THE USE OF THE GENITIVE IN ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN

Abstract

The paper aims at presenting the use of the genitive in English and Romanian. In English the genitive is the rule with nouns denoting persons and sometimes things and with nouns denoting time. It may also be used as a post-genitive or as a local genitive whether singular or plural. The genitive alternates with an of-adjunct with proper names, with names of animals, with certain names of things, with names of measures and values. In Romanian the genitive has numerous values: the possessive genitive, the subjective genitive, the objective genitive, the genitive of denomination, the qualitative genitive, and the genitive implied by prepositions and prepositional phrases. As concerns the morphological means of expression, the genitive is functionally clear, being marked by determinatives.

Keywords

• headword
• local genitive
• of-adjunct
• determinative