Cover not available
Part of
Germanic Genitives
Edited by Tanja Ackermann, Horst J. Simon and Christian Zimmer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 193] 2018
► pp. 149–188

The Genitive Rule and its background

| University of Jena

In the German Language, there are two types of rules that determine whether a DP/NP may bear genitive case or not. The type I rules handle the case assignment as in other languages with morphological case, including a visibility condition for the genitive case. The type II rules refer to the DP/NP-internal feature distribution. The interaction of these rules can be formulated as a corollary, the Genitive Rule. Since the type II rules are merely descriptive generalizations, the question arises to what extent the Genitive Rule really covers the diverse constructions with genitive case. On the whole, the Genitive Rule seems to predict the distribution of the genitive constructions and their competitors with other cases correctly. Nonetheless, two deviations are to be expected (and can be observed): (i) A construction is grammatical in spite of violating the Genitive Rule; (ii) a construction is ungrammatical in spite of complying with the Genitive Rule. In both circumstances a second question arises: Which factors trigger the unexpected behavior?

Article outline
  • 1.Genitive and visibility
  • 2.DP/NP-internal feature distribution in German
    • 2.1Obscure case forms
    • 2.2Main and secondary feature bearers
  • 3.The interaction of visibility and feature distribution
    • The ending -e (dative)
    • The ending -en of the weak masculine nouns
    • The ending -n of dative plural
    • The ending -es/-s of the strong masculine and neuter nouns
    • 3.1Compulsory and optional substitutive constructions
    • 3.2Overview of the following discussion
  • 4.The expected behavior
    • A.Possessive genitive, prenominal
    • B.Possessive genitives and related genitive constructions, postnominal
    • C.Postnominal Genitivus qualitatis
    • D.Postnominal Genitivus explicativus (explicative genitive)
    • E.Partitive genitive
    • F.Preposition+genitive phrase
    • G.Genitive object
    • H.Adverbial genitive phrases
    • I.“Loose” apposition
    • J. als/wie+DP/NP
  • 5.Unexpected behavior I
    • 5.1Pronouns with genitive marker -es
    • 5.2Recurring genitive phrases
  • 6.Unexpected behavior II
    • 6.1Prestigious prepositions
    • 6.2Proper nouns
    • i.
    • ii.
    • iii.
    • iv.
    • 6.3Derivations from geographical proper names with suffix -er
    • 6.4Some other constructions
  • 7.The Genitive Rule and the tendency to redundancy-free inflection
    • 7.1Loss of the genitive ending of nouns
    • 7.2Determiners: Weak vs. strong endings
    • 7.3The preference against case forms of nouns
  • 8.Conlusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.193.07gal
References

