Genitive case

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The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. In a more general sense, this genitive relationship may be thought of as one thing belonging to, being created from, or otherwise deriving from some other thing. (The relationship is usually expressed by the preposition of in English.) The term possessive case refers to a case that is similar, though usually more restricted in usage, to the genitive.

Specific varieties of genitive relationships include:

origin ("men of Rome")
relationship ("Janet's husband")
subjectivity ("my leaving")
objectivity ("the archduke's murder")
description ("man of honor", "day of reckoning")
composition ("wheel of cheese") — partitive
number of distinct items (Old English "féower manna"; literally, "four of men") — partitive
part of a mass ("a pound of beef") — partitive
inalienable possession ("my height", "his existence", "her long fingers")
alienable possession ("his jacket", "my drink")

The last two relationships are the most commonly expressed by the genitive. A distinct partitive case is used in the languages supporting it. The partitive applies to number of distinct items, composition and part of mass, as in Finnish kilo juustoa "a kilogram of cheese".

In some languages, nouns in the genitive case also agree in case with the nouns they modify (that is, the head noun is marked for two cases). This phenomenon is called suffixaufnahme.

One form in which genitive cases may be found is inclusio.

Many languages have a genitive case, including Lithuanian, Arabic, Latin, Irish, Georgian, Greek, German, Dutch, Polish, Slovenian, Russian, Finnish and Sanskrit. English does not have a proper genitive case, but a possessive ending, -'s (see below).

1 The English -'s ending
- 1.1 The possessive marker
- 1.2 Uses of the marker in English
2 The genitive in astronomy
3 Baltic Finnic "genitives"
4 External links

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The English -'s ending

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The possessive marker

Some argue that it is a common misconception that English nouns have a genitive case, marked by the possessive -'s ending (known as the saxon genitive). Some linguists believe that English possessive is no longer a case at all, but has become a clitic, an independent particle which, however, is always pronounced as part of the preceding word. This is claimed on the basis of the following sort of example: "The king of Sparta's wife was called Helen." If the English -'s were a genitive case mark, then the wife would belong to Sparta; but the -'s attaches not to the word Sparta, but to the entire phrase the king of Sparta.

Despite the above, the English possessive did originate in a genitive case. In Old English, a common singular genitive ending was -es. The apostrophe in the modern possessive marker is in fact an indicator of the e that is "missing" from the Old English morphology.

The use of an independently written particle for the possessive can be seen in the closely related Afrikaans language: die man se hand (the man's hand).

The 18th century explanation that the apostrophe might replace a genitive pronoun, as in "the king's horse" being a shortened form of "the king, his horse", is erroneous (a construction which actually occurs in German dialects and has replaced the genitive there, together with the "of" construction that also exists in English). Indeed, it would be expected that plurals and feminine nouns would form possessives using '-r': "*The queen'r children" would be short for "the queen, her children". Since this is different from the plural, it would provide a useful distinction. The fact that that is not how English speakers form possessives shows that the above explanation is incorrect.

A few remnants of the genitive case do remain in Modern English in a few pronouns as whose, the genitive form of who; likewise, my/mine, his/hers/its, our/ours, their/theirs. See also Declension in English.

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Uses of the marker in English

The English construction in -'s has various uses other than a possessive marker. Most of these uses overlap with a complement marked by 'of' (the music of Beethoven or Beethoven's music), but the two constructions are not equivalent. The use of -'s in a non-possessive sense is more prevalent, and less restricted, in formal than informal language.

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Genitive of origin; subjective genitive

Beethoven's music
Fred Astaire's dancing
Confucius's teaching

In these constructions, the marker indicates the origin or source of the head noun of the phrase, rather than possession per se. Most of these phrases, however, can still be paraphrased with of: the music of Beethoven, the teaching of Confucius.

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Objective genitive; classifying genitive

the Hundred Years' War
A Dollar's worth
Two weeks' notice
A Midsummer Night's Dream

In these constructions, the marker serves to specify, delimit, or describe the head noun. The paraphrase with of is often un-idiomatic or ambiguous with these genitives: *the war of a Hundred Years, *the pay of a day, and *notice of two weeks introduce the likelihood of misunderstanding.

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Genitive of purpose

Women's shoes
Children's literature

Here, the marked noun identifies the purpose or intended recipient of the head noun. Of cannot paraphrase them; they can be idiomatically paraphrased with for: shoes for women.

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The genitive in astronomy

In the case of constellations, it is useful to know the genitive of the constellation's Latin name, since this is used to make the Bayer designation of stars in that constellation. For instance, since the genitive of the Latin word virgo ("virgin") is virginis, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo is known as Alpha Virginis. Many references on constellations list the genitive for each constellation.

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Baltic Finnic "genitives"

In Baltic-Finnic languages, the accusative case -(e)n is homophonic to the genitive case. In Estonian, it is often described 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 only exceptions in Finnish, where a separate accusative -(e)t is found in pronouns, e.g. kenet "who (telic object)", vs. kenen "whose".