Hannes Hirzel <hirzel at spw.unizh.ch> said:
>| Ellipse's |  width |
>
>  vs.
>
>| the width  |  of the Ellipse |
>
Because these sentences are incomplete, it's hardly an issue with SVO but
rather with the genitive being present/in common use, not? At least, I cannot
discern a verb here...

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, as we are slowly moving away from
dependency on case in our language (IIRC, this was mostly introduced 
during Classicism, because it was a neat idea from Latin - the same would
hold for German, we've just been quicker to get rid of it ;-))).

In German, both forms would be possible and written using the genitive, but
the first form would probably be considered oldfashioned (or poetic at least). 

Going down in the quality of my language knowledge, I'd say that the
second form is more natural in French, Italian and Spanish as well
(is the first form possible at all in the Roman languages?).

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg at cdegroot.com>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B