CHAPTER FIVE
GENITIVE § 1 . Introduction The genitive case, as it appeared from the statistics quoted above (Chapter 2, §§ 2-4), is the one least used, despite the fact that in Greek it represents two older cases, the genitive proper and the ablative. Over a half of its uses are with prepositions (largely ablatival). It is by far the chief adnominal case, accounting for 90% of all such use; and in it alone adnominal use exceeds adverbal (63%: 36% ). When the case is judged against this background, and after separation of the ablatival use (denoting 'place etc. from which'), we can on grounds of convenience, if none other, divide the remainder of the uses between the adnominal on the one hand (actualised in a great variety of different contexts) and the par• titive on the other hand (chiefly adverbal, but not completely). This is how Chantraine and Humbert proceed: the latter goes further (267 f.), and finds a link between partitive and adnominal in the notion of limitation. The genitival complement of a verb would thus delimit its operation, which affects a part only of the object; that of a noun has, like an adjective, a defining and thus again a delimiting character. This notion of delimiting is found again in Louw (84): for him the genitive connotes the idea of restriction (thus the genitive with verbs of eating and drinking, where only part of the object is concerned; or the genitive of reference, restricting the point at issue). This approach provides the most successful attempt at find• ing a semantic unity behind the uses of the true genitive. An alternative scheme has been proposed by Kurylowicz ( 183 ff.). This would take the adnominal use, and especially the subjective-objective, as alone primary, and the partitive would form a contextual variant of this. But what then of the adverbal partitive uses? These he is obliged to regard as all being originally adnominal, in dependence on a noun (usually accusative) which suffers ellipse: after the ellipse their character changes from adnominal to adverbal. So µe:tfoXE~ ·mii rc611ou (P. 248) presupposes a lost accusative µotpcxv vel sim. This view is in fact an ancient one, and in more recent times other authorities have sought to support it (e.g. Hirt and Ehrlich: cf. Lasso de la Vega 1, 433 ff.). But the large-scale ellipse which the theory supposes is too artificial, and is rightly rejected; and the adverbal use which it seeks to explain, has all the appearance of great antiquity. GENITIVE 51
Schwyzer's scheme is rather less tidy, though not necessarily the worse for that: he has a partitive, a pertinentive (of relation in the widest sense, embracing the usual adnominal but also including some adverbal use), and a final group of syncretistic uses where the historical development is not clear. It must be true that, whatever original basis is proposed, for Greek-speakers the genitive represented a single case, and that after the fusion with the ablative further developments took place especially in the assimilation of adverbal and adnominal use.
A. Adnominal and derived uses § 2. Introduction The many semantic sub-types into which the adnominal genitive can be divided serve a practical purpose, but are all illustrations of the ways in which there is involved the sense of relationship between two nouns (that in the genitive and its regens); they describe the manner of the limitation or definition imposed by the one upon the other. Syntactically we may say simply that the genitive noun is in an adjectival relation to the regens: fur• ther, semantic analysis explores the nature of the contexts in which this oc• curs. Derived adverbal uses have also been included.
§ 3. Possessive-pertinentive use The possessive includes the wider notions of association, connection with (pertinentive, Schwyzer). OT 925 "t(X "tOU "tUpiXWOU owµ.0t"t' ... Olo(1tou. T. 74 EupU"tOU 1t6Atv. E. 252 "touµ.ov OtU"tT}~ 'my very own interest': the con• struction brings out the link between adjective and genitive, iµ.6v being equivalent to iµ.oii and so expanded by gen. 0turij~. Of parentage: An. 825* "t