Sunt etiam animalia quae appellantur alces. Hae nullos crurum articulos habent.
I included the preceding sentence just so you all know what it’s referring to. As for the genitive, my first guess was that it is a partitive genitive, but I’m certain I’m wrong, so now I’m guessing that it’s an objective genitive. I think I’m still wrong though.
As for how to translate it, it doesn’t make sense to me to say:
The first is what is usually called a descriptive genitive, which is the more generic kind of genitive. What kind of joints? Joints of the legs.
The second is what is usually called a partitive genitive. Two thousand being a part out of the whole universe of existing soldiers.
It’s not an objective genitive because that’s the expression usually used to express a verb-like effect of a noun. The usual example is the “timor canis”, fear of the dog because it’s not the dog that has the fear but it’s the dog/canis that is functioning, in a way, as the “direct object” (if timor were a verb)of timor.
All of this being said, I can’t stress it enough that, apart from a few specific uses, what is important in the cases are that the relations are understood, and specifically that the force that inheres in the genitive case is understood well enough to understand the nuances. The names we give them serve that intuitive apprehension and not the other way around.
Thank you. I wanted to say that the second genitive I brought up was a partitive genitive, though I went with the objective genitive for fear of being wrong (that turned out well). And I know it’s really not that important to know all the specific uses of the genitive. I just thought I’d go a little more in-depth with my learning of Latin.