Re: Save of the dative, the genitive's is already dead!

On the genitive: I would say it is a great exaggeration that the
genitive is dead in German. Or, to put it differently, it has been
virtually dead in many dialects for centuries already but today, one
can observe even some contrary development in Austria: With Standard
German becoming the role model for spoken language, the use of the
genitive has slowly increased. I believe that many people decrying
the diminishing genitive are in fact pointing to the more widespread
use of casual speech on TV or radio. But TV and radio have also led
to Standard German becoming the role model for spoken language, so
its a complex relationship.

As I want to point out, the use of the genitive in spoken language is
not decreasing.

Example of spreading genitive:
dialectal construction:
der Familie ihr Haus
of the family their house

Standard German
das Haus der Familie
the house of the family

The Standard German construction is more and more used, while the
dialectal construction loses ground. The dative construction "das
Haus von der Familie" (the house of the family) is also widely used,
and has so for a long time. In higher social classes, people often
mock the "von"-usage, imitating it in broad dialect - only to use it
then themselves ... . But this is no recent innovation, and the
diminishing of the dialects leads to more genitive usage, not less.

Note that the English contruction "the family's house" is still
possible in Standard German, but sounds strange to German ears: "Der
Familie Haus". It can be found in lyric context.

On "weil": Being Austrian, I am not aware of a widespread shift of
SOV => SVO for clauses starting with "weil". Nevertheless I believe I
hear this use sometimes in TV programs from (Northern) Germany. Could
be a regional thing. What is widespread is to change the word order
if you use a subordinated clause without main clause, but in
colloquial language only.

I can only refer to situations, regions and people I know well - it
can be quite different in other German-speaking regions.

Christian

>Hello all,
>
>My dad recently got angry about the question why the genitive disappears
>more and more in German. I didn't know the reason or if there is a
>comparable process in other languages. However, the genitive can be
>replaced by a dative construction in all places in spoken language. This
>has become more and more popular over the years so that most people
>(including me) don't use the genitive anymore except in 'formal'
>environments such as school or in writing. Hence the saying "Save of the
>dative, the genitive's is already dead!".
>Another question (my question) is, why the conjunction "weil"
>("because", also governing genitive case!) developed towards triggering
>SVO in the following undoubtly subordinate clause, although the standard
>word order in subordinate clauses is SOV.
>
>Thanks,
>Carsten