The Genitive Case in Dutch and German : A Study of Morphosyntactic Change in Codified Languages [1 ed.] 9789004183285, 9789004181441

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The Genitive Case in Dutch and German

Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics Series Editor Jóhanna Barðdal (Ghent University)

Consulting Editor Spike Gildea (University of Oregon)

Editorial Board Joan Bybee, University of New Mexico – Lyle Campbell, University of Hawai’i Manoa – Nicholas Evans, The Australian National University Bjarke Frellesvig, University of Oxford – Mirjam Fried, Czech Academy of Sciences – Russel Gray, University of Auckland – Tom Güldemann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Alice Harris, University of Massachusetts Brian D. Joseph, The Ohio State University – Ritsuko Kikusawa, National Museum of Ethnology – Silvia Luraghi, Università di Pavia – Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin – Søren Wichmann, MPI/EVA

volume 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bshl

The Genitive Case in Dutch and German A Study of Morphosyntactic Change in Codified Languages By

Alan K. Scott

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2211-4904 isbn 978 90 04 18144 1 (hardback) isbn 978 90 04 18328 5 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, idc Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

’t Is waar, de meeste spraakkunstenaars denken anders over de zaak dan wij, en niet zonder reden; want, door veel over die naamvallen te praten, maken zij hun boeken zoo veel langer, hun spraakkunst zoo veel omslachtiger, en hun werk zoo veel mooier, althans zoo veel geleerder. van lennep 1985 [1865]: 41

… Als Gymnasiasten wurde uns beigebracht, der Genitiv sei der Kasus der Gebildeten, das gelte für das Deutsche ebenso wie für das Lateinische. Noch heute schwingt ein nostalgisches Bedauern mit, wenn vom Tod des Genitivs die Rede ist. eisenberg 2008

… Der (falsch gebrauchte) Genitiv ist der abgespreizte kleine Finger beim Mokkatässchenhalten. michael skasa [in sedlaczek 2009]

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Contents Preface

ix

1 Introduction 1 2 Morphosyntactic Change 5 2.1 Introduction 5 2.2 Case 5 2.3 Number and Gender 9 2.4 The Effects of Language Change on Case Systems 16 2.5 The Popular Reception of the Manifestations of Morphosyntactic Change 22 2.6 Codification 26 2.7 Summary of Chapter 2 27 3 The Genitive Case 29 3.1 Introduction 29 3.2 A Typology of the Genitive 29 3.3 The Genitive in the Germanic Languages 36 3.4 The Constructions 44 3.5 Summary of Chapter 3 50 4 Data and Methodology 51 4.1 Introduction 51 4.2 Theoretical Basis 51 4.3 Data Sources 64 4.4 The Databases 91 4.5 Summary of Chapter 4 92 5 The Dutch Genitive 95 5.1 Introduction 95 5.2 The Genitive in Old and Middle Dutch 103 5.3 The Precept: Standardisation and the Genitive Case 110 5.4 The Genitive Case in 16th–19th Century Dutch: A Diachronic Portrayal 116 5.5 The Genitive Case in Modern Dutch: A Synchronic Portrayal 159 5.6 Other Surviving Remnants of Genitive Morphology 198 5.7 Conclusion 206 5.8 Summary of Chapter 5 208

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6 The German Genitive 209 6.1 Introduction 209 6.2 The Genitive until the 17th Century 211 6.3 The Genitive Case in 17th–19th Century German: A Diachronic Portrayal 225 6.4 The Genitive Case in Modern German 249 6.5 Exapted Fragments of the Genitive Case 278 6.6 The Precept: Standardisation, Prescriptivism and the Genitive Case 295 6.7 Conclusion 307 6.8 Summary of Chapter 6 309 7 Codification and Morphosyntactic Change 311 7.1 Introduction 311 7.2 Morphosyntactic Change Affecting the Genitive in the Data 311 7.3 The Relationship between Codification and Morphosyntactic Change 316 7.4 A Theoretical Account 321 7.5 Summary of Chapter 7 325 8 Conclusions and Closing Remarks 327 8.1 Introduction 327 8.2 The Findings of the Investigation 327 8.3 Methodological Considerations 337 Appendix 1: Primary Sources 341 Appendix 2: Large Data Tables and Charts References 355 Index 379

