Thanks Hairy Scot - Sorry if I've been a bit hasty elsewhere. Lang may your lum reek. :)

The word 'of' can indicate origin or position as well as possessive. But genitive 's 'denotes property or possession' (Joseph Priestley - The Grammar 1798)

Robin of Loxley and Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) came from those places, they weren't owned by them, probably something to do with the French 'de' meaning both 'of' and 'from', and which also has several other functions.

Similarly the Ark of the Covenant was the chest where the Covenant lay, the chest didn't belong to the Covenant.The Book of Ezekiel is more difficult to explain, perhaps, as we can have St. Matthew's Gospel etc. Perhaps somebody else could help out there.

'Primary sense of ['of'] in O.E. was still "away," but shifted in M.E. with use of the word to translate L. de, ex, and especially O.Fr. de, which had come to be the substitute for the genitive case.' - Online Etymology Dictionary.

But apart from anything else it would just sound unidiomatic.

Keep it as it is. Here are two examples from MWDEU, which says 'with the exception of' is commonly used as a synonym for 'except (for)':

... with the exception of British Guiana and the Virgin Islands.
... with the exception of cases of deliberate, premeditated theft

http://books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Go to p 962

@Brus - 'Fill in the missing word from the ones on the list in brackets:
"The old lady ~~~~ I had helped across the street thanked me." (she/her/who/whom/that).
"The man to ~~~~ I had given a lift gave me $10." (him/them/who/that/whom).'

The problem with this is that you disallow the most natural answer in both cases. These are both defining (restrictive) relative clauses and the relative pronoun represents the object. In these cases we can and often do omit the relative pronoun altogether:

"The old lady I had helped across the street thanked me."

Just think of the songs, 'The man I love.', 'This is dedicated to the one I love.'

In the second one you are trying to force the issue with the positioning of the preposition 'to', which of course has to be followed by 'whom'. But most of us would shift the preposition to the end of the clause, giving:

"The man I had given a lift to gave me $10."

Just check out this ngram
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+man+I+love%2Cthe+man+whom+I+love%2Cthe+woman+I+love%2Cthe+woman+whom+I+love&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

@HairyScot - good joke about 'similar', but everything else you say only strengthens my impression that you live outwith the UK now. If I only use 'different to' before 'that' and 'what', does that still make me a member of 'the mob'?

In support of Kyle, I had assumed he was meaning this as past perfect, (in addition to my present perfect example), not as an inverted 3rd conditional (to use an ESL/EFL term) as Jen has interpreted. It looks a bit strange on its own, but can perfectly well be a question.

He looked starving. Had he had breakfast this morning? she wondered. "Would you like something to eat?", she asked.

'My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly.' - Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2, Act 1, Scene 2

You can live a tranquil life, live life to the full, and live and die a single man - these are the only uses my dictionary gives for the transitive of 'live' - to spend your life in a particular way - all other uses of 'live', including for a give time, are given as intransitive.

I'm afraid 'box turtles can live 80 years' doesn't sound right to me (BrE), but it could be different in AmE

And both 'He ran for 12.2 seconds in the 100m' and 'He ran 12.2 seconds in the 100m' sound equally unnatural to me. You run a race in a time, not for a time. What does he do? Go, 'Ah, that's 12.2 seconds, I think I'll stop now.'

He ran the 100m in 12.2 seconds

@Brus
qui is the subject pronoun - for both people and things
Toi qui es si malin. - You who are so intelligent/astute
Prenez la rue qui monte - Take the street which/that goes up (the hill)

que is the object pronoun - for both people and things
Celle que j'aime - The one (who/that) I love
Les cadeaux que tu lui as faits - The presents (which/that) you have made for him

que - that - eg. to connect clauses
Je crois qu'il est là - I think (that) he's here (lit. there)
C'est dommage qu'il soit malade - It's a shame (that) he's ill (with subjunctive)

Examples from Le Robert Micro

Despite our differences, this post has thrown up some really interesting stuff, and I thought it would be worth doing (rather a long) blog entry on my thoughts. So if any one is interested it's at:

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2011/11/subjunctive-were-revisited-again.html

I hope this isn't breaking any forum rules.