:Introduction

This paper offers a contrastive analysis of the genitive constructions in English and Standard
Arabic. It aims at showing the similarities and differences between the two languages in such
constructions from the morphological, syntactic and semantic perspectives. It starts with a
definition of the term genitive and the various parts in a genitive construction (section 1).
Then, a brief discussion of the traditional classification of genitive constructions is provided
in (section 2). After that, genitive constructions are dealt with from a morphological
perspective (section 3). Furthermore, the syntactic structure of genitive phrases is
contrasted in both languages (section 4). In addition, a semantic classification of genitive
constructions in both languages is provided (section 5). Finally, a summary of the similarities
and differences of genitive constructions in the two languages is given in the conclusion

Definition

In grammar, the genitive case , also called the second case, is the grammatical

case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun
—thus, indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can
also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may
feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also
. have adverbial uses

: Adverbal genitive

In grammar, an adverbial genitive is a noun declined in the genitive case that functions

.as an adverb

n Old and Middle English, the genitive case was productive, and adverbial genitives were
commonplace. While Modern English does not fully retain the genitive case, it has left
various relics, including a number of adverbial genitives. Some of them are now analyzed
:as ordinary adverbs, including the following

 always (from all way)

 afterwards, towards, and so on (from their counterparts in -ward, which
historically were adjectives)
 once, twice, and thrice (from the roots of one, two, and three)
 hence, thence, and whence (related to the roots of here, there, and where

Some words were formed from the adverbial genitive along with an additional
parasitic -t:

 amongst (from among)
 midst (from mid)
 whilst (from while

The adverbial genitive also survives in a number of stock phrases; for example, in "I
work days and sleep nights", the words days and nights are analyzed as plural nouns
 but are in fact derived historically from the genitive or instrumental cases
of day and night. (That they function as adverbs rather than as direct objects is clear
from the rephrasing "I work during the day and sleep at night.") The modern British
expression "Of an afternoon I go for a walk" has a similar origin, but uses
the periphrasis "of + noun" to replace the original genitive. This periphrastic form has
variously been marked as used "particularly in isolated and mountainous regions of
the southern United States" and as having "a distinctly literary feel"

Possessive :

Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be

regarded as a subset of genitive construction. For example, the genitive construction
"pack of dogs" is similar, but not identical in meaning to the possessive case "dogs'
pack" (and neither of these is entirely interchangeable with "dog pack", which is
neither genitive nor possessive). Modern English is an example of a language that
has a possessive case rather than a conventional genitive case. That is, Modern
English indicates a genitive construction with either the possessive clitic suffix "-'s",
or a prepositional genitive construction such as "x of y". However, some irregular
English pronouns do have possessive forms which may more commonly be
described as genitive

genitive in arabic language :

Called ‫المجرور‬ al-majrūr (meaning "dragged") in Arabic, the genitive case functions both
as an indication of ownership (ex. the door of the house) and for nouns following a
preposition.
Nominative: ٌ‫بيت‬ baytun (a house)
Genitive: ٍ‫بابُ بيت‬ bābu baytin (the door of a house) ِ‫بابُ البيت‬ bābu l-bayti (the door of
the house)
The Arabic genitive marking also appears after prepositions.
e.g. ٍ‫بابٌ لبيت‬ bābun li-baytin (a door for a house)
The Semitic genitive should not be confused with the pronominal possessive
suffixes that exist in all the Semitic languages
e.g. Arabic ‫بيتي‬ bayt-ī (my house) َ‫كتا ُبك‬ kitābu-ka (your [masc.] book)

Arabic, on the other hand, has three cases: nominative, accusative and genitive. The
genitive case is used for the second noun in a genitive construction and for the
object of a preposition. Arab grammarians use the term /?iDaafah/ ‘annexation’ to
describe the process of adding a noun to another in a genitive construction. Using
the Turkish term /izafet/, Trask defines it as “a term used in the grammars of certain
languages to denote a construction in which a noun is possessed or modified by
another noun or noun phrase, particularly when an overt marking of the relation
occurs on the noun which is possessed or modified.”
In Arabic, on the other hand, the genitive has only one form: the head noun
followed by the modifying noun in its genitive form:
(5) a. fasaatiin-u bint-in
dresses-Nom girl-Gen
‘some dresses of a girl’
 b. qumSaan-u r-rijaal-i
shirts-Nom the-men-Gen
‘the shirts of the men’.

