...the of in an English phrase like 'the law of the land' is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational indicator as the 'genitive' suffix '-is' in the Latin 'lex urbis' [...] . it was originally an adverb of considerable concreteness of meaning, 'away, moving from,' and that the syntactic relation was originally expressed by the case form of the second noun.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.113

...the old alignment of case forms is being invaded by two new categories -a positional category (pre-verbal, post-verbal) and a classificatory category (animate, inanimate).
- Sapir (1921), a pag.168