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Preface This book reports the findings of my project The Development of the Genitive in Dutch and German, which was funded by an Early Career Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, whose support I gratefully acknowledge. The research was carried out between September 2009 and September 2012 in the Department of German Studies at the University of Nottingham. It is probably necessary at the outset to provide some justification for the publication of yet another book about the genitive case in the Germanic languages, which is surely one of the most written-about topics in linguistics. I believe, however, that this book fills a gap in the existing research. The initial inspiration for my research into the genitive in Dutch and German lies in my experience of working as Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project Germanic Possessive -s: An Empirical, Historical and Theoretical Study (Principal Investigators: Professor Kersti Börjars and Professor David Denison) at the University of Manchester. In the course of investigating the possessive -s construction and its prepositional competitor(s) in English and Swedish, and on becoming acquainted with the vast body of research into the genitive and possessive -s in English and Swedish and wishing to make comparisons with other Germanic languages, it became apparent that there was no comparably detailed, empirically based study of the development of the genitive case in Dutch and German. This book is an attempt to fulfil this need. I am particularly interested in the influence that the standardisation of a language can have on the morphosyntactic change affecting that language, and on the push-and-pull between prescription and actual usage in general: standardisation was a factor that affected the course taken by the genitive in Dutch and German, but not in English and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, in which the genitive had been lost before the advent of standardisation. Furthermore, given the German genitive’s current status as the poster child of perceived language decline—a perception dating back well over a century but which has become particularly prominent in recent years—I became interested in measuring up the perceived vulnerability of the genitive against its actual use in real life sources. A subsidiary aim of this work is, therefore, to make an objective, empirically founded contribution to the public discourse surrounding language “decline”. This book follows the development of the genitive case—and the nature of the division of labour between the genitive and its competing, synonymous constructions—in Dutch and German from the end of the medieval period

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up to the present day. It assesses the relationship between an instance of morphosyntactic change affecting those two languages, and their standardisation. The sources studied are therefore drawn from standard language use (rather than from dialects) and cover a variety of registers and media to allow for pragmatic variation in using the various semantically equivalent prescribed and non-prescribed constructions. With the aim of making direct comparisons between Dutch and German, I have focused primarily on early modern Dutch and modern German on account of the similarity between their case systems. To this, I added additional data in the shape of, for German, a corpus of early modern newspaper texts, a sample of Martin Luther’s polemical writings, and a sample of late 18th century personal letters and, for Dutch, a sample of 16th–19th century informal letters and journals, and modern formal writing and spontaneous speech. Instead of taking samples at evenly spaced intervals across a given period, I opted to carry out detailed synchronic studies of the use of the relevant constructions at certain points throughout the history of early modern and modern Dutch and German, manually coding the data for structural and pragmatic factors in specially constructed databases; within the confines of my project, this approach afforded a depth and richness of detail that would not have been possible had the investigation been based on regularly spaced samples from across the entire period. The research described here has been presented—sometimes as work in progress; sometimes in more complete form—at conferences, workshops and seminars in Antwerp, Austin TX, Bloomington IN, Budapest, Canterbury, Copenhagen, Groningen, Leiden, Liège, Logroño, Milwaukee WI, Nijmegen, Nottingham, Oldenburg, Oxford, Reading, Sheffield, Tübingen and Vienna. I am grateful to the audiences at those presentations for productive discussion and useful suggestions. I also spent two short but productive spells at the library of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim; I would like to thank the helpful staff there and to acknowledge the funding of the University of Nottingham Research and Knowledge Transfer Board, which paid for my June 2011 visit. My research benefitted greatly from the welcoming and supportive working environment of the German Department at the University of Nottingham, for which I thank my colleagues. Away from Nottingham, Kersti Börjars and David Denison are responsible for sparking off my interest in the genitive case as an object of linguistic research. I am very grateful to Jóhanna Barðdal and Spike Gildea, the series editors of Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics, for accepting my book into their series and for providing useful feedback on the initial draft of the book, and I am indebted to Brill’s Stephanie Paalvast, and her predecessor

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Jasmin Lange, as well as Marjolein Schaake, for guiding me through the various stages from the submission of the initial proposal to the appearance of the final monograph.

