Genitive case

In grammar, the genitive case 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.
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 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". 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. The names of the astronomical constellations have genitive forms which are used in star names, for example the star Mintaka in the constellation Orion 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 :
* inalienable possession
* alienable possession
* relationship indicated by the noun being modified
composition :
* substance
* elements
* source
participation in an action:
* as an agent – this is called the subjective genitive
* as a patient – this is called the objective genitive
origin
reference
description
compounds
apposition

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.
In some languages, nouns in the genitive case also agree in case with the nouns they modify. 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, as well as possessive adjective forms such as his, their, etc., and in certain words derived from adverbial genitives such as once and afterwards. 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.
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 genitives and accusatives

Finnic languages 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 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 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.
A complication in Finnic languages is that the accusative case -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. 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 *-m. This homophony has exceptions in Finnish, where a separate accusative -t is found in pronouns, e.g. kenet "who ", 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' " and kuä'cǩǩmid "eagles " in Skolt Sami.

German

It is also called "second case" in some German language educational sources in Chinese.

Conjugation

Articles

des, des, der, der is used. See German articles.

Nouns

German uses -s/-es for masculine and neutral nouns to label genitive case. For feminine, the noun itself does not change.

des Beitrags – masculine
der Blume – feminine
des Bundeslandes – neuter
der Bäume – plural

Singular masculine nouns of the weak declension are marked with an -n ending in the genitive case:

des Raben – masculine
des Herzens – neuter

Adjectives

The declension of adjectives in the genitive case is as follows:

	Masculine & Neuter	Feminine & Plural
With article	-en	-en
With no article	-en	-er

Personal pronouns

The genitive personal pronouns are quite rare and either very formal, literary or outdated. They are as follows :

Nominative	Genitive
ich	meiner
du	deiner
er	seiner
es	seiner
wir	unser
ihr	euer
Sie	Ihrer
sie	ihrer

Some examples:

Würden Sie statt meiner gehen?
Wir sind ihrer nicht würdig
Ich werde euer gedenken

Relative pronouns

Unlike the personal ones, the genitive relative pronouns are in regular use and are as follows :

	Nominative	Genitive
Masculine	der	dessen
Neuter	das	dessen
Feminine & Plural	die	deren

Some examples:

Kennst du den Schüler, dessen Mutter eine Hexe ist? – masculine
Sie ist die Frau, deren Mann Rennfahrer ist – feminine

Usage

Nouns

The genitive case is often used to show possession or the relation between nouns:

die Farbe des Himmels
Deutschland liegt im Herzen Europas
der Tod seiner Frau
die Entwicklung dieser Länder

A simple s is added to the end of a name:

Claudias Buch

Prepositions

The genitive case is also commonly found after certain prepositions:

innerhalb eines Tages
statt des Hemdes
während unserer Abwesenheit
jenseits der Berge

Adjectives

The genitive case can sometimes be found in connection with certain adjectives:

Wir sind uns dessen bewusst
Er ist des Diebstahls schuldig
Das Kind ist der Ruhe bedürftig
Ich werde dieses Lebens überdrüssig

Verbs

The genitive case is occasionally found in connection with certain verbs ; they are mostly either formal or legal:

Die Stadt erfreut sich eines günstigen Klimas
Gedenken Sie der Toten des Krieges
Wer klagte ihn des Mordes an?
Man verdächtigt euch des Betrugs

Greek

The ablative case of Indo-European 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.

Hungarian

The Hungarian genitive is constructed using the suffix -é.

; madáré

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.

If the possessor is not the predicate of the sentence, the genitive is not used. Instead, the possessive suffixes e or - mark the possessed object. The possessor is left in the nominative if it directly precedes the possessed object. For example:

csőr ; csőre
a madár csőre/''csőre a madárnak

In addition, the suffix -i is also used. For example:

madár ; madári''

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:
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:

Scientific names of living things sometimes contain genitives, as in the plant name Buddleja davidii, meaning "David's buddleia". Here davidii is the genitive of Davidius, a Latinized version of the Hebrew name. It is not capitalized because it is the second part of a binomial name.
Names of astronomical constellations are Latin, and the genitives of their names are used in naming objects in those constellations, as in the Bayer designation of stars. For example, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo is called Alpha Virginis, which is to say "Alpha of Virgo", as virginis is the genitive of virgō. Plural forms and adjectives also decline accordingly: plural Alpha Piscium and Alpha Canum Venaticorum versus singular Alpha Piscis Austrini and Alpha Canis Majoris. Astronomy manuals often list the genitive forms, as some are easy to get wrong even with a basic knowledge of Latin, e.g. Vela, which is a neuter plural not a feminine singular: Delta Velorum not *Delta Velae.Modus operandi, which can be translated to English as "mode of operation", in which operandi is a singular genitive gerund, not a plural of operandus as is sometimes mistakenly assumed.

Irish

The Irish language also uses a genitive case. For example, in the phrase bean an tí, 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.

Mandarin

In Mandarin Chinese, the genitive case is made by use of the particle 的.
However, about persons in relation to oneself, 的 is often dropped when the context allows for it to be easily understood.

