Genitive case
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")
- composition ("wheel of cheese")
- part of a mass ("a pound of beef")
- number of distinct items (Old English "féower manna"; literally, "four of men")
- relationship ("Janet's husband")
- subjectivity ("my leaving")
- objectivity ("the archduke's murder")
- description ("man of honor", "day of reckoning")
- 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.
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, Russian, Finnish and Sanskrit. English does not have a proper genitive case, but a possessive ending, -'s (see below).
The English -'s ending
It is a common misconception that English nouns have a genitive case, marked by the possessive -'s ending. Linguists generally 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 can be shown by the following 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.
That is not to say that the English possessive did not have its origins as a genitive case; but it has developed into being a clitic instead. In Old English, a common singular genitive ending was -es. Instead, the apostrophe is replacing the 'e' from the Old English morphology.
Use of a 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.
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.
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".als:Genitiv ca:Genitiu de:Genitiv es:Caso genitivo eo:Genitivo fr:Génitif nl:Genitief ja:属格 nn:Genitiv pl:Dopełniacz (przypadek) ro:Cazul genitiv fi:Genetiivi sv:Genitiv zh:属格