chapter 1

Introduction Two important developments that have shaped the Germanic languages have been their deflection and their standardisation: the central aim of this investigation is to shed light on the nature of the interaction between morphosyntactic change—such as deflection—and standardisation.1 The effect of deflection on the genitive case in the Germanic languages has been a frequent topic of study. Most investigations have focused on the emergence of the invariant, once-only possessive -s marker from a concordial genitive suffix in English and Swedish (e.g. English: Allen 2008; Rosenbach & Vezzosi 1999; Rosenbach et al. 2000; Swedish: Norde 1997, 2001a, b, 2006; Askedal 2002, 2003; Börjars 2003). In both of those languages, these changes were complete prior to standardisation. However, deflection proceeds differently in standardised and nonstandardised languages, as Vezzosi (2000) shows with reference to Dutch. Up to the 15th century in Dutch, the decline of the morphological genitive case in favour of an analytic construction proceeded as expected (Weerman & de Wit 1999) but, from the 16th century onwards, coinciding with the start of the standardisation of Dutch, the genitive—and, indeed, case morphology as a whole—underwent an unexpected resurgence (Vezzosi 2000); no such development occurred in English or Swedish. Until the early 20th century in Dutch, case morphology was preserved alongside the synonymous constructions that had emerged in the course of deflection; this was manifested primarily in formal written language but was also visible to an extent in informal egodocuments (Chapter 5). As in Dutch, case morphology still remained in German when standardisation began; here, too, the result was that case morphology was preserved alongside the non-agreeing and analytic constructions which had appeared in the course of deflection. Unlike Dutch, this situation persists today in Standard German; even the dialects, which are not standardised, retain a case system of sorts, varying in nature from dialect to dialect. Besides Vezzosi (2000), little research has been carried out into how deflection affects a standardised language or, indeed, a language that is still in the early stages of standardisation. The present research, therefore, is an attempt to fill this gap by addressing the question of how standardisation affects deflection (and, for that matter, how deflection informs the standardisation of a language). The tension between standardisation and deflection is central to this work. 1 The nature of deflection is explored further in Section 2.4.1.

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Early modern Dutch and modern German are ideal languages in which to investigate this tension. The case system of each language already bore the marks of deflection at the time of the first moves towards standardisation. The genitive case in both languages had been reduced to an almost exclusively adnominal case, its adverbal and adjectival roles having all but been lost during the medieval period. Nonetheless, in contrast to English and Swedish, concordial case morphology was sufficiently intact for it to be included by the early grammarians—under the influence of Latin—in their prescribed norm. This support assisted the survival of the genitive case—and case morphology in general—and set Dutch and German apart from their fellow Germanic languages (apart from Icelandic and Faroese). Nonetheless, evidence from both Dutch and German presented in this book indicates that the genitive case had begun its resurgence before explicit standardisation (i.e. prior to the appearance of codifying works by grammarians, widespread language teaching, and so on). In Dutch, the loss of case morphology was only postponed; it finally disappeared—with one exception (Scott 2011a; Chapter 5)—from formal written usage during the early part of the 20th century. In German, in contrast, a case system remains in the standard language and, in reduced form, in the dialects. Standardisation does not halt or undo deflection, however, and the genitive case in both languages continued to face competition from alternative analytic and non-agreeing constructions. In this investigation the term competition (and the denoting of a construction as a competitor of another construction) does not imply a value judgement of the type found in the lay linguistic and prescriptive literature, particularly that produced in German since the 19th century. Rather, competition denotes the existence—and potential interchangeability—of two or more semantically equivalent constructions (see Fischer 1987: 274); accordingly, two (near-) synonymous constructions are competitors. By focusing on the competition between equivalent constructions—the original, synthetic genitive case on the one hand, and the more recent, analytic constructions that emerged as a result of deflection on the other—we can gain an insight into the effects of deflection within a standardised language (in the case of modern German) or a language in which standardisation is starting to take effect (early modern Dutch). The interaction between deflection and standardisation involves various parameters of variation. This investigation is therefore not simply a study of the morphosyntactic characteristics of the genitive case in Dutch and German; rather, it addresses the interfaces of morphosyntax with semantics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. It is constructed from synchronic analyses of the situation at various points in time from the early modern period to the present

