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Article In: NOWELE
Vol. 79:2 (2026) ► pp.105–146

The genesis of Dat-Gen with verbs of lacking in Old Frisian and Middle Low German

ORCiD logo with link | Ghent University
ORCiD logo with link | Ghent University
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Abstract
A peculiarity of Old Frisian is the Dative-Genitive (Dat-Gen) case frame found with verbs of lacking, also documented in Middle Low German, involving verbs derived from roots meaning ‘break’ or ‘burst’. A closer inspection reveals that verbs of lacking predominantly select the Dat-Gen case frame in earlier East and West-Germanic. We review four explanations for the origin of the genitive, i.e. that its source is: (i) attributive genitive, (ii) partitive genitive, (iii) genitive of negation, and, (iv) the low-transitive nature of denominative verbs. We expand our study to Dat-Gen verbs in general in Germanic, including different semantic classes of verbs. Most of the relevant verbs are denominative and low in transitivity, with the genitive referent being minimally affected and negligibly involved in the event denoted by the verb.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Corpus Oudfries and printed editions
    • 2.2Reference corpus for Middle Low German/Low Rheinish (ReN)
  • 3.The data
    • 3.1Old Frisian
    • 3.2Middle Low German
    • 3.3Comparative observations
  • 4.Comparison with other Germanic languages
  • 5.The origin of the Dat-Gen case frame
    • 5.1Genitive as an attribute
    • 5.2Partitive genitive
    • 5.3Genitive of negation
    • 5.4Dat-Gen with low transitivity (denominative) verbs
  • 6.Comparison of lacking verbs to existing Dat-Gen verbs in early Germanic
  • 7.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Contributions
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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