In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated )Glossing Rules. Department of Linguistics. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Leipzig. is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun.Dictionary.com, genitive A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses (see adverbial genitive).
The genitive construction includes the genitive case, but is a broader category. Placing a modifying noun in the genitive case is one way of indicating that it is related to a head noun, in a genitive construction. However, there are other ways to indicate a genitive construction. For example, many Afroasiatic languages place the head noun (rather than the modifying noun) in the construct state.
Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be regarded as subsets of the genitive construction. For example, the genitive construction "pack of dogs" is similar, but not identical in meaning to the possessive case "dogs' pack" (and neither of these is entirely interchangeable with "dog pack", which is neither genitive nor possessive). Modern English is an example of a language that has a possessive case rather than a conventional genitive case. That is, Modern English indicates a genitive construction with either the possessive clitic suffix "-", or a prepositional genitive construction such as "x of y". However, some irregular English pronouns do have possessive forms which may more commonly be described as genitive (see English possessive). The names of the astronomical constellations have genitive forms which are used in star names, for example the star Mintaka in the constellation Orion (genitive Orionis) is also known as Delta Orionis or 34 Orionis.
Many languages have a genitive case, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Basque, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, German, Greek, Gothic, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Kannada, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Nepali, Romanian, Sanskrit, Scottish Gaelic, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, all Slavic languages except Bulgarian and Macedonian, and most of the Turkic languages.
Functions Depending on the language, specific varieties of genitive-noun–main-noun relationships may include: possession (see possessive case, possessed case): inalienable possession ("Janet's height", "Janet's existence", "Janet's long fingers") alienable possession ("Janet's jacket", "Janet's drink") relationship indicated by the noun being modified ("Janet's husband") composition (see Partitive): substance ("a wheel of cheese") elements ("a group of men") source ("a portion of the food") participation in an action: as an agent ("She benefited from her father's love") – this is called the subjective genitive (Compare "Her father loved her", where Her father is the subject.) as a patient ("the love of music") – this is called the objective genitive (Compare "She loves music", where music is the object.) origin ("men of Rome") reference ("the capital of the Republic" or "the Republic's capital") description ("man of honour", "day of reckoning") compounds ("doomsday" ("doom's day"), Scottish Gaelic "ball coise" = "football", where "coise" = gen. of "cas", "foot") apposition (the city of Rome) Depending on the language, some of the relationships mentioned above have their own distinct cases different from the genitive.
Possessive pronouns are distinct pronouns, found in Indo-European languages such as English, that function like pronouns inflected in the genitive. They are considered separate pronouns if contrasting to languages where pronouns are regularly inflected in the genitive. For example, English my is either a separate possessive adjective or an irregular genitive of I, while in Finnish, for example, minun is regularly agglutinated from minu- "I" and -n (genitive).
In some languages, nouns in the genitive case also agree in case with the nouns they modify (that is, it is marked for two cases). This phenomenon is called suffixaufnahme.
In some languages, nouns in the genitive case may be found in inclusio – that is, between the main noun's article and the noun itself.
English
Old English had a genitive case, which has left its mark in modern English in the form of the possessive ending 's (now sometimes referred to as the "Saxon genitive"), as well as possessive adjective forms such as his, their, etc., and in certain words derived from adverbial genitives such as once and afterwards. (Other Old English case markers have generally disappeared completely.) The modern English possessive forms are not normally considered to represent a grammatical case, although they are sometimes referred to as genitives or as belonging to a possessive case. One of the reasons that the status of s as a case ending is often rejected is that it does not behave as such, but rather as a clitic marking that indicates that a dependency relationship exists between phrases. One can say the King's war, but also the King of France's war, where the genitive marker is attached to the full noun phrase the King of France, whereas case markers are normally attached to the head of a phrase; if the English suffix were attached to the phrase's head, then it would read *the King's of France war.
Finnic genitives and accusatives Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian, etc.) have genitive cases.
In Finnish, prototypically the genitive is marked with -n, e.g. maa – maan "country – of the country". The stem may change, however, with consonant gradation and other reasons. For example, in certain words ending in consonants, -e- is added, e.g. mies – miehen "man – of the man", and in some, but not all words ending in -i, the -i is changed to an -e-, to give -en, e.g. lumi – lumen "snow – of the snow". The genitive is used extensively, with animate and inanimate possessors. In addition to the genitive, there is also a partitive case (marked -ta/-tä or -a/-ä) used for expressing that something is a part of a larger mass, e.g. joukko miehiä "a group of men".
In Estonian, the genitive marker -n has elided with respect to Finnish. Thus, the genitive always ends with a vowel, and the singular genitive is sometimes (in a subset of words ending with a vocal in nominative) identical in form to nominative. However, there are multiple strategies to form genitives from nominative forms ending in consonants, including addition of an unpredictable vowel, syncope, or even disfixation.
