Re: Subordinate clauses

Hello!

From: "Aaron Grahn" <aaron@AARONGRAHN.COM <mailto:aaron@...>>
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 5:39 AM
Subject: Re: Subordinate Clauses


 > So if man is dative, it becomes the subject of war, but if it's
 > genitive, dog is the subject? I was thinking that the nominative
element
 > would be the subject, regardless of man's case. What is the rule?
 >
 > -Aaron

I'll do my best to give you an explanation of the cases. I'm afraid I
cannot really answer your question. But yes, of course, German cases
work basically like the English ones, only that we've got a
dative/accusative distinction English does not have. A syntactic
breakdown would look like this:

 main clause pt. 1      relative clause  main clause pt. 2
|--------^---------| |---------^---------| |---^---|
Der Hund des Mannes, den ich gesehen habe, war grün.
---v---- ----v-----  -v- -v- ------v-----  -v- -v--
  NOM.      GEN.      |   |        |      VERB ???
Subject              ACC NOM     VERB
                      | Subject
                      |
                      `-{ This is the relative pronoun   }
                        { referring to "der Hund", which }
                        { is the subject of the main     }
                        { clause. This is grammatically. }
                        { My feeling tells me that the   }
                        { relative pronoun refers to the }
                        { genitive object in this case.  }
                        { But I may be wrong. Anyone?    }

You said, "So if 'the man' is dative,...": No, this is only the case in
colloquial, everyday language. The trend is towards a of+dative
construction which replaces the genitive. It's only a matter of time
(give it another 15, 20 years or so), until this construction has
completely replaced the actual genitive (sg. des/der/des, pl.
der/der/der <noun>-s) and is recognized as the only valid solution even
in writing.

--Carsten

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