Talk:Possessive and possessed cases

some languages or all languages
I think it's in all languages-- find a counter example or remove the biased statement and find a neutral statement (not even most is neutral). A neutral phrasing would not make a claim about the distribution. SO something like: the possessive case of a language does this. Otherwise the assertion is unsupported. Mrdthree 23:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

globalize template
I think whoever put that there wants examples from other countries.Mrdthree 18:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Merger/Seperation
I've proposed a merger between Possessive case and genitive case.... but, in Saxon genitive it says, "linguists argue that 's represents a possessive case, not a genitive." --165.230.46.148 22:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

In the Hawaiian language, they have both a genitive and a possessive case. I'm not sure what the exact difference is (genitive is translated 'of the noun' while possessive is 'the noun's') but there does seem to be a distinction. Awoody87 19:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Awoody87

From my reading, those who talk about the subjective/objective/possessive cases of English tend to be those who study English only. These cases correspond closely to the cases traditionally labelled nominative/accusative/genitive in other Indo-European languages. Those same traditional labels are now used by grammarians worldwide in discussing case marking in many languages far removed from Latin, whence they came (as translations of terms used by even earlier Ancient Greek grammarians). In the Saxon genitive article, there is a comment that the English  's   is a clitic, hence can't be an ordinary case label. I suggest this comment may be Eurocentric, even Anglocentric: throughout the world many agglutinating languages use clitics to mark case on dependent nominals. The traditional labels (nominative/accusative/genitive etc) have been in use for over 2,000 years and are now understood worldwide -— let's not discard them without very good reason.

The comment of Awoody87 is interesting: seems like a case for an expert in Austronesian languages! Otherwise, I would support merging the articles, or else include a brief discussion on controversies in case taxonomy.

For a good review of these matters, see Category:Indo-Aryan languages

DavidB 07:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The genitive case has many functions besides marking a possessive relationship: in Latin, it can also be partitive or subjective/objective, epexegetic etc., and in ancient Greek it functions as ablative. This use is still seen in modern germanic languages, cf. English 'of', German 'von', which can mean both 'belonging to' (genitive) or 'coming from' (ablative). Secondly, there are cases besides the genitive that cover the possessive meaning, like the possessive dative. Most importantly though, the genitive is a grammatical category, whereas the possessive case is a semantical one. Therefore, these should not be merged.

Alwynvd 13:09, 27 February 2007

I would enjoy that. But I'm not sure if it is nessecary my friends. I do liek to have my Gentives and Possevies in different areas. If you know what I'm saying.

No merging please; possessive case is distinct from the genitive and deserves a separate article. 81.244.25.197 20:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we need this article?
This article serves no function unless the alleged difference between a genitive and possive is explained and sourced. (In strict claasical terms, I suppose the possessive includes some of the ethical dative, but that's a featherthin difference.
 * Did West Germanic have a genitive or a possessive?
 * Did Anglo-Saxon?
 * If the answer to these is yes, "still has a possessive" is nonsense; it's an innovation.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Someone suggested merging it earlier, but there was no support for the merger. FilipeS (talk) 01:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)