Difference between Genitive Personal Pronoun and Possessive Pronoun

Question

I'm currently studying Icelandic. Right away at one of the first steps I found a bit of difficulty and I wonder if any of you might be able to help me as the question might be answered based on any highly inflected language. The doubt regards the use of pronouns:

Below you'll be able to see the Personal and Possessive pronouns that constitutes the Icelandic language, and with them I also put the noun cases that would be also part of the scheme: (For the sake of the example I'll only use first person singular pronouns)

Personal pronouns:

Case Pronoun

Nom ég

Acc mig

Dat mér

Gen mín

Possessive Pronouns:

Case Pronoun

Nom minn

Acc minn

Dat mínum

Gen míns

My question is: how can I differentiate the usage of the personal genitive pronoun with the possessive genitive pronoun? Does anybody knows of any example (In Latin or German, or even in English if you can figure a way out) or anywhere I could find an explanation?

Answer 1

In English the distinction is apparent in the competing forms my vs. of mine. The appearance of the preposition of of course marks what would appear as the genitive in many related languages, e.g.

 a. my book vs. that book of mine

The form my book is preferred if there is no reason for another determiner to appear. In that book of mine, the necessity for the demonstrative determiner to appear forces the appearance of the "genitive" form of mine, since English generally allows just a single determiner to introduce a noun phrase.

German has antiquated forms of the genitive pronoun (meiner 'of mine', deiner 'of yours', seiner 'of his', ihrer 'of hers', unsrer 'of ours', eurer 'of yours', Ihrer 'of yours'). These forms have basically died out of the modern language, but they can be found on occassion in older texts. When these pronouns appeared, they would usually follow the noun that they modify, e.g. das Buch meiner 'the book of mine'. There was thus a difference in word order that helped distinguish between the genitive pronoun meiner (of mine), which followed the noun, and the possessive determiner mein- (my), which precedes the noun.

I'm not sure I understand Manjusri's answer, but perhaps Icelandic is similar to German insofar as the genitive pronoun (not the possessive determiner!) appears rarely, and check to see if it follows its noun as opposed to preceding it.

Answer 2

In English (and certainly in the Romance languages, and similar to what Tim Osborne mentions with older German), when you use the possessive adjective as a determiner, the noun is treated as definite:

• My book _EN
• Mio libru _AST
• Mi libro _ES

To force an indefinite interpretation, you can't just add in an indefinite article:

• *A my book, *My a book _EN
• *Un mio libru, *Mio un libru _AST
• *Un mi libro, *Mi un libro _ES

The only way in English is to switch to an alternate structure. Ditto in the Romance languages, which language depending have different ways of adjusting structure so that the possessive adjective (if it stays as an adjective) loses its determinative prowess.

• A book of mine. _EN
• Un libru mio, un libro de mio _AST
• Un libro mío _ES

I'd imagine that most languages with a definite/indefinite distinction have the possessive adjectives imply definiteness, with any other forms (via pronouns, etc) allowing for idefiniteness determiners.

Answer 3

The difference should be defined by the usage of Nominative VS Accusative. For most Icelandic nouns, it should be obvious, e.g.:

armur (an arm): minn armur (Nom.) => minn arm (Gen.)`

afi (a grandfather): minn afi (Nom.) => minn afa (Gen.)

saga (a story): minn saga (Nom.) => minn sögu (Gen.)

I think the ambiguity you have mentioned exists only in phrases with definiteness marked by possessive pronouns plus nouns of certain declension types (one-syllable feminine words with final a consonant of both declensions and neutrum of both declension types), for my intuition is that in sg. definite form no possessive pronoun should be used.

There should also be some syntaxical tools to mark a subject VS a possessor (see e.g. an answer by user2619), or a commonsense logic to distinguish animate vs inanimate.

Answer 4

Here is some data on the question from Latvian, which as it so happens makes this distinction. In Latvian, the first person possessive adjective is ‘mans/mana’ (masc/fem). It declines with the noun it modifies. The genitive case form of the first person pronoun is ‘manis’.

