There are two main forms of expressing possession or ownership in Standard Iridian: the genitive case (e.g., Jancie dum) and the clitic form of personal pronouns (e.g., dumem). The use of the cliticised personal pronoun is heavily emphatic and thus it is often dropped when it can be inferred from the context.
When referring to people, either using their name or their relationship with the speaker or the addressee, it is common to used the diminutive form of the name or the relationship to indicate that the person is related to the speaker or the addressee (i.e., saying mlazka instead of mlaz to refer to one’s own or the addresee’s brother). To further communicate affection, one often adds the clitic pronoun -óm (‘our’), e.g., mlazkóm. This usage however is less a question of expressing possession or ownership grammatically as it is of the politeness system in Iridian.
A third usage involves the use of the ethical dative as in Latin (or, since Iridian lacks a true morphological dative, the ethical accusative). In this case, the possession or ownership is framed not as a fact per se but as an action or condition that affects the possessor or owner or in which they have some interest in. Consider for example the common introduction
Do
1sg.acc
mine
name
Tomáš Bilo.
Tomáš Bilo.
‘My name is (lit., the name to me/for me is) Tomáš Bilo.’
In this example, of course, once can still use the clitic pronoun -em (i.e., minem Tomáš Bilo) but such usage is less common in colloquial speech. In most cases, however, the genitive and the ethical dative are interchangeable, with the latter used when the speaker wishes to convey greater affect or interest in the object.
Jancě
Janek-gen
běncení
cat-gen
mine
name
Luka.
Luka
‘Janek’s cat is called Luka.’Janka
Janek-acc
běncení
cat-gen
mine
name
Luka.
Luka
ibid.
The ethical dative (especially with pronouns) may also used even when there is no possession/ownership but the speaker wants to communicate some interest in the action/condition being described without being too emphatic as to resort to the benefactive voice.
To
dem.prox
do
1sg.acc
vdeniká.
see-pv-hort
‘Would you look at that!’(cf. the overt use of benefactive in Da toha vidébká, ‘Look at this for me’)
It is also quite common to see the ethical dative used with the reflective voice, often in reference to body parts. (In the latter case, as in the second example below, the ethical dative is required, unless easily inferrable from context; while in the former case, as in the first example below, the ethical dative is optional and is often just used emphatically.)
Movil
phone
do
1sg.acc
ushražaní.
refl-die-av-ret
‘My phone did on me.’Bást
dem.prox
Janka
Janek-acc
ušaržaní.
refl-break-av-ret
‘Janek broke his ankle.’