student asking question

Just curious, what does possessive "'s" stand for?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"'s" is used to represent a contraction of the verb "to have," and takes the form of [noun] + is/has. In this case, "Rocky's lost his voice" here means "Rocky has lost his voice." You can figure out if it's present tense (is) or past tense (has) by looking at the tense of the verb that follows. "Lost" is past tense, so the "'s" before it must mean "has." Ex: It's gone missing. ("Gone" is past tense, so the sentence means "It has gone missing.") Ex: Mary's feeling ill. ("Feeling" is present tense, so the sentence means "Mary is feeling ill.")

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