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

Hello!

On 6/12/05, Christian Köttl <christian.koettl@...> wrote:

[snip snip]

> 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.
I remember writing a satirical poem called "Des Schülers Leid" (The
Pupil's Suffering) once in high school. As you'll probably be able to
guess, I chose the "exotic", "posh" genitive-before-head construction
deliberately. I think I never used it before or since. ;-)

The German genitive seems to be alive and kicking when it comes to
names. Many people who will cheerfully use _das Auto von meinem Vater_
instead of _das Auto meines Vaters_ will still say _Martins Auto_
("Martin's car") rather than _das Auto von/vom Martin_ ("the car of
Martin"). (I, on the other hand, will of course use the calqued _(dem)
Martin sein Auto_ construction most of the time. But at least I don't
pretend that this is Standard German, and I *will* use _Martins Auto_
when explaining German grammar to foreigners. ;)

> 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.
A subordinate clause without a main clause? You mean, when someone
says something like "because I wanted to" (as opposed to "I did this
because I wanted to")? That would be interesting -- I've heard _weil_
with main clause construction (oh the pain!) often enough, but so far,
I haven't discovered any usage patterns beyond "this person uses it
more often than that person" (and, of course, "it is used more often
in colloquial speech than in formal speech"). Then again, I don't know
all that much about the dialects spoken in Austria.

But I've heard something similar to that "_weil_ + SVO" construction
used with _obwohl_ ("although"). Like _weil_, _obwohl_ should
technically start a subordinate clause with SOV word order, but
sometimes people use it with SVO instead. I don't know whether or not
this means that the syntax of _obwohl_ is changing, though; _obwohl_
is quite a rare word, at least when compared to _weil_. ;-)

On a related note, I remember being surprised when I started reading
Viktor Klemperer's autobiography a few years ago and found him using
_trotzdem_ ("even so" or "in spite of") to start subordinate (SOV)
clauses. Is this a regional thing too, or is this just an older usage
of _trotzdem_ that has fallen out of use? Until then, I had thought
that _trotzdem_ was an adverb rather than a conjunction, but he seems
to use it like I (and Mr. Duden) use _obwohl_, i.e. starting its own
little subordinate clause.

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)

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