introduction

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day. These analyses are arranged chronologically in order to give a diachronic portrayal of the changes taking place. The genitive case has been chosen as an object of study because of the types of variation and change that are known to have affected it across the Germanic languages. Not only has it been joined by a number of semantically equivalent competing constructions in the course of deflection, but its use has also been characterised by a great deal of variation. In early modern Dutch and modern German, the division of labour between the genitive and its competitors varies according to register and medium. Furthermore, in both languages, the use of the genitive case has, at different points in time, been the object of prescriptivists’ attention. Thus, the diachronic development and synchronic use of the genitive and its competitors involve a number of structural and pragmatic variables, which this investigation addresses. In view of the variables involved, a large-scale empirical study such as this one is necessary. Accordingly, this work aims to provide an analysis—with a broad, representative diachronic empirical basis—of the development of the genitive case in early modern Dutch and modern German, and to supplement the work on the early periods of English and Swedish by providing a contrastive view of the same morphosyntactic changes taking place in standardised languages. Accordingly, while the developments affecting the genitive in English and Swedish occurred too early to show the interaction between morphosyntactic change and standardisation, the present study is able to shed light on this interaction. This monograph is a tentative attempt to apply a usage-based, construction grammar framework to language change, and to treat standardisation as a usage factor and to integrate it into the theoretically founded conclusions drawn on the nature of morphosyntactic change in standardised languages. The following research questions are addressed here: – How does the standardisation of a language affect ongoing deflection in that language? – When synonymous constructions are preserved alongside each other through standardisation, what are the structural and pragmatic factors that govern their use? – How similar are the parallel developments that have affected the genitive case in the history of Dutch and German? – Can a particular construction be associated with a particular pragmatic valency (e.g. conventionalisation in a particular register or medium)? Accordingly, structural and pragmatic analyses are combined here. The relative balance between structural and pragmatic analysis throughout the investiga-

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tion depends on the importance of structural and pragmatic factors in the use of the different constructions; for example, when dealing with the distribution of the adnominal genitive and von-construction in modern German, besides one strong structural restriction constraining the genitive, it is mainly pragmatic factors which govern the use of the two constructions. In contrast, when dealing with the extension to the German possessive -s construction, more emphasis is placed on structural factors as these are central (alongside certain pragmatic factors) to whether or not the construction is used. The nature of morphosyntactic change—the fundamental process at work in the developments investigated here—is considered in Chapter 2, in which the relevant key concepts are defined. This leads into a more detailed typological look at the genitive case in Chapter 3 which highlights the shared characteristics of the Germanic genitives and the genitive case found in other languages and sets out the main characteristics of the genitive in German and Dutch. Chapter 4 introduces the theoretical background to the present work; it also describes the nature of the data collection and the sources used. Chapters 5 and 6 present analyses of the genitive case in Dutch and German, respectively. These two chapters have a broadly similar structure and focus on the use of the genitive case and the division of labour between the genitive and the synonymous competing constructions; the language use studied comes both from older periods and from the present day. In these chapters the focus is on the individual language in question; however, where relevant, some typological comparisons are made (for instance, in Chapter 5, comparing the survival of case morphology in fixed expressions in Dutch as well as in other Germanic languages). The findings of Chapters 5 and 6 are brought together in Chapter 7, which takes a contrastive approach to Dutch and German and focuses on the tension between standardisation and morphosyntactic change. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Chapter 8: the main findings are summarised, the effectiveness of the theoretical and methodological approach is appraised, and suggestions are made as to how the findings could be applied in language teaching and how they can contribute to the public discourse on the German genitive case. Appendix 1 lists the primary sources used in the research presented here while Appendix 2, in the interest of reader-friendliness, contains some of the larger tables and figures, which were removed from the main body of the book.

chapter 2

Morphosyntactic Change 2.1

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the key theoretical concepts relating to the diachronic changes affecting morphology and syntax and, in particular, how they affect a language’s morphological case marking. In conjunction with the typological portrayal of the genitive case given in Chapter 3, the purpose of this chapter is to provide a foundation to the research described in Chapters 5 and 6 and to position this research alongside existing work on morphosyntactic change. First, the concept of case is discussed in Section 2.2; on account of its relevance to concordial case marking, lexical gender is dealt with briefly in Section 2.3. Then, Section 2.4 provides a survey of the effects of language change on morphological case systems. The matter of the lay linguistic attitudes towards the synchronic manifestations of morphosyntactic change—of particular relevance when considering the status of the genitive case in modern German—is introduced in Section 2.5 and finally, in Section 2.6, the tension between the codification of a language and the morphosyntactic change affecting that language is introduced.