In Finnish, in addition to the uses mentioned above, there is a construct where the genitive is used to mark a surname. For example, Juhani Virtanen can be also expressed Virtasen Juhani ("Juhani of the Virtanens").
A complication in Finnic languages is that the accusative case -(e)n is homophonic to the genitive case. This case does not indicate possession, but is a syntactic marker for the object, additionally indicating that the action is telic (completed). In Estonian, it is often said that only a "genitive" exists. However, the cases have completely different functions, and the form of the accusative has developed from *-(e)m. (The same sound change has developed into a synchronic mutation of a final m into n in Finnish, e.g. genitive sydämen vs. nominative sydän.) This homophony has exceptions in Finnish, where a separate accusative -(e)t is found in pronouns, e.g. kenet "who (telic object)", vs. kenen "whose".
A difference is also observed in some of the related Sámi languages, where the pronouns and the plural of nouns in the genitive and accusative are easily distinguishable from each other, e.g., kuä'cǩǩmi "eagles' (genitive plural)" and kuä'cǩǩmid "eagles (accusative plural)" in Skolt Sami.
German The genitive is one of the four cases found in German. It is known as , (after the genitive-case interrogative pronoun wessen/wes), and (lit. "second case", according to the German-language traditional case ordering) .
Formation
Articles The genitive forms of the definite article are (masculine and neuter singular) and (feminine singular, all-gender plural). See German articles.
Nouns German uses for masculine and neutral nouns to label genitive case. For feminine, the noun itself does not change. (of the contribution) – masculine (of the flower) – feminine (of the state) – neuter (of the trees) – plural Singular masculine nouns (and one neuter noun) of the weak declension are marked with an (or rarely ) ending in the genitive case: (of the raven) – masculine (of the heart) – neuter
Adjectives The declension of adjectives in the genitive case is as follows: Masculine & NeuterFeminine & PluralWith article With no article
Personal pronouns The genitive personal pronouns are quite rare and either very formal, literary or outdated. They are as follows (with comparison to the nominative pronouns): NominativeGenitive (I) (you sg.) (he) (it) (we) (you pl.) (you formal sg./pl.) (she/they) Some examples: (Would you go instead of me?) (We are not worthy of her/them) (I will commemorate you)
Relative pronouns Unlike the personal ones, the genitive relative pronouns are in regular use and are as follows (with comparison to the nominative relative pronouns): NominativeGenitiveMasculine NeuterFeminine & Plural Some examples: (Do you know the student whose mother is a witch?) – masculine (She is the woman whose husband is a racer) – feminine
Greek The ablative case of Indo-European was absorbed into the genitive in Classical Greek., page 313 and elsewhere This added to the usages of the "genitive proper", the usages of the "ablatival genitive". The genitive occurs with verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions. See also Genitive absolute.
Hungarian The Hungarian genitive is constructed using the suffix -é. ('bird'); ('bird's')
The genitive -é suffix is only used with the predicate of a sentence: it serves the role of mine, yours, hers, etc. The possessed object is left in the nominative case. For example: A csőr a madáré ('The beak is the bird's').
If the possessor is not the predicate of the sentence, the genitive is not used. Instead, the possessive suffixes (-(j)e or -(j)a in the third person singular, depending on vowel harmony) mark the possessed object. The possessor is left in the nominative if it directly precedes the possessed object (otherwise it takes a dative -nak/-nek suffix). For example: csőr ('beak'); csőre ('its beak') a madár csőre/csőre a madárnak ('the bird's beak')
In addition, the suffix -i ('of') is also used. For example: madár ('bird'); madári ('avian', 'of bird(s)')
Japanese Japanese construes the genitive by using the grammatical particle no の. It can be used to show a number of relationships to the head noun. For example: 猫の手 neko-no te ("cat's paw") 学生の一人 gakusei-no hitori ("one of the students") 金の指輪 kin-no yubiwa ("a ring of gold") 京都のどこ Kyouto-no doko ("where of (in) Kyoto") 富士の山 Fuji-no yama ("the mountain of Fuji" [Mt. Fuji]) The archaic genitive case particle -ga ～が is still retained in certain expressions, place names, and dialects. Possessive ga can also be written as a small ke (), for example in .
Typically, languages have nominative case nouns converting into genitive case. It has been found, however, that the Kansai dialect of Japanese will in rare cases allow accusative case to convert to genitive, if specific conditions are met in the clause in which the conversion appears. This is referred to as "Accusative-Genitive conversion."
Latin The genitive is one of the cases of nouns and pronouns in Latin. Latin genitives still have certain modern scientific uses: