Page:A Danish and Dano-Norwegian grammar.djvu/91

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164. Syntactical remarks about the use of the possessive. The possessive is employed to convey the meaning of possessive, subjective, objective and definitive genitive. In stead of the possessive may in some meanings be used a complement with af (or colloquially til). Han er Sön af sin Fader and han er sin Faders Sön he is a son of his father, Hunden til Pedersen and Pedersens Hund P's dog. The possessive meaning i. e. the pure relation of property can, different from English, never be expressed by af. If two kinds of genitive (poss. and obj. or subj. and obj.) occur in connection with one word, then the objective genitive must be expressed by af. Thus it is wrong to say: Hr. Pedersens Afstraffelse af Hr. Kristensen to indicate the punishment of Mr P. by Mr. K.; it means Mr. P's punishment of Mr. K.

A peculiar use of the possessive form is to express a past time in such expressions as: igaaraftes last night, iaftes last night (but iaften this night); iforgaars the day before yesterday, ihöstes last fall, ivaares last spring.

The possessive form is very common as the first part of compound words: Landsmand countryman, Krigsskib warship, skadeslös indemnified (probably analogously with this latter word are formed the following with irregular genitive in -es: frugtes-