Re: Subordinate clauses

Quoting Carsten Becker <post@...>:

> 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?    }

I'm not aware of any rule forcing the interpretation that _den_ refer to the
dog, and without further context I'd certainly take it to refer to the man. The
later seems also seems to be the more likely thing to want to say.

(Nitpick: _des Mannes_ is not a genitive object here. It's a plain old
possessive genitive.)

Trying to come up with a modification to make _den_ refer more-or-less
unambiguously to the dog, I came upon _Des Mannes Hund, den ich gesehen ..._. I
guess it sounds a bit high-faluting, but it's gammatical, not? What are the
rules for when you can front a genitive like that?

(Oh, and _grün_ would be a predicative adjective, here.)

                                                  Andreas