genetiiviksen

Genetiiviksen is a linguistic term used to describe a hypothetical genitive-marking morpheme. The term is built from genetiivi, the genitive in several languages, and the suffix -ksen, which appears in theoretical discussions as a way to illustrate how genitive relations might be encoded in noun phrases. The concept is used primarily in typological studies and in the construction of artificial languages, rather than as a standard feature of widely studied natural languages.

In theoretical descriptions, genetiiviksen is described as an affix that attaches to a possessor noun to indicate that the following noun phrase bears a genitive relation. Depending on the analysis, it can mark possession directly, or mark a possessed noun as part of a genitive sub-phrase within a larger noun phrase. It may interact with other morphological systems such as number, gender, or multiple cases, and can be combined with different word orders.

Attestation: there are no widely accepted natural-language examples of genetiiviksen as a real-world morpheme; it appears mainly in discussions of possible or typologically interesting systems and in some constructed languages used for linguistic experimentation.

See also: Genitive, Possessive, Morphology, Syntactic theory, Constructed languages.