posesive

Posesive is a term used in linguistic discussions to describe a hypothetical or fictional grammatical category that marks possession with a particular emphasis on the possessor’s perspective, stance, or involvement. It is not a standard or widely adopted term in mainstream grammars, but appears in speculative or worldbuilding contexts to explore alternative ways of encoding ownership.

In a posed context, a posesive system could be realized in several ways. The marker might attach to the possessor noun, pronoun, or determiner; it could also appear as a separate clitic that attaches to the possessor phrase. The core function is still to indicate possession, but the orientation conveyed by the marker can encode additional information such as the possessor’s attitude, immediacy, or intersubjective relationship to the possessed object.

Typical discussions around posesive contrast with conventional possessive constructions such as genitive or possessive adjectives. While a standard possessive marks ownership from the possessed noun’s perspective, a posesive approach might foreground the possessor’s viewpoint or involvement, potentially interacting with person, number, or discourse features in different ways.

Example (illustrative only): in a constructed language, the possessor phrase John might bear a posesive marker to yield a sequence that translates as “John’s [possession],” with the marker on John indicating the posesive relation and possibly shading the perspective of ownership.

Notes: The posesive concept remains speculative and is not part of established grammatical theory. It is used mainly as a theoretical or fictional device to consider how possession could be encoded under alternative morphosyntactic designs.

See also: Possessive, Genitive, Clitic, Morphology.