Sorry.  I got a bit carried away with the terms.  Partitive refers to a part-whole relationship, in which the genitive expresses the part, as in 

the car's bumper
a pint of milk
a year's salary

Objective describes a genitive that is semantically the thing that undergoes the action expressed by a deverbal noun or other noun that can have such a relational meaning, as in

Jack's appointment by the president
The Unibomber's capture

This is in contrast to a subjective genitive, like

The president's appointment of Jack
The FBI's capture of the Unibomber

Genitive is a case label.  Since English makes only minimal use of case in its morphosyntax, we tend to use the term possessive instead, but that, as you can see, expresses only one of the many meanings carried by genitive case.  As a case label it refers to morphologically distinct forms of nouns that have the meanings described above.

I hope this helps.  If I've been too terse, please let me know.

Herb


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Jan Kammert
Sent: Sun 5/14/2006 1:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Genitive, Partitive, Objective
 
Can someone give me a simple definition of genitive, partitive, and
objective?  I think I'm not the only person on this list who would like
explanations of these terms.
Jan


> Genitive of possession:  My car (provided the bank doesn't own it)
> Partitive genitive:  Two-thirds of the population
> Genitive of measure:  A five foot board, a three year appointment
> Genitive of contents:  A cup of coffee
> Subjective genitive:  My claim that the train hit the car
> Objective genitive:  My arrest for speeding
> Genitive of patient:  My experience of teaching
> 

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