and they're not the door's keys, they're the guy's keys.

Thus, also, Somebody Else's Problem.
Indeed, as HHGttG makes clear, the SEP field is very advanced technology.

John Lawler
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    Here, John, I bet you’ll appreciate this. For the record, clitics can also be mesoclitics. In Portuguese, unlike in (Modern) Spanish, the clitic pronouns fall between the stem and the inflection’s ending in the future and conditional. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s because of how modern Romance synthesized new tenses out of postpositioned auxiliaries after Latin infinitives. See here and this scholarly article. – tchrist Jul 26 '13 at 22:05
  • Yes, a sandwich of fossilized cliticization in all those cases. Kinda like shouldna or could'ven't, both of which I've observed. – John Lawler Jul 27 '13 at 00:31
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According to The Cambridge Guide of English Usage, so well established are phrases like "someone else", "anyone else", "what else" and "who else" that else can take the possessive form quite easily.

In the light of the above reference the possessive of "someone else" is "someone else's".

It is worth noting that "This usage was once frowned on by those who insisted that else was an adverb and so could be made possessive", and this presumably justifies your doubts.

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The answer is obviously that it’s someone else’s cat, just like it’s the Queen of England’s first great-grandson or the guy at the door’s keys.

I honestly don’t even understand how the question could ever come up.

tchrist
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  • Well, not a native speaker. Got uncertain. Also, you need to regard the fact that if it's so obvious, we'd be using "it has dog", hence "it is it's dog". But that's incorrect. Sometimes the apostrophe gets lost. – Konrad Viltersten Jul 26 '13 at 21:38
  • People are told it's a genitive or possessive case, and they may quite reasonably expect it to behave like a case, instead of an NP postclitic. – John Lawler Jul 26 '13 at 21:42
  • @JohnLawler I wouldn't put it that way. Mostly because I have no clue what "NP postclitic" is. Care to shed some light? :) – Konrad Viltersten Jul 26 '13 at 21:44
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    NP = noun phrase. Postclitic is a clitic (a small pseudo-word that can only appear if attached to a proper word) that is added to the end of a word (rather than before its beginning, in which case it’s a preclitic). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 21:45
  • @JohnLawler If it’s quite reasonable to expect that, then how come no child who’s a native speaker ever asks such a question when told it’s a possessive? – tchrist Jul 26 '13 at 21:51
  • @tchrist, how many children do you know who learn their first language through grammatical description and terminology? – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 21:53
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    Also, a correction to my comment above: the term is of course proclitic (not †preclitic). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 21:54
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Young schoolchildren are taught to write the possessive with an ’s, and they are told it is the possessive. – tchrist Jul 26 '13 at 21:55
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    This is not a question that would come up with a native speaker. They might ask why it isn't *someone's else problem, but they'd know what it should be. A non-native speaker who knew an inflected language might believe what was in their textbook, however. – John Lawler Jul 26 '13 at 21:55
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    @tchrist, they are told it means the possessive, yes, but they know instinctively where the clitic goes because they already speak the language and use the clitic. They do not learn, before actively using it, that ’s is a genitive case. It is quite understandable that someone who is learning English through grammar and is told that ’s is a case ending would expect ’s to then act as a case ending, rather than as a clitic. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '13 at 22:00
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    @JanusBahsJacquet I doubt that grade-school teachers are allowed to even say the word clitic in class. :) – tchrist Jul 26 '13 at 22:09