Finnish Finnish 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 or
genitive case 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 cases are not affected by the possessive suffix except for the
accusative case (
-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
genitive case in
Toni maalasi Marin talon "Toni painted Mari's house". (The
-n on the word
talon is the
accusative case, 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
genitive case. 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, 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 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 tulevansa (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. Distantly related to
Finnish, Hungarian follows similar rule as given above for Finnish, except that it does not use
genitive case for emphasis. To say "Maria's house", one would say : literally 'Maria her house', where means 'her/his/its house' (
see His genitive). :See also
Possessive suffixes in the article Hungarian grammar (noun phrases). ==Semitic languages==