linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...

(usually

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...

) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of

possessive adjective Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they do ...

s. Possessive affixes are found in many languages of the world. The ''

World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural ( phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-R ...

'' lists 642 languages with possessive suffixes, possessive prefixes, or both out of a total sample of 902 languages. Possessive suffixes are found in some Austronesian,

Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...

, Altaic, Semitic, and

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...

. Complicated systems are found in the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...

; for example, Nenets has 27 (3×3×3) different types of forms distinguish the possessor (first-, second- or third-

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

), the

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual number ...

of possessors (singular, dual or plural) and the number of objects (singular, dual or plural). That allows Nenets-speakers to express the phrase "we two's many houses" in one word.

Mayan languages The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...

and

Nahuan languages The Nahuan or Aztecan languages are those languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family that have undergone a sound change, known as Whorf's law, that changed an original *t to before *a. Subsequently, some Nahuan languages have changed this to ...

also have possessive prefixes.

Uralic languages

Finnish

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

uses possessive suffixes. The number of possessors and their person can be distinguished for the singular and plural except for the third person. However, the construction hides the number of possessed objects when the singular objects are in

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) 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 a ...

and plural objects in nominative case since ''käteni'' may mean either "my hand" (subject or direct object), "of my hand" (genitive) or "my hands" (subject or direct object). For example, the following are the forms of ''talo'' (''house''), declined to show possession: The

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

s are not affected by the possessive suffix except for the

accusative case The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘t ...

(''-n'' or unmarked), which is left unmarked by anything other than the possessive suffix. The third-person suffix is used only if the possessor is the subject. For example, ''Mari maalasi talonsa'' "Mari painted her house", cf. the use of the

in ''Toni maalasi Marin talon'' "Toni painted Mari's house". (The ''-n'' on the word ''talon'' is the

, which is pronounced the same as the genitive case.) For emphasis or clarification, the possessor can be given outside the word as well, using the

. In this case, the possessive suffix remains. For example, ''my house'' can be ''taloni or minun taloni'' in which ''minun'' is the genitive form of the first-person singular pronoun. Omission of the possessive suffix makes it possible to distinguish the plural for the possessed objects, but that is not considered proper language: ''mun käsi'' "my hand" vs. ''mun kädet'' "my hands". Systematic omission of possessive suffixes is found in

Spoken Finnish Colloquial or spoken Finnish () refers to the unstandardized spoken variety of the Finnish language, in contrast with the standardized form of the language (). It is used primarily in personal communication and varies somewhat between the differe ...

, wherever a pronoun in the genitive is used, but that is found only in direct address: "Their coats are dry" is ''Niiden takit on kuivia'' (''niiden'' lit. "they's"). That can be contrasted with indirect possession, as in "They took their coats", in which the possessive suffix is used: ''Ne otti takkinsa''. Even in proper Finnish, the pronouns ''sen'' and ''niiden'', which are the demonstrative as well as inanimate forms of ''hänen'' and ''heidän'', do not impose possessive suffixes except indirectly. It would be

hypercorrect In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...

to say ''niiden talonsa''. There is also a distinction in meaning in the third person on whether or not the third-person possessive pronoun is used: :''He ottivat (omat) takkinsa.'' = "They took their (own) coats." (The possessor cannot be mentioned, even for emphasis, when it the same as the subject.) :''He ottivat heidän takkinsa.'' = "They took their (others') coats." (When a third person pronoun is mentioned as the possessor, it must refer to someone other than the subject of the sentence.) :''He kertoivat tekevänsä (itse).'' = "They told they would come (themselves)." (The doer cannot be mentioned, even for emphasis, when it is the same as previously.) :''He kertoivat heidän tulevan.'' = "They told they (others) would come." (When a third person pronoun is mentioned as the subject of the second sentence, it must refer to someone other than the subject of the first sentence.)

Hungarian

Hungarian is another

Uralic language The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

. Distantly related to

, Hungarian follows similar rule as given above for Finnish, except that it does not use

for emphasis. To say, "Maria's house," one would say ''Mária háza'' (literally "Maria his house", "where ''háza'' means "her/his/its house"). :See also Possessive suffixes in the article ''Hungarian grammar (noun phrases)''.

Semitic languages

Arabic

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

, a

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

, uses personal suffixes, also classified as

enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

pronouns, for the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) 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 a ...

and

s of the

personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...

s. The genitive and accusative forms are identical, except for the 1st person singular, which is ''-ī'' in genitive and ''-nī'' in accusative case. They can be used with

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

s, expressing possession, with

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s, which require the genitive case, or with

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s, expressing the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

. Examples for personal suffixes expressing possession, using the word بيت ''bayt(u)'' (''house'') as a base:

Hebrew

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, a

Northwest Semitic language Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze A ...

, possessive suffixes are optional. They are more common in formal, archaic, or poetic language and for certain nouns than on others. For instance, ''my home'' can be written ''בֵּיתִי'' (beiti). However, the following are some different ways to express possession, using the word ''בַּיִת'' (''bayit'', house) as a base: *my house: ''בֵּיתִי'' ''beiti'' (house-my), ''הַבַּיִת שֶׁלִּי'' ''ha-bayit sheli'' (the-house of-me) *your ( masc., sing.) house: ''בֵּיתְךָ'' ''beitkha'' (house-your), ''הַבַּיִת שֶׁלְּךָ'' ''ha-bayit shelkha'' (the-house of-you) *Adam's house: ''בֵּית אָדָם'' ''beit Adam'' (house-of Adam), ''בֵּיתוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם'' ''beito shel Adam'' (house-his of Adam), ''הַבַּיִת שֶׁל אָדָם'' ''ha-bayit shel Adam'' (the-house of Adam)

Assyrian

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Suret ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ) ( �su:rɪtʰor �su:rɪθ, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by ethnic Assyrians, including those identifying as religious groups rather than eth ...

, a

Modern Aramaic The Neo-Aramaic or Modern Aramaic languages are varieties of Aramaic that evolved during the late medieval and early modern periods, and continue to the present day as vernacular (spoken) languages of modern Aramaic-speaking communities. Within ...

language,

possessive pronouns A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...

are suffixes that are attached to the end of nouns to express possession similar to the English pronouns ''my, your, his, her,'' etc., which reflects the gender and the number of the person or persons. Although possessive suffixes are more convenient and common, they can be optional for some people and seldom used, especially among those with the Tyari and Barwari dialects. The following are the alternative ways to express possession, using the word "bĕtā" (''house'') as a base: *my house: ''bĕtā it dēyi'' ("house of mine") *your ( masc., sing.) house: ''bĕtā it dēyūkh'' ("house of yours") *your (fem., sing.) house: ''bĕtā it dēyakh'' *your (plural) house: ''bĕtā it dēyōkhūn'' ("house of yours") *3rd person (masc., sing.): ''bĕtā it dēyū'' ("house of his") *3rd person (fem., sing.): ''bĕtā it dēyō'' ("house of hers") *3rd person (plural): ''bĕtā it dēyĕh'' ("house of theirs")

Indo-European languages

Armenian

In Armenian, the following suffixes are used ( Eastern standard):

Persian

Persian, an

Indo-European language The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

, has possessive suffixes: e.g. pedar''-am'' my father; barâdar''-aš'' his/her brother

Central Morocco Tamazight

Central Morocco Tamazight's use of possessive suffixes mirrors that of many other

Afro-Asiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic s ...

. # -inw is used when the noun ends in a consonant Independent possessives are formed by attaching the possessive suffixes to (if the object possessed is masculine) or ' (for feminine), e.g. ('mine').

Turkish

Possessive forms of the noun '' ev'' ("house"): The plural of ''ev'' is ''evler'', and the form ''evleri'' is ambiguous; it can be , with the 3rd-person plural possessive suffix, or , with the 3rd-person singular possessive suffix. Additionally, when suffixed to a plural form, the plural suffix ''-leri'' is replaced by ''-i'', so "their houses" is not *''evlerleri'' but just also ''evleri'', making this form triply ambiguous. The Turkish possessive suffixes obey

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

('' ok'' – "arrow"; ''okum'' – "my arrow"; ''okları'' – "their arrow" or "his/her/their arrows"). If the word to which they are attached ends on a vowel, an initial vowel of the possessive suffix is elided ('' baba'' – "father"; ''babam'' – "my father").

Malay

In Malay, an Austronesian language, the following suffixes can be added to nouns to indicate possession. Not all pronouns are added in this way; most are written as separate words. For example, ''your country'' can also be expressed as ''negara anda'' or ''negara engkau'', and ''our country'' as ''negara kita'' (if the reader is included) or ''negara kami'' (if the reader is excluded).

Classical Nahuatl

Classical Nahuatl Classical Nahuatl (also known simply as Aztec or Nahuatl) is any of the variants of Nahuatl spoken in the Valley of Mexico and central Mexico as a ''lingua franca'' at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. During the ...

, an

Uto-Aztecan language Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. Th ...

, uses possessive prefixes.

References

# {{in lang, fi Johanna Laakso. ''Uralilaiset kansat. Tietoa suomen sukukielistä ja niiden puhujista.'' WSOY 1991. * Affixes