Thread: A sentence in Genitive case

Please provide a more specific example, to make it clear what you mean.

Мне нечего делать.

tell me please, why is 'нечего' here in genitive case? i do not see the possesion in this sentence.
why use 'нечего' instead of 'нечто'?

thank you

Originally Posted by tiudavidharris

Мне нечего делать.

tell me please, why is 'нечего' here in genitive case? i do not see the possesion in this sentence.
why use 'нечего' instead of 'нечто'?

thank you

1. This example has nothing to do with possession. If you think that the only purpose of genitive is to indicate possession, that is very far from the truth. Genitive has many more other usages. One of them is to indicate negation or lack of something.

I've already provided an example above:

Я знаю его имя (accusative) - I know his name.
but
Я не знаю его имени (genitive) - I do not know his name. .

Another example:

У меня есть собака. (nominative) - I have a dog.
but
У меня нет собаки. (genitive) - I do not have a dog.

And coming back to your example, "Мне нечего делать" is a negation (I have nothing to do), the genitive here indicates "lack of things to do".

2. "нечего" and "нечто" are not only different cases. They are different pronouns with different meanings!
"нечего" is a negative pronoun (there is nothing to ...)
But "нечто" is an indefinite pronoun (it means "something").

Here is an example for you with both of them:

Мой друг делает нечто интересное, а мне всё ещё нечего делать. - My friend is doing something interesting, but I have nothing to do yet.

"нечто" is nearly the same as "что-то". But "нечто" usually sounds a bit more "bookish", "что-то" is more often used in colloquial speech.

In contrast, "нечего" is colloquial, it always means "there is nothing to ..." (Мне нечего тебе сказать = I have nothing to tell you; Ему нечего читать = He has nothing to read), and it does not even have any nominative form!