Pertensive

Pertensive marking is to head-marking languages what possessive marking is to dependent-marking languages. For example, in English, a dependent-marking language, possession in the phrase "a person's rodent" is indicated by the placement of the possessive suffix "'s" on the dependent grammatical constituent, "person's,", while the head constituent, "rodent," is left unmarked. In contrast, Shilluk places a pertensive affix on the head (e.g., dúup = "rodent", dû́uup = "rodent belonging to"). Other languages with pertensive marking are Nungon, Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty. Some languages, such as Martuthunira, employ both possessive and pertensive marking.

The term was coined by linguist Dixon in 2011.