This semantic study tackles the uses of Basque locative and possessive genitives that call for part-whole relations (meronomies). Observing data mostly extracted from corpuses, we show that the distribution of these markers can be explained on the basis of notions such as typical configuration and dependence. The proposed analysis is then compared with the results of other works, mainly morphosyntactical. Several clues about the relations between meronomies and other semantic and cognitive notions (localization/inclusion, "possession", ontology of spatial entities) that this study of Basque genitives provides are finally settled.