Re: Possessive and Genitive

But even in langs that have both possessives and genitives, I don't think
there's much confusion, as the two are completely different! "My horse" is
possessive (I possess the horse), but "My horse's bridle" is the genitive of
a possessive ("the horse which I possess has a bridle" or "the bridle of my
horse..."). I think the confusion arises among English speakers who, because
the genitive case is sometimes called the possessive case, are apt to
confuse it with possessive pronouns, simply because these two terms contain
the term 'possessive'.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: Possessive and Genitive


En réponse à John Cowan :


>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:
Actually, if you want to be correct, you have to say that possessive forms
are often used in non-possessive ways (what you described can be done in
French with the possessive adjectives which are certainly not genitives).
The fact that the genitive is often used like that says nothing.

My point is that the term "genitive" refers strictly to a noun case, while
the  term "possessive" refers to a syntactic function, which can be
rendered through a genitive case in languages that have one, but also
through plenty of other possible forms (adjectives, prepositional phrases,
construct states constructions, etc...) which cannot be called "genitive".
As such, the term "genitive" is more restrictive than the term
"possessive", and that's the only thing I'm saying.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.



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