Genitives and Possessive Adjectives

Do you think it would be workable to have a language which derived
possessive adjectives instead of having a genitive? What I mean is...
the latin genitive for instance, does not agree in gender or case with
its noun, because it is a noun in itself with its own gender in the
genitive case. But instead, you could derive a possessive adjective
which did agree with its noun. For an example I'll tack bits onto
spanish since english doesn't actually have adjective agreement
(forgetting about the occasional almost pair like blond and blonde).
Suppose you could add the ending... I don't know... -oro to form a
possessive adjective. Then you could have:

el coche de Juan   =   el coche Juanoro
las casas de Juan   =   las casas Juanoras

etc. Would this be a workable alternative to having a genitive or
something similar? The problem I suppose is that you couldn't apply
adjectives to such a phase, unlike a genitive noun in a language like
latin which can have its own adjectives. So you probably couldn't say
"the big car's wheels", unless you have an augmentive affix... Anyway, I
was wondering about that on the bus earlier today, so maybe someone else
on the list has already considered it and has an opinion ready and waiting.

Chris.

Reply