Possessive affix

In linguistics, a possessive affix is a suffix or prefix attached to a noun to indicate it is possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive suffixes are found in some Austronesian, Uralic, Altaic, Semitic, and Indo-European languages. Complicated systems are found in the Uralic languages; for example, Nenets has 27 (3×3×3) different types of forms distinguish the possessor (first, second, third person), the number of possessors (singular, dual, plural) and the number of objects (singular, dual, plural). This allows Nenets speakers to express the phrase "many houses of us two" in one word. Mayan languages and Nahuan languages also have possessive prefixes.

Finnish is one language that uses possessive suffixes. The number of possessors and their person can be distinguished for the singular and plural, except for the third person. However, the construction hides the number of possessed objects when the singular objects are in nominative or genitive case and plural objects in nominative case; käteni may mean either "my hand" (subject or direct object), "of my hand" (genitive) or "my hands" (subject or direct object). For example, the following are the forms of talo (house), declined to show possession:

The grammatical cases are not affected by the possessive suffix, except for the accusative case (-n or unmarked), which is left unmarked by anything but the possessive suffix. The third-person suffix is used only if the possessor is the subject. For example, Mari maalasi talonsa "Mari painted her house", cf. the use of the genitive case in Toni maalasi Marin talon "Toni painted Mari's house". (The -n on the word talon is the accusative case homophonic to the genitive case.)

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