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Re: French and German (jara: An introduction)

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Saturday, June 7, 2003, 10:56
Hi!

Garth Wallace <gwalla@...> writes:
> Henrik Theiling wrote: > > > > adj.mode: 3 possibilities: > > e.g. after 'manch' ('strong' form) > > e.g. after 'ein' ('weak/strong' form) > > e.g. after 'der' ('weak' form) > > What are adjective modes? Are they anything like verb modes--is "strong" > realis and "weak" irrealis? I've never studied German...
The mode is selected by the determiner you use. The terms 'strong' and 'weak' refer to the forms you use: 'strong' forms show more inflection, like '-er', '-es', '-em', thereby carrying at least a bit of information (e.g. '-em' is always sg.dat.), 'weak' forms are only -'e' or '-en' which is quite vague. Now, when a strong form is consumed by a determiner, the following adjective uses weak endings. And when the determiner uses weak endings, then the adjective uses strong endings. E.g. 'der/die/das', the definite article has strong endings. Therefore, adjectives following it use weak form. 'manch' and others do not carry any ending, which means that the adjective that follows always has to use the strong form. And 'ein/eine/ein' and others have some strong forms, so the adjective sometimes uses weak form, sometimes strong form. Example: The endings for masc.sg.nom are: strong weak -er -e E.g. d-er schnell-e Hund strong weak the fast dog ein schnell-er Hund none strong a fast dog manch schnell-er Hund none strong some fast dog The endings for neut.sg.dat are: string weak -em -en E.g. d-em schnell-en Auto strong weak the fast car ein-em schnell-en Auto strong weak a fast car manch schnell-em Auto none strong some fast car Note that -en and -e are not exclusively weak, but also occur as strong forms. E.g. fem.sg.nom: -e, -e All forms: nom acc dat gen masc.sg -er/-e -en/-en -em/-en -es/-en neut.sg -es/-e -es/-e -em/-en -es/-en fem.sg -e /-e -e /-e -er/-en -er/-en pl -e /-en -e /-en -en/-en -er/-en In the table, there's strong/weak. I chose the order so that similar forms (fem.sg ~ pl, masc ~ neut, nom ~ acc, dat ~ gen) are close to each other. Dialectal comment: many Germans don't have -em, which sounds very uneducated. And in Saarlandian, masc.acc.sg = misc.nom.sg, which sounded *very* strange to me, especially because you do wishes in acc in German: ,Schönen Sonntag!' (='have a nice sunday'). In Saarlandian, it's: ,Scheener Sonndag' Very strange. :-) **Henrik

Replies

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
John Cowan <cowan@...>
Pavel Iosad <edricson@...>