Persian

Old Persian had a true genitive case inherited from Proto-Indo-European. By the time of Middle Persian, the genitive case had been lost and replaced by an analytical construction which is now called Ezāfe. This construction was inherited by New Persian, and was also later borrowed into numerous other Iranic, Turkic and Indo-Aryan languages of Western and South Asia.

Semitic languages

Genitive case marking existed in Proto-Semitic, Akkadian, and Ugaritic. It indicated possession, and it is preserved today only in Arabic.

Arabic

Called المجرور al-majrūr or المخفوض al-makhfūḍ in Arabic, the genitive case functions both as an indication of ownership and for nouns following a preposition.
The Arabic genitive marking also appears after prepositions.
The Semitic genitive should not be confused with the pronominal possessive suffixes that exist in all the Semitic languages

Slavic languages

With the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, all Slavic languages decline the nouns and adjectives in accordance with the genitive case using a variety of endings depending on the word's lexical category, its gender, number and in some cases meaning. For instance, in Russian Broutona island name, its genitive/possessive case is created by adding a affix to the explorer's name.

Possessives

To indicate possession the ending of the noun indicating the possessor changes depending on the word's ending in the nominative case.
For example, to a, u, i, or y in Polish, а, я, ы, or и in Russian, а, я, y, ю, і, и or ей in Ukrainian, and similar cases in other Slavic languages.
Possessives can also be formed by the construction "u jest " / "У есть "/ "у є "
In sentences where the possessor includes an associated pronoun, the pronoun also changes:
And in sentences denoting negative possession, the ending of the object noun also changes:
The Polish phrase "nie ma " can work both as a negation of having or a negation of an existence of,
but the meaning of the two sentences and its structure is different.
The Russian word "нет" is a contraction of "не" + "есть".
In Russian there is no distinction between not having an and not being present at 's.
Note the difference between the spelling "не має " and "нема " in both cases.

To express negation

The genitive case is also used in sentences expressing negation, even when no possessive relationship is involved. The ending of the subject noun changes just as it does in possessive sentences. The genitive, in this sense, can only be used to negate nominative, accusative and genitive sentences, and not other cases.
Use of genitive for negation is obligatory in Slovene, Polish and Old Church Slavonic. Some East Slavic languages employ either the accusative or genitive for negation, although the genitive is more commonly used. In Czech, Slovak and Serbo-Croatian, negating with the genitive case is perceived as rather archaic and the accusative is preferred, but genitive negation in these languages is still not uncommon, especially in music and literature.

Partial direct object

The genitive case is used with some verbs and mass nouns to indicate that the action covers only a part of the direct object, whereas similar constructions using the Accusative case denote full coverage. Compare the sentences:
In Russian, special partitive case or sub-case is observed for some uncountable nouns which in some contexts have preferred alternative form on -у/ю instead of standard genitive on -а/я: выпил чаю, but сорта чая.

Prepositional constructions

The genitive case is also used in many prepositional constructions.

Czech prepositions using genitive case: od, z, ze, do, bez, kromě, místo, podle, podél, okolo, u, vedle, během, pomocí, stran etc.
Polish prepositions using genitive case: od, z, ze, do, w, na, bez, zamiast, wedle, wzdłuż, około, u, koło, podczas, etc.
Russian prepositions using genitive case: от, с, со, до, без, кроме, вместо, после, вдоль, около, у, во время, насчёт, etc.

Turkish

The Turkish genitive, formed with a genitive suffix for the possessor, is used in combination with a possessive for the possessed entity, formed with a possessive suffix. For example, in "my mother's mother", the possessor is "my mother", and the possessed entity is " mother". In Turkish:

Albanian

The genitive in Albanian is formed with the help of clitics. For example:
If the possessed object is masculine, the clitic is i. If the possessed object is feminine, the clitic is e. If the possessed object is plural, the clitic is e regardless of the gender.
The genitive is used with some prepositions: me anë, nga ana, për arsye, për shkak, me përjashtim, në vend.

Armenian

The genitive in Armenian is generally formed by adding "-ի":
Nominative: աղջիկ ; գիրք ;
Genitive: աղջիկի գիրքը.
However, there are certain words that are not formed this way. For example, words with ուն change to ան:
Nominative: տուն, Genitive: տան.

Dravidian languages

Kannada

In Kannada, the genitive case-endings are:
for masculine or feminine nouns ending in "ಅ" : ನ

Examples: sūrya-na

for neuter nouns ending in "ಅ" : ದ

Examples: mara-da

for all nouns ending in "ಇ", "ಈ", "ಎ", or "ಏ" : ಅ

Examples: mane-y-a

for all nouns ending in "ಉ", "ಊ", "ಋ", or "ೠ" : ಇನ

Examples; guru-v-ina

Most postpositions in Kannada take the genitive case.

Tamil

In Tamil, the genitive case ending is the word உடைய or இன், which signifies possession. Depending on the last letter of the noun, the genitive case endings may vary.
If the last letter is a consonant, like க், ங், ச், ஞ், ட், ண், த், ந், ப், ம், ய், ர், ல், வ், ழ், then the suffix உடைய/இன் gets added. *Examples: His: அவன் + உடைய = அவனுடைய, Doctor's: மருத்துவர் + உடைய = மருத்துவருடைய, மருத்துவர் + இன் = மருத்துவரின் Kumar's: குமார் + உடைய = குமாருடைய, குமார்+ இன் = குமாரின்