GENITIVE, the name of one of the " cases " in grammar (see DECLENSION). In such an expression as (Lat.) regis flies, (Eng.) the king's son, the form regis or king's is called the genitive case; and according to the usual explanation, this name was given it, because it indicates the source or origin of the thing joined with it. A much more sat isfactory account of the origin of the name, and of the real nature of the genitive case, is that given by -flax Milner (Science of Language), The terms of grammar were origin. ally applied, not to the parts of speech, but to the elements of thought; they were logi cal terms before they were grammatical. Long before the now familiar grammatical distinctions of singular and plural, of gender, case, voice, etc., had been thought of, the Greek writers on dialectics, in analysing the different parts of an expressed thought, had distinguished the principal notion—the subject or nominative as it is called—from secondary or dependant notions; the dependency of the latter they expressed by the pods (Let. cases), a fall or leaning of one thing upon another; and in such a pro position as, "the king's son is dead," they indicated the exact nature of the dependence by calling it the genikZ ptosis, i.e., the case showing' the genus, kind, or class—the gen eric case; for while the name "son" is applicable to every man having parents, " king's son " is limited to the class of sons having kings for their fathers. One name joined to another in this relation has thus the same effect as an adjective (q.v.) in limit ing its application. It seems probable, indeed, that the termination of what we now call the genitive case, was originally the same as that by which adjectives were formed from nouns. The names thus applied to ideas were by the Greek grammarians of Alex andria transferred to the words expressing them, and were afterwards translated into their Latin equivalents by the Greek grammarians who taught their language to the youth of Rome. But by this time the terms had become strictly technical, and their
original signification little thought of; and this may account for the Greek genike, the Latin equivalent for which is generalis, being rendered by genitivus, generating or pro ducing, which would have been expressed in Greek by gennetia In English, the genitive is the only case or relation among nouns expressed by a dif ference of termination, and even it is often expressed by the proposition of; as the river's brink, or the brink of the river. From the frequency with which the form in 's indicates that one thing belongs to another, it is often called the possessive ease. But this name is little applicable in such expressions as a day's journey; still less in many cases where the genitive is used in the ancient languages; e.g., foes Ideas, a fountain of milk. The generic case, however, meaning that which limits the other noun to a class or kind, will be found to expres the real relation in every Conceivable combination.
The termination 's has been erroneously supposed to be a contraction for his, as if "the king's son the king his son." But this would not account for "the queen's son," or for "men's sons." .Besides his itself is the genitive of he, and formed in the same way as king's, for the apostrophe (') is a mere artificial expedient of writing to dis tinguish the possessive from the plural, and does not belong to the spoken language. The English genitive in 'a is a genuine relic of the inflections (q.v.) common at an early stage to all the Aryan languages. a was the prevalent ending of the genitive singular in the Anglo-Saxon, and in modern English it has been extended by analogy to all nouns and even to the plural. When the plural ends in s, the additional a of the genitive is omitted, for the sake of the sound, as king's sons.