forum.englishteacher.ru

Могу ли я заменить фразу
color of envelopes
на одну из следующих (и какую):
1) envelope color,
2) envelopes color,
3) envelopes' color.
С одушевленными объектами проблем нет: pens of my daughters = my daughters' pens. Но как быть с неодушевленными?

http://forum.study.ru/index.php?topic=25398.msg93144#msg93144

В книге Качалова, Израилевич "Практическая грамматика английского языка" сказано, что в форме притяжательного падежа употребляются существительные одушевленные, за некоторыми исключениями (в исключениях вашего случая нет). Если есть учебник - страница 15 (том 1).

Привели бы уж эти исключения, а то ответ вышел ни то, ни сё.
Абсолютного запрета на обозначение принадлежности апострофом у неодушевленных нет.
Я не вижу ничего неправильного в выражениях:
hard day's night, car's front seat, planet's orbit.

Наберите в поисковике inanimate possessive и изучайте вопрос.
Вот мнения носителей языка, с различных сайтов:
---
One way to show possession in English – that something belongs to a person, place, or thing – is to use the apostrophe (‘).  
---
The extreme southwestern tip of Great Britain is called “Land’s End“, so-named at least back to 1769; the phrase itself has been used generally since at least 1400, according to the OED. Similarly, there’s a hotel called The Cliff’s Edge in Hawaii...
There simply isn’t any evidence that there is or ever was a rule of English saying that inanimate objects cannot take an ‘s possessive.
---
Whichever guideline you choose, be consistent. Personally, I would permit the possessive form of inanimate objects in creative writing, but maybe not in technical writing.
---          
It surprises me that this misconception (that possessors must be people) is so widespread. Where did it come from, I wonder? It could be a zombie rule promulgated by prescriptivists, or bad second-language teaching materials, or maybe interference from the native language.       
I've noticed a similar reluctance to use the word "whose" for inanimate objects. For example, "A house whose windows were broken". This is more understandable since "whose" is another form of "who". But there is no alternative word for inanimate objects in this case, so "whose" is considered correct by most authorities,
---
I'll start by saying that I've seen several heated debates about this online, but the general consensus is that this rule is one of those stylistic ones that someone created that has gotten passed around by some as an actual grammatical requirement. In practice, inanimate objects are quite frequently used with 's.

Привожу исключения