Re: Possessive and Genitive

Quoting Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>:

> Is there any difference in meaning between the terms possessive an
> genitive? The former tends to be used when referring to English, the latter
> to other languages, but what they refer to doesn't seem to differ much (a
> case of a noun or pronoun indicating that the marked noun or pronoun is the
> owner of another).
Remember:  all case names are no more than labels.  The Latin
derived name "genitive" originally implied source, but since one
of its common functions is possession, it is frequently used for
possessive affixes in other languages.  In English, the clitic
"possessive" also has vestigial uses of measurement:  "a long
day's journey into night". The fact that we call such a case
possessive or genitive is essentially arbitrary.

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Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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