Re: Relatives, interrogatives and other such particles

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.