genitiivsingularis

Genitiivsingularis, or genitive singular, is a grammatical case used in languages that mark nouns for case. It expresses various relations, most commonly possession, but also origin, description, measurement, and part–whole relations. In languages with gender and declensions, the genitive singular form of a noun often changes with its gender or declension class, and adjectives or determiners may need to agree with that form.

Functionally, the genitive singular is frequently employed to indicate ownership: the book of the boy, or the boy’s book. It also appears in expressions governed by certain prepositions or verbs, and in constructions that describe measurements, portions, or sources.

Examples:

- German typically marks possession in the genitive singular: des Mannes (of the man), der Frau (of the woman), des Kindes (of the child). Adjectives in such phrases agree in case and gender, as in des großen Mannes.

- Finnish uses a distinct genitive singular ending, such as talon from talo (house), to indicate possession or association.

By contrast, English lacks a dedicated genitive case; possession is usually shown with the possessive suffix -'s or with of-phrases, reflecting a more analytic approach to possession rather than an inflected genitive form.

Variation across languages is common: some languages feature a productive genitive singular that interacts with numerals or set phrases, while others rely on periphrastic or postpositional strategies. In linguistic descriptions, genitiivsingularis is treated as one of several cases that interact with noun classes, agreement, and syntax to encode relationships between nouns.