Traditional Classification of Genitive Constructions:

In English, the genitive has two forms which were discussed in detail by Quirk et. al.
(1972: 194) as follows:
(a) THE INFLECTED GENITIVE (‘the -S GENITIVE’) indicated in writing by apostrophe +
s suffix or apostrophe only, after the modifying noun: modifying noun phrase + ’s +
head noun-phrase:
(1) a. the girl’s dresses b. the men’s shirts c. the boys’ toys (b) THE PERIPHRASTIC
GENITIVE (the OF GENITIVE) consisting of the modifying noun phrase in a
prepositional phrase after the head noun phrase: head noun phrase + of + modifying
noun phrase:
(2) a. the dresses of the girl
b. the shirts of the men
c. the toys of the boys

Therefore, Quirk et. al. (1972: 198-201) list the following four animate noun classes
as normally taking the inflected genitive:
(a) Personal Names: Clinton’s scandal Ghandi’s statue
(b) Personal Nouns: the girl’s new doll my brother-in-law’s bicycle.
(c) Collective Nouns: the army’s maneuvers the government’s budget
(d) Higher Animals: the dog’s tail the horse’s jump They also list the following kinds
of inanimate nouns as taking the inflected genitive:
(e) Geographical Names:
Continents: Africa’s treasures
Countries: Egypt’s monuments
Cities/towns: Cairo’s mosques
Rivers: The Nile’s delta
Universities: Oxford’s Linguistics Department.

Morphological Comparison:
Burton-Roberts (1986: 52) considers the genitive one of the distinctive
morphological properties of nouns: “a MORPHOLOGICAL identifying feature of all
nouns is that they have a GENITIVE (or POSSESSIVE) form”. This is also confirmed by
Haegeman & Gueron (1999: 54): “Another property of nouns is that they can often
be associated with a genitive morpheme”. Arab grammarians also consider the
genitive a distinctive property of nouns. Thus, Abdul-Ghani (Al-Wahadaat: 223)
asserts that “the presence of a feature of annexation in a form is an indication of its
being a noun.

The inflected genitive in English is formed as follows :

For singular nouns, by adding -’s to the modifying noun. The usual ending for the Old
English genitive singular was -es. When, later, the -e was omitted, its absence was
shown by an apostrophe (’):
a. the girl’s dress
b. Jack’s garden
For plural nouns ending in -s, by adding apostrophe only:
 a. the teachers’ room
b. the officers’ cars
For plural nouns not ending in -s, by adding ’s:
a. the children’s room.
b. the women’s cries

the English genitive morpheme has three allomorphs that are phonologically
conditioned, the Arabic genitive morpheme has six allomorphs that are governed by
morphosyntactic conditions related to the gender and number properties and the
declension status of the modifying noun.

Nunation [-n] is deleted from the head noun if it is a singular noun, broken plural or
sound feminine plural, as in:

kilaab-u l-haql-i ‘dogs of the field’

Taalibaat-u l-madiinat-i ‘female students of the city’

Also, [-ni] is deleted from the head noun if it is dual, and [-na] is deleted if it is sound
masculine plural.

The final [-n] (with its following vowel) in the dual and the sound masculine plural is
deleted because it resembles nunation in the singular noun and what follows its
declension.

Examining the two genitive structures, one may notice that:

1. The (GS) in English has three words and four morphemes: the + boy + 's + book.
The (GS) in Arabic has two words and five morphemes : kita:b + u + ?al + walad + i ,
where /u/ is the nominative morpheme and /i/ is the genitive morpheme.

2. the (GS) in English needs an apostrophe or an apostrophe s , e.g., the boys'

books, the boy's book. The (GS) in Arabic needs the genitive case marker,i.e., /i/ or
/in/, suffixed to the second N of the GS.

3. The GS in E and A is mainly a relationship between two noun. Such a relation

could be an owner-owned relation, as in S's 1-2, whole-part relation, e.g., the dog's
tail, ‫ ذيل الكلب‬, a doer action relation, e.g., the man's hunting ‫صيد الرجل‬, or other
semantic relations. In A, the relation is in the opposite direction: owned-owner, part-
whole, and action-doer, respectively.

4. the GS in E does not allow a determiner before the second part, e.g., *the boy's
the book. The GS in A does, e.g, S2, where ‫ أل‬is allowed before ‫ولد‬.

5. The GS in E allows a determiner before the first part, e.g., the boy in S1. The GS
in A does not, e.g., *?al kitabu ?alwaladi *‫الكتاب الولد‬.
 6. the GS in E generally requires an animate first part i.e., human or animal, e.g., the
boy's book, the cat's tail, but not *the table's leg. The GS in A does not have such a
restriction.

