At 8:52 AM -0600 1/24/97, Jonathan Robie wrote: > [Jonathan's odyssey through Zerwick and Wallace omitted] > >So I turned to BDR for an authoritative answer, and read: "Division into >objective genitive, subjective genitive, etc. is merely an attempt to >emphasize some of the many possible uses of the adnominal genitive". I think this is the truth of the matter. I think we can broadly distinguish three original "cases" that use genitive endings: pertinentive (adnominal), partitive, and ablative. The "pertinentive" or "adnominal" or "adjectival" function is structural rather than semantic: it links one noun to another noun on which it is dependent; one might say it means "belonging to" in the widest sense, but that's not useful as a translation. Often this genitive may be translated with an adjectival form of the noun. Subjective and objective genitive are useful terms chiefly because the subject or object of a noun expressing a verbal notion is so commonly put into this "pertinentive" objective. But the difference between them is strictly one of context, and it is often not clear which genitive is the subject and which is the object. hH TOU PATROS THS QUGATROS FILIA could be either "the father's love for his daughter" or "the daughter's love for her father." There's no distinction at all in the inherent function of the genitive here beyond the one which we assign to it in our analysis. Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics, Washington University One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130 (314) 935-4018 OR WWW: