Saxon genitive

English English possessive Etymology So named because the possessive was one of the only productive relics of the Anglo-Saxon declensional system. Noun en linguistics A genitive construction in English formed with the possessive clitic en -'s. en 1871 A. J. Mertens A Complete English Grammar 71 It is against euphony to make two genitives of the same form follow each other, particularly when they are Saxon genitives. en 1997 Ewa Dąbrowska Cognitive Semantics and the Polish Dative 149 First, not all Saxon genitives can be paraphrased with have: many subjective and objective nominalizations (the boy's escape, the boy's release), genitives of origin (the boy's letter), genitives of measure (ten days' absence), and many genitives with non-human reference points (today's paper, next year's profits, duty's call, the poll's results) do not have analogous uses with have (*The boy has an escape, *The boy has a release...). Translations French: fr génitif saxon m German: de sächsischer Genitiv m Italian: it genitivo sassone m Portuguese: pt genitivo saxão m Spanish: es genitivo sajón m