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Re: Relatives, interrogatives and other such particles

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Saturday, April 22, 2006, 18:27
Hi!

Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> writes:
> On 4/22/06, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote: > > > > Further, Colloqial German has article ~ 3rd person pronoun: > > > > Der hat Hunger. (Instead of 'Er hat Hunger.') > > he has hunger > > One place where this comes in particularly handy is for 3pl, where the > pronoun "sie" is also used for 2sg formal and 2pl formal (but spelled > "Sie" in this cases); however, demonstrative/article "die" can only be > 3pl. > > Ich gebe es Ihnen. "I give it to you (formal; singular or plural)" > I give it you.fml.dat > > Ich gebe es ihnen. "I give it to them" (different spelling, same > pronunciation) > I give it they.dat > > Ich gebe es denen. "I give it to them" (colloquial) > I give it those.dat
Right! :-) And this shows another thing I oversaw before: 'denen' is not an article. So the four things I listed to use the same words before are in fact two different sets of words that coincide in many forms. Article/Demonstrative: nom. acc. dat. gen. n. das das dem des m. der den dem des f. die die der der pl. die die den der 3p. Pronoun/Relative Pronoun: nom. acc. dat. gen. n. das das dem DESSEN m. der den dem DESSEN f. die die der DERER/DEREN pl. die die DENEN DERER/DEREN So in the genitive case, there are different forms and the dative plural is also different. In the genitive f. and pl., 'deren' is the possessive pronoun, and 'derer' the normal one. 'dessen' (and also 'denen') is both. As a relative pronoun: Die Frau, derer wir gedenken, ... The woman whom we commemorate, ... vs. Die Frau, deren Buch ich lese, ... The woman whose book I read, ... As a 3p. pronoun: Wir lesen deren Buch. We read their book Well, and a plain genitive, which is almost exclusively written language, is just the wrong register for colloquial usage of 'der/die/das'. We'd get something along the lines of: ??Wir gedenken derer. (Formal register: Wir gedenken ihrer.) We commemorate her. By the blindness of L1, I did not notice all this but when reading Philip's examples... Interesting! ;-) **Henrik PS: It is interesting, however, that in the saying 'Wes Brot ich eß, des Lied ich sing', the relative pronoun is 'des' anyway. Also, 'wes' would be 'wessen' in normal register.