Quote:
Originally Posted by beachboy  A friend of Johnīs (mine) is coming to Brazil next week.
I wonder if itīs right to say:
A friend of John (me) is coming to Brazil next week |
Generally speaking, about the only circumstance in which you will ever find the construction [NP of PRN] is where the of-phrase constitutes an objective, rather than a subjective (i.e. 'possessive'), genitive.
Thus, we can say
Their interrogation of him produced no results.
because the interrogation is an action done to him, rather than something that he in any sense 'possesses', but not
*A friend of him was being interrogated in the next room.
In this case we would use the so-called 'double possessive':
A friend of his was being interrogated in the next room. 
a friend of - possessive pronoun 
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