Re: Colloquial German, experiencers and the construct state

In Dutch, it's exactly the same, only we don't have the equivalent of the
Standard German genitive with 'des' etc.

Standard Dutch:

1] het huis van de man
 "the house of the man"

and, colloquial Dutch:

2] de man zijn huis
  "the man his house"

or, as it is pronounced usually

3] de man z'n huis

(z'n = [z@n]

which reminds us of Standard Afrikaans:

die man se huis

In case of a female:

1] het huis van de vrouw

2] de vrouw haar huis

3] de vrouw d'r huis

(d'r = [d@r])


So, we see that Standard German has no equivalent in Dutch,
Colloquial German = Standard Dutch, and Colloquial Dutch = Standard
Afrikaans...

Kind regards
Ingmar Rœrdinkholder


On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:49:39 +0200, Carsten Becker
<naranoieati@...> wrote:


>
>In colloquial German,
>
>  1) dem     Mann sein Haus
>     the.DAT man  his  house
>     "to the man his house"
>
>is one of two common variants used instead of the standard
>
>  2) das     Haus  des     Mannes
>     the.NOM house the.GEN man.GEN
>     "the house the man's"
>
>The other variant would be
>
>  3) das     Haus  von dem     Mann
>     the.NOM house of  the.DAT man
>     "the house of/from the man"
>
>which is IMO actually more grammatical than (1), but this
>is not my point.
>
>That colloquial German uses the construct case in (1) is
>obvious, but why is "dem Mann" ("to the man") in the dative
>case? Is it seen as an experiencer or why is it? Note that
>German often uses the dative case for experiencers
>(e.g. "Mir ist kalt", "To me is cold"), though not as
>consistently as Icelandic (or Tarsyanian) as was proved
>in the thread about "quirky subjects" we've had recently.
>There are as well some prepositions that govern the dative
>case (like "von" in 3). Another interesting thing is that
>German puts the possessee - the head of the genitive NP -
>before the possessor, unlike English which places it after
>the possessor.
>
>I've just come across this question because I'm working on
>Tarsyanian nouns and their cases right at the moment.
>
>Thanks,
>Carsten
>
>--
>Edatamanon le matahanarà benenoea eibenem ena Bahis
>Tenena, 15-A8-58-7-5-1-15 ena Curan Tertanyan.
>=========================================================================

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