Genitive case
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 Macedonian, and most of the Turkic languages.
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.
In languages having a true genitive case, such as Old English, this example may be expressed as þes cynges wyrre of France,[4] literally "the King's war of France", with the 's attaching to the King.
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".
In addition to the genitive, there is also a partitive case (marked -ta/-tä or -a/-ä) used for expressing that something is a part of a larger mass, e.g. joukko miehiä "a group of men".
However, the cases have completely different functions, and the form of the accusative has developed from *-(e)m. (The same sound change has developed into a synchronic mutation of a final m into n in Finnish, e.g. genitive sydämen vs. nominative sydän.)
This homophony has exceptions in Finnish, where a separate accusative -(e)t is found in pronouns, e.g. kenet "who (telic object)", vs. kenen "whose".
Feminine and plural nouns remain uninflected: Singular masculine nouns (and one neuter noun) of the weak declension are marked with an -(e)n (or rarely -(e)ns) ending in the genitive case: The declension of adjectives in the genitive case is as follows: The genitive personal pronouns are quite rare and either very formal, literary or outdated.
The possessor is left in the nominative if it directly precedes the possessed object (otherwise it takes a dative -nak/-nek suffix).
For example: The archaic genitive case particle -ga ～が is still retained in certain expressions, place names, and dialects.
Possessive ga can also be written as a small ke (ヶ), for example in Kasumigaoka (霞ヶ丘).
In Mandarin Chinese, the genitive case is made by use of the particle 的 (de).
我wǒ的de妈妈māmā→ 我wǒ妈妈māmā[我媽媽] 我 的 妈妈 → 我 妈妈wǒ de māmā {} wǒ māmāboth mean "my mother"Old Persian had a true genitive case inherited from Proto-Indo-European.
By the time of Middle Persian, the genitive case had been lost and replaced by an analytical construction which is now called Ezāfe.
This construction was inherited by New Persian, and was also later borrowed into numerous other Iranic, Turkic and Indo-Aryan languages of Western and South Asia.
Genitive case marking existed in Proto-Semitic, Akkadian, and Ugaritic.
The Semitic genitive should not be confused with the pronominal possessive suffixes that exist in all the Semitic languages With the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, all Slavic languages decline the nouns and adjectives in accordance with the genitive case using a variety of endings depending on the word's lexical category, its gender, number (singular or plural) and in some cases meaning.
For example, to a, u, i, or y in Polish, а, я, ы, or и in Russian, а, я, y, ю, і, и or ей in Ukrainian, and similar cases in other Slavic languages.
The genitive case is also used in sentences expressing negation, even when no possessive relationship is involved.
Compare the sentences: In Russian, special partitive case or sub-case is observed for some uncountable nouns which in some contexts have preferred alternative form on -у/ю instead of standard genitive on -а/я: выпил чаю ('drank some tea'), but сорта чая ('sorts of tea').
For example, words with ուն change to ան: Nominative: տուն ('house'), Genitive: տան ("house's").
In Kannada, the genitive case-endings are: for masculine or feminine nouns ending in "ಅ" (a): ನ (na) for neuter nouns ending in "ಅ" (a): ದ (da) for all nouns ending in "ಇ" (i), "ಈ" (ī), "ಎ" (e), or "ಏ" (ē): ಅ (a) for all nouns ending in "ಉ" (u), "ಊ" (ū), "ಋ" (r̥), or "ೠ" (r̥̄): ಇನ (ina) Most postpositions in Kannada take the genitive case.
Depending on the last letter of the noun, the genitive case endings may vary.
