Suffixaufnahme (German for "suffix-absorption") is a linguistic phenomenon whereby a genitive noun declines to match its head noun, and vice-versa. It is present in Old Georgian and some other Caucasian and ancient Middle Eastern languages as well as many Australian languages, and almost invariably coincides with agglutinativity.
A subject, for instance, would be marked with a subjective affix as well as a genitive affix. In the sentence "The dog's tongue is blue", the word "tongue" would have a subjective affix, whereas "dog" would have both a subjective affix and a genitive affix.
A noun possessing another noun that possesses a noun would be marked with a subjective affix and two genitive affixes, to indicate that it is possessing a possessive. For example, in the sentence "The doctor's dog's tongue was blue", the word "doctor" would have a subject affix and two genitive affixes.
This happens sometimes in some Indo-European languages where declinable adjectives serve as genitives, for example:-
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
"Suffixaufnahme".
Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world