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Re: Possessive and Genitive

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 12:18
Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Actually, I tend to see the term "possessive" as wider in use than > "genitive". "Genitive" only refers to the noun case for possession. > "Possessive" can be used in places where you can't talk about a case (like > in French or Spanish which have possessive *adjectives* - agreeing in > number and in gender with the noun possessed -, which are not the genitive > case of personal pronouns - those don't even exist in French or Spanish > -).
But it's also typical for genitive forms to be used in non-possessive ways, as in the objective genitive and subjective genitive that you and I discussed here some time back: http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0111C&L=conlang&P=R754 http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0111C&L=conlang&P=R1429 http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0111C&L=conlang&P=R1633 -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1. I doubt if the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>