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

Hello!

On 6/12/05, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> writes:
> > Carsten Becker wrote:
> >
> > >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.
I tend to get angry about this kind of thing as well. Then I remember
that, yes, as a German speaker, I'm allowed to get angry at those
hooligans (:-) who destroy our -- and their own -- language out of
stupidity, or laziness, or whatever (having to keep all those case
forms in mind is hard work, I guess). But as a linguist, I've seen it
happen to other languages (and to earlier forms of the same language),
and it's just a part of life (the life of a language, that is), and
not at all "destroying a language", only "destroying this stage of a
language and ushering in another one".

German speakers were probably just as appalled about 1500 (?) years
ago at those pesky Latinisms cropping up everywhere and "polluting"
their language, and at that ugly umlaut thing that "those youngsters"
insisted on using... :-}

> > I don't speak German but I think that it is similar to something in French
> >
> > The preposition "de" when it marks the genive can be replaced by "à" that
> > usually marks the dative
> >
> > My father's car = La voiture de mon père ~ La voiture à mon père
> >
> > Is it similar to what you think that happens in German?
>
> Hmm, no.  In German, the replacement works in two areas: for the plain
> genitive in noun-noun phrases, it is replaced by a prepositional
> clause:
>
>   das Auto meines Vaters -> das Auto von meinem Vater
>   my father's car        -> the car of my father
>
> As a side effect of using the preposition, the dative is used instead
> of a genitive, since 'von' wants dative case.
This is probably helped along by the fact that many German dialects
don't seem to have a genitive case. (I can't help but wonder what will
happen to the Präteritum [simple past] tense in the near future, since
AFAIK many German dialects don't seem to have that, either. Or is that
just us southerners, i.e. speakers of High German as opposed to Low
German in the north?)

For example, in my own Saarlandian dialect, and in the Standard German
spoken by Saarlanders like myself, _das Auto meines Vaters_ would be
_meinem Vater sein Auto_. So, dative case instead of genitive, and not
even a preposition to "justify" the dative...

(ObDisclaimer: Most of the time I do remember to say _das Auto meines
Vaters_, especially when talking to strangers. But I tend towards
_meinem Vater sein Auto_ when talking to friends and family, even if
they're from a different dialect area, or even non-native speakers. --
As far as I can tell, I hardly ever use the _das Auto von meinem
Vater_ construction. But that's probably a regional thing.)

[rest snipped]

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)