Sources

Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel
1669 Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus. [URL]
Kühn, Otto Bernhard & Thomas Tredgold
1826 Grundsätze der Dampfheizung und der damit verbundenen Lüftung aller Arten von Gebäuden. Leipzig: Baumgärtner.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin
1534 Die Bibel. Wittenberg: Lufft.Google Scholar
Rommeiß, Angela
2014 Alex und Alexandra. Ein Haus in Thüringen. Berlin: Epubli.Google Scholar
Schiller, Friedrich
[1799]1954 Wallensteins Lager. In Schiller. Ein Lesebuch für unsere Zeit, Paul Friedländer (ed.). Weimar: Thüringer Volksverlag.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Tanja
2018 From genitive inflection to possessive marker? The development of German possessive -s with personal names. In this volume.Google Scholar
Dammel, Antje & Nübling, Damaris
2006 The superstable marker as an indicator of categorial weakness. Folia Linguistica XL: 97–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Demske, Ulrike
2001 Merkmale und Relationen. Diachrone Studien zur Nominalphrase im Deutschen [Studia Linguistica Germanica 56]. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dückert, Joachim & Kempcke, Günter
1984 Wörterbuch der Sprachschwierigkeiten. Zweifelsfälle, Normen und Varianten im gegenwärtigen Sprachgebrauch. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut.Google Scholar
Duden
2009 Die Grammatik [Duden, Vol. 4], 8th edn. Mannheim: Dudenverlag.Google Scholar
2011 Gutes und richtiges Deutsch. Das Wörterbuch der sprachlichen Zweifelsfälle [Duden, Vol. 9], 7th edn. Mannheim & Zürich: Dudenverlag.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Peter
2013 Grundriss der deutschen Grammatik, Band 2: Der Satz, 4th edn. Stuttgart: Metzler.Google Scholar
Elspaß, Stephan & Robert Möller
2003 et seq. Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (AdA). Universität Salzburg, Université de Liège. [URL]
Fuhrhop, Nanna
2003 ‘Berliner Luft’ und ‘Potsdamer’ Bürgermeister: Zur Grammatik der Stadtadjektive. Linguistische Berichte 193: 91–108.Google Scholar
Fuß, Eric
2011 Eigennamen und adnominaler Genitiv im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte 225: 19–42.Google Scholar
Gallmann, Peter
1990 Kategoriell komplexe Wortformen [Germanistische Linguistik 108]. Tübingen: Niemeyer DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Zur Flexionsmorphologie von ein . In Probleme syntaktischer Kategorisierung: Einzelgänger, Außenseiter und mehr, Sandra Döring & Jochen Geilfuß-Wolfgang (eds). Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Gippert, Jost
1981 Zur Dativ-Apposition im Deutschen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (PBB) 103: 31–62.Google Scholar
Hentschel, Elke
1993 Flexionsverfall im Deutschen? Die Kasusmarkierung bei partitiven Genitivattributen. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 21: 320–333.Google Scholar
Leirbukt, Oddleif
1978 Über dativische Appositionen bei akkusativischem Bezugswort im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte 55: 1–17.Google Scholar
Lindauer, Thomas
1995 Genitivattribute. Eine morphosyntaktische Untersuchung zum deutschen DP/NP-System [Reihe Germanistische Linguistik 155]. Tübingen: Niemeyer.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 Attributive genitive constructions in German. In Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 22], Artemis Alexiadou & Chris Wilder (eds), 109–140. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neef, Martin
2006 Die Genitivflexion von artikellos verwendbaren Eigennamen als syntaktisch konditionierte Allomorphie. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 25: 273–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nübling, Damaris
2012 Auf dem Wege zu Nicht-Flektierbaren: Die Deflexion der deutschen Eigennamen diachron und synchron. In Nicht-flektierende Wortarten [Linguistik – Impulse und Tendenzen 47], Björn Rothstein (ed.), 224–246. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nübling, Damaris, Fahlbusch, Fabian & Heuser, Rita
2012 Namen. Eine Einführung in die Onomastik. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Peschke, Simone
2014  Merkels Politik vs. die Politik Merkels. Eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung zur Prä- und Poststellung von Eigennamen im Genitiv. In Linguistik der Familiennamen [Germanistische Linguistik 225–227], Friedhelm Debus, Rita Heuser & Damaris Nübling (eds), 233–248. Hildesheim: Olms.Google Scholar
Plank, Frans
1980 Encoding grammatical relations: Acceptable and inacceptable non-distinctness. In Historical Morphology, Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 289–325. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schachtl, Stefanie
1989 Morphological case and abstract case: Evidence from the German genitive construction. In Syntactic Phrase Structure Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentence [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 6], Christa Bhatt, Elisabeth Löbel & Claudia Schmidt (eds), 99–112. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schlücker, Barbara
2018 Genitives and proper name compounds in German. In this volume.Google Scholar
Scott, Alan K.
2014 The Genitive Case in Dutch and German. A Study of Morphosyntactic Change in Codified Languages [Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics 2]. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Szczepaniak, Renata
2014 Sprachwandel und sprachliche Unsicherheit. Der formale und funktionale Wandel des Genitivs seit dem Frühneuhochdeutschen. In Sprachverfall? Dynamik – Wandel – Variation [Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Jahrbuch 2013], Albrecht Plewnia & Andreas Witt (eds), 33–49. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zifonun, Gisela
2001 Eigennamen in der Narrenschlacht. Oder: Wie man Walther von der Vogelweide in den Genitiv setzt. Sprachreport 3: 2–5.Google Scholar
Zimmer, Christian
2015  Bei einem Glas guten Wein(es): Der Abbau des partitiven Genitivs und seine Reflexe im Gegenwartsdeutschen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (PBB) 137: 1–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 On the motivation of genitive-s omission in Contemporary German. In this volume.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Ackermann, Tanja
2018. From genitive inflection to possessive marker?. In Germanic Genitives [Studies in Language Companion Series, 193], ► pp. 189 ff. DOI logo
Rehn, Alexandra
2021. Loss or variation? Functional load in morpho-syntax – Three case studies. In Lost in Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 218], ► pp. 161 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Loss or variation? Functional load in morpho-syntax – Three case studies. In Lost in Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 218], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.