Re: French and German (jara: An introduction)

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

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