Uses of possessive adjective:

In noun phrases: mans draugs ‘my friend’

In predicate position: Tas divritenis ir mans. ‘That bicycle is mine.’

Uses of genitive pronoun:

In prepositional phrases: Pirms manis ir bijis tikai viens īpašnieks.
Before me, there has been only one owner.

In constructions requiring the genitive: Manis nav.
I don’t exist./I am not there. (negative construction)

Vai tev manis trūka? Did you miss me? (genitive complement of ‘trūkt’ to miss)

So this is pretty much in line with TKR’s expectations in his comment. Note that there is no distinction made between ‘my’ and ‘mine’. There’s an additional complication though: possessive adjective forms exist only for the first and second person singular. For the plurals and for third person, the genitive pronoun is used across the board, like this:

viņa drangs ‘his friend’

viņas draugs ‘her friend’

Viņa nav. ‘He’s not here.’

Viņas nav. ‘She’s not here.’

Tas divritenis ir jūsu. ‘That bicycle is yours (pl.).’

So as TKR pointed out, every language has its own idiosyncracies. This is certainly something to pay attention to when learning a language with a well-developed case system. Have fun with Icelandic!

Answer 5

I'm comparing Icelandic and German:

Pers. pronoun N G D A: eg min mer mig - ich mein mir mich

You can find such tables in German grammars, but the genitive is misleading.

Instead of the genitive of the pronoun you use the possessive forms, possessive + noun.

The use of the genitive of the pronoun is limited and very rare. In modern language it is not used at all. The only use was as a genitive object after a verb, and verbs with genitive object are rare.

Answer 6

The Genitive case of the personal pronoun in Icelandic is used when it's the object of a verb which takes an object in the Genitive case of following a preposition that requires the Genitive case:

• Þú ættir að skammast þín. ("You ought to shame yourself" - You ought to be ashamed. - Genitive Object)
• Ég kem til þín á morgun. (I'll come to you tomorrow - Prep. + Gen.)

The possessive pronoun, on the other hand, is used to denote possession:

• Þetta er hesturinn þinn. ("This is the horse your" - This is your horse.)

Note that the 3rd person possessive pronoun, sinn, is only used to denote possession of the subject of the sentence, otherwise you use the genitive case of the personal pronoun:

• Jón hittur afann sinn. ("Jón meets grandpa his" - Jón meets his own grandpa.)
• Þetta er Jón. Í gær hitti ég afann hans. (This is Jón. "Yesterday met I granpa his" - Yesterday I met his grandpa.)

In the second example, the pronoun (hans) doesn't refer to the Subject (ég), so you can't use sinn and have to use hans. The use of the article that some answers seem to regard as crucial does not matter in Icelandic, you can use the possessive pronoun both with or without the article. The same goes for word order, the possessive usually comes after the noun, but if you put it before the word, you still use the possessive pronoun.

In Latin and German, the situation is much the same, you use the possessive pronoun for possession and the genitive of the personal pronoun for genitive objects or prepositions that take the genitive. However, Latin prepositions never take the genitive and German usually special constructions for prepositions, so the genitive of the personal pronoun is really only used for genitive objects, and both Latin (I think) and German have fewer verbs that take genitive objects than Icelandic, so the genitive pronoun is rare in both languages:

German:

• Das ist sein Haus. (This is his house - poss.pron.)
• Wir gedenken seiner. (We commemorate him) (Genitive Object - pers.pron.)
• Wir machen das seinetwegen (rather than wegen seiner). (Prep + Genitive)

Latin:

• Id est domus sua. (This is his house - poss.pron.)
• Memini tui. (I remember you) (Genitiv Object - pers.pron.)

In Ancient Greek, on the other hand, the genitive of the personal pronoun can be freely used for possessions:

• ὁ ἰχθὺς ἐμόσ ("ho ichthys emos" = the fish mine - poss.pron.)
• ὁ ἰχθὺς μού ("ho ichthys mou" = the fish mine - pers.pron.)

So there doesn't seem any rule that works for all languages out there, the difference is probably just language specific.