On 5 Feb 2002, Cees de Groot wrote:

> Hannes Hirzel <hirzel at spw.unizh.ch> said:
> >| Ellipse's |  width |
> >
> >  vs.
> >
> >| the width  |  of the Ellipse |
> >

[snip]

> 
> In Dutch, the second form is definitely more natural than the first form
> (and I think that's where I stopped half a year ago when assessing
> the work involved in translating eToys to Dutch - word order was a sort
> of showstopper for the easy path of just offering alternate string
> dictionaries). De first form is possible, but hasn't been fashionable
> for the last half century at least, ....

PS on noun phrase:

A noun phrase consists of a pronoun or noun with any associated modifiers,
including adjectives, adjective phrases, adjective clauses, and other
nouns in the possessive case. 

Like a noun, a noun phrase can act as a subject or as the object of a
verb.

From: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/phrfunc.html

In our case the possessive or associative case is important.

HJH