In grammar , the genitive case ( abbreviated gen ) 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. 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 ).
29-459: 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
58-458: A conventional genitive case. That is, Modern English indicates a genitive construction with either the possessive clitic suffix " - 's ", 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
87-453: 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
116-423: A number of stock phrases; for example, in "I work days and sleep nights", the words days and nights are analyzed as plural nouns but are in fact derived historically from the genitive or instrumental cases of day and night . (That they function as adverbs rather than as direct objects is clear from the rephrasing "I work during the day and sleep at night.") The modern British expression "Of an afternoon I go for
145-787: 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 . The genitive singular definite article for masculine and neuter nouns
174-440: A walk" has a similar origin, but uses the periphrasis "of + noun " to replace the original genitive. This periphrastic form has variously been marked as used "particularly in isolated and mountainous regions of the southern United States" and as having "a distinctly literary feel". German uses the genitive as a productive case, in addition to adverbial genitive expressions. The adverbial suffix -erweise added to adjectives
203-439: Is des , while the feminine and plural definite article is der . The indefinite articles are eines for masculine and neuter nouns, and einer for feminine and plural nouns (although the bare form cannot be used in the plural, it manifests in keiner , meiner , etc.) Singular masculine and neuter nouns of the strong declension in the genitive case are marked with -(e)s . Generally, one-syllable nouns favour
232-416: Is as follows: The genitive personal pronouns are quite rare and either very formal, literary or outdated. They are as follows (with comparison to the nominative pronouns): Some examples: Unlike the personal ones, the genitive relative pronouns are in regular use and are as follows (with comparison to the nominative relative pronouns): Some examples: The genitive case is often used to show possession or
261-400: Is derived from the feminine singular genitive adjective ending -er agreeing with the noun Weise 'manner'. For example, the adverb glücklicherweise 'fortunately' can be analyzed as glücklicher Weise 'fortunate way [genitive]', i.e. 'in a fortunate way' or more explicitly ‘in a manner of good fortune’ (which also hints at the possessive role of the case). The conjunction falls ('if') is
290-402: 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
319-431: Is left in the nominative case. For example: 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: In addition,
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#1732859502195348-399: The -es ending, and it is obligatory with nouns ending with a sibilant such as s or z . Otherwise, a simple -s ending is usual. Feminine and plural nouns remain uninflected: Singular masculine nouns (and one neuter noun) of the weak declension are marked with an -(e)n (or rarely -(e)ns ) ending in the genitive case: The declension of adjectives in the genitive case
377-543: 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." The genitive is one of the cases of nouns and pronouns in Latin . Latin genitives still have certain modern scientific uses: The Irish language also uses a genitive case ( tuiseal ginideach ). For example, in
406-619: The Turkic languages . Depending on the language, specific varieties of genitive-noun–main-noun relationships may include: 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
435-489: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 766600309 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:51:42 GMT Adverbial genitive In grammar , an adverbial genitive is a noun declined in the genitive case that functions as an adverb . In Old and Middle English ,
464-591: The genitive case may be found in inclusio – that is, between the main noun's article and the noun itself. 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
493-426: The genitive case was productive , and adverbial genitives were commonplace. While Modern English does not fully retain the genitive case, it has left various relics, including a number of adverbial genitives. Some of them are now analyzed as ordinary adverbs, including the following: Some words were formed from the adverbial genitive along with an additional parasitic -t : The adverbial genitive also survives in
522-421: 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
551-457: 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. In languages having a true genitive case, such as Old English, this example may be expressed as þes cynges wyrre of France , literally "the King's war of France", with the ' s attaching to the King . Finnic languages ( Finnish , Estonian , etc.) have genitive cases. In Finnish, prototypically
580-411: The genitive of Fall 'case'. Likewise for keinesfalls / keineswegs ('by no means of'), andernfalls ('otherwise' i.e. ‘another way of’). The preposition angesichts ('in view of') is the genitive of Angesicht ('face'). The time expressions morgens , mittags , abends , nachts , eines Tages (one day) and eines Nachts (one night; analogized with eines Tages , though Nacht is feminine) use
609-430: 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
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#1732859502195638-553: The phrase bean an tí (woman of the house), tí is the genitive case of teach , meaning "house". Another example is barr an chnoic , "top of the hill", where cnoc means "hill", but is changed to chnoic , which also incorporates lenition . In Mandarin Chinese , the genitive case is made by use of the particle 的 (de). 我 wǒ 的 de 猫 māo [ 我的貓 ] 我 的 猫 wǒ de māo Genitive construction Too Many Requests If you report this error to
667-402: 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
696-442: The relation between nouns: A simple s is added to the end of a name: The genitive case is also commonly found after certain prepositions: The genitive case can sometimes be found in connection with certain adjectives: The genitive case is occasionally found in connection with certain verbs (some of which require an accusative before the genitive); they are mostly either formal or legal: The ablative case of Indo-European
725-521: The singular genitive is sometimes (in a subset of words ending with a vocal in nominative) identical in form to nominative. 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
754-402: 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
783-520: 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 Macedonian , and most of
812-593: The suffix -i ('of') is also used. For example: 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: 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 ( ヶ ), for example in Kasumigaoka ( 霞ヶ丘 ) . Typically, languages have nominative case nouns converting into genitive case. It has been found, however, that
841-505: Was absorbed into the genitive in Classical Greek. 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 . The Hungarian genitive is constructed using the suffix -é . 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
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