Genitive construction

In grammar, a genitive construction or genitival construction is a type of grammatical construction used to express a relation between two nouns such as the possession of one by another (e.g. "John's jacket"), or some other type of connection (e.g. "John's father" or "the father of John"). A genitive construction involves two nouns, the head (or modified noun) and the dependent (or modifier noun). The dependent noun modifies the head by expressing some property of it. For example, in the construction "John's jacket", "jacket" is the head and "John's" is the modifier, expressing a property of the jacket (it is owned by John).

Genitive constructions can be expressed in various ways:

This is common in languages with grammatical case, e.g. Latin. For example, "Cicero's father" is expressed by pater Cicerōnis or Cicerōnis pater, where the dependent noun "Cicero" (Latin Cicerō) is placed in the genitive case (Latin Cicerōnis) and then placed either before or after the head noun (pater "father"). A similar construction occurs in formal German: das Buch des Mannes "the man's book", where das Buch means "the book" and des Mannes is the genitive case of der Mann "the man".

This is common in languages without grammatical case, as well as in some languages with vestigial case systems. English uses the preposition of to express many genitival constructions, e.g. "the father of John" or "the capital of the nation". Informal German prefers a preposition also, except with proper names, e.g. der Vater von meinem Freund "My friend's father" (lit. "the father of my friend") but Johanns Vater "John's father". Mandarin Chinese uses a linking word de 的, e.g. Yuēhàn de fùqīn 约翰的父亲 "John's father", where Yuēhàn means "John" and fùqīn means "father". The word de in Chinese is not a preposition (for example, Chinese prepositions precede their dependent nouns, just as in English), but rather a special particle with its own syntax (a bit like the "'s" modifier in English). Japanese similarly uses no の, e.g. Jon no chichi ジョンの父 "John's father".

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