Re: Standard Average European (was: case system)
| From: | Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, April 13, 2008, 18:49 |
|---|
On Apr 13, 2008, at 7:29 AM, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
> Dative external possessors... There's also the German construction:
>
> dem König seine Kleider
> the-DAT king his cloths
> 'the king's cloths'
>
> The possessor takes dative, the possession – which makes the head
> of this construction and
> therefore takes whichever case required – has an extra possessive
> adjective to refer back to
> the possessor. The construction is not standard German, but
> according to my linguistic prof,
> it's found in dialects all over the German-speaking area, so it
> seems to stem from a common
> older source.
>
> I thought I stumbled once on some data that made me think that
> English once allowed a
> similar construction, but I don't remember anymore.
I read somewhere that at one time the possessive suffix <'s> was
reinterpreted as being a contraction of <his>; some grammarians at
that time thus commented that it was illogical to use <'s> for a
female possessor, preferring something like "the queen her crown". I
think they also sometimes expanded the "contraction", writing things
like "the king his castle". I'm not sure how they treated inanimate
possessors. In any event, that analysis of <'s> didn't last.
Replies