7.E has an alternative structure, i.e., the of-structure, e.g., the book of the boys. A
does not have a structure exactly parallel to the of-structure. Notice that the of-
structure does not have the plus-animate restriction required by the GS in E.

Conclusion:
The genitive is one of the noun cases in English and Arabic. English traditionally
has two forms for the a morphological genitive: inflected and periphrastic. Arabic,
on the other hand, has one form, the inflected. Preposition phrases cannot be
utilized to express the genitive in Arabic. The genitive is considered property of
nouns in both English and Arabic. In English, a genitive construction is formed by
attaching an 's which has three allomorphs that are phonologically conditioned by
the final sound of the modifying noun. The Arabic genitive has six allomorphs that
are morpho-syntactically conditioned by the gender and number properties as
well as the declension status of the modifying noun. The main syntactic difference
between English and Arabic is that in the former the modifying noun comes
before the head noun, but in the latter this order is reversed. As for the
experiment, we found that Arabic learners, especially whose level of English is
either Upper-Intermediate or Advanced, have no major difficulties in choosing the
correct genitive case that suits the noun used in the sentence. Moreover, we
found learners' results supported the claims made about the use of genitive case
which says that that the –s genitive is favored with animate nouns whereas the
of -construction is rather favored with inanimate nouns, and that Arabic learners
spontaneously followed the rules made for using the two constructions. That
could be ascribed to the fact that prepositional phrases (of -constructions) are not
used in Arabic possessive constructions. However, only the inflected genitive (-
s genitive) is used in the Arabic language. Consequently, that could be the reason
why the –s genitive was preferred to be used more than the of -construction
among Arabic learners of English.

Dictionary.com, genitive

Herbert Weir Smyth (1956).  Greek Grammar. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press., page 313 and elsewhere

 Harper, Douglas. "always". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved  2010-03-15

Allerton, D. & French, M. (1987) “Morphology: The Forms of English.” The English
Language. ed. by W. F. Bolton and David Crystal. London: Sphere Books. 71-132
 Al-Khuli, Muhammad Ali (1982) A Dictionary of Theoretical

Abdul-Ghani, Ahmad Abdul-Azim (n.d.) Al-Wahadaat aSSarfiyyat wa dawruha fi binaa?

al-kalimat alc arabiyya [Morphemes and their Role in Arabic Word Formation]

https://www.academia.edu/12657574/Genitive_Case_in_English_and_Arabic_-
_Case_Study

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case

genitive presentation:
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated GEN), also called the second case, is
the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word,
also usually a noun—thus, indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the
other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For
example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive
case may also have adverbial uses.

The genitive structure in English is a structure which uses an apostrophe or an

apostrophe s between two related nouns, e.g., the child's toy, the girls' book.

In Arabic there is no such thing . the genitive in Arabic is Called ‫المجرور‬ al-

majrūr (meaning "dragged") in Arabic, the genitive case functions both as an
indication of ownership (ex. the door of the house) and for nouns following a
preposition .
Nominative: ٌ‫بيت‬ baytun (a house)
Genitive: ٍ‫بابُ بيت‬ bābu baytin (the door of a house) ِ‫بابُ البيت‬ bābu l-bayti (the door of
the house).
The Semitic genitive should not be confused with the pronominal possessive suffixes that
exist in all the Semitic languages
e.g. Arabic ‫بيتي‬ bayt-ī (my house) َ‫كتا ُبك‬ kitābu-ka (your [masc.] book).

Possessive case

's '

It's alison's skirt The students' shirts are yellow

1) singular nouns or proper nouns take 's

 e.g., the boy's ball / Emily's ring.

2) Plural nouns that end in " s " take an apostrophe at the end ( ' ).

e.g., the girls' house

3) Irregular plural nouns take 's

e.g., the men's boat.

4) same thing belongs to two or more people we add 's only to the last noun.

e.g., Ali and Sara's house.

5) You should still use the "of" form of the possessive / genitive case when talking
about things that belong to other things.

For example:-

 The top speed  of the  car is 1000 km/hr. You might also hear, "the car's top
speed" in advertising, because they like to humanise things.
 The content  of the  website. You can also say, "the website content", or "the
website's content".
 Go to the top  of the  page.

https://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/casepossgen.html

https://www.academia.edu/12657574/Genitive_Case_in_English_and_Arabic_-
_Case_Study

comparative linguistics : English and Arabic by Dr. Muhammad Ali Alkhuli.

https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-powerpoints/grammar/genitive-s-or-
.possession/possessive-case/75388