Possesive case: Difference between revisions

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+#REDIRECT [[Possessive case]]
-'''Possesive case''' is a case that exists in some languages used for possession.  It is not the same as the [[genitive case]], though the two have proximal meanings in many languages.
-There are many types of possession, but a common distinction is alienable versus inalienable possesion.  Alienability refers to the ability to disassociate something from its parent -- in this case, a quality from its owner.
-When something is inalienably possessed, it is usually an attribute: for example, John's big nose is inalienably possessed, because it cannot (without surgery) be removed from John -- it's simply a quality he has.  In contrast, 'my briefcase' is alienably possessed -- it can be seperated from me.
-Many languages make this distinction in some way. Saying something like 'I have my dad's big nose' with the latter noun-phrase marked inalienable would imply some sort of genetic inheritance; marked alienable, it would imply that you had cut off your father's nose or somesuch and were actually in physical possession of it.
-English does not have a grammatical facility to make such distinctions.
-The term 'possessive case' is often used to refer to the "'s" [[morpheme]], which is suffixed onto many nouns in english to denote 'possession by'.  This usage is not strictly correct -- this [[affix]] is actually a [[clitic]].  See the entry on the [[genitive case]] for details.