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:
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

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

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 & NeuterFeminine & 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 :
NominativeGenitive
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 :
NominativeGenitive
Masculinederdessen
Neuterdasdessen
Feminine & Pluraldiederen

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.