2.2

Case

Given the aim of the present study to concentrate on the effects of language change on morphological case system—specifically, on the competition faced by case-marking constructions from other constructions (both case and noncase)—rather than to investigate the theoretical nature of case (or Case), only a brief summary of the most relevant points of the nature of case is provided here. The concept of case is defined by Blake (2001: 1) thus: Case is a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads. Traditionally the term refers to inflectional marking, and, typically, case marks the relationship of a noun to a verb at the clause level or of a noun to a preposition, postposition or another noun at the phrase level. [emphasis in original] Butt (2006: 4) gives a similar definition:

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[C]ase is a handy tool for marking semantic relationships between nouns and verbs, or, more generally between dependents and a head. In German, for example, nominative marking on a noun phrase marks that noun phrase as the subject of a verb while accusative marking indicates that the noun phrase is the object of the verb (1a). Should the constituents of the sentence become scrambled (within the bounds of what is possible in German), but the case marking remains the same, the meaning of the sentence is unaltered (1b). In a language without case marking, such as English, such scrambling would cause a change in meaning. (1)

a. Der Mann isst den Lachs. the.masc.sg.nom man eats the.masc.sg.acc salmon ‘The man eats the salmon.’ b. Den Lachs isst der Mann. the.masc.sg.acc salmon eats the.masc.sg.nom man ‘The man eats the salmon.’

Case marking on a noun phrase can mark that noun phrase as the complement of an adposition (2). Certain German adpositions permit complements of more than one case, each case being associated with a particular sense; in ‘in’, for example, denotes movement with an accusative complement (3a) and stativity with a dative complement (3b). (2) Sie lächelte während ihres Auftritts. she smiled during her.masc.sg.gen performance.masc.sg.gen ‘She smiled during her performance.’ (3) a. Ich laufe in mein Haus. I run in my.neut.sg.acc house ‘I run into my house.’ b. Ich laufe in meinem Haus. I run in my.neut.sg.dat house ‘I run in(side) my house.’ Case is indicated by means of affixes and whole words; these, respectively, are referred to as case markers and case forms by Blake (2001: 2). In a break with this tradition and in view of the lack of necessity of making the distinction

morphosyntactic change

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between the two groups in the present study, any item marking case—whether an affix or an entire word—will be referred to as a case marker. This follows Moravcsik’s definition of case marker: A case marker is a formal device associated with a noun phrase that signals the grammatical role of that noun phrase. moravcsik 2009: 231, my emphasis

The formal devices in Moravcsik’s definition include bound elements (affixes and clitics), phonological changes (modification of the stem), and suppletion (i.e. the use of a particular whole word). Cross-linguistically, morphological case markers are mostly suffixes (Spencer 2009: 185). Moravcsik’s group of case markers is broader than that of the present investigation: she also includes adpositions (Moravcsik 2009: 231 and passim; compare also de Wit’s [1997] classification of the Dutch preposition van ‘of’ as a genitive marker). While this investigation does deal with adpositions that denote “case-like” meanings and perform functions otherwise performed by morphological case marking, adpositions are not treated as case markers here: this would obscure the move away from synthetic case marking in Dutch and German, which is the focus of the investigation. Thus, in the course of this book, reference is made, for example, to genitive markers; that is, to affixes and words that indicate that the noun phrase in which they occur is genitive. The case markers in German and early modern Dutch are fusional, combining information on number, gender and case in a single marker; this is indicated in the glosses of examples (1) to (4). In addition, both languages display a great amount of syncretism with regard to the form of their case markers. For example, the German determiner den, glossed in (1) as ‘the.masc.sg.acc’, is also used for ‘the.plu.dat’; mein was glossed in (3a) as ‘my.neut.sg.acc’, but is also ‘my.masc.sg.nom’; the adjective ending -en occurs in all syntactic contexts except nominative singular (all genders), and feminine and neuter accusative singular. Case marking in German and early modern Dutch—in common with, for example, Latin—is concordial. That is to say, case is marked on certain words in the noun phrase; mostly on determiners and adjectives, but also on certain masculine and neuter singular nouns, and the markers vary—and agree with one another (hence concordial)—according to the gender and number of the noun. Generally in German and early modern Dutch the head noun in the genitive noun phrase remains uninflected. In German, the ending -en attaches to so-called “weak” masculine nouns in the singular in the accusative, genitive and dative cases (4a), while the “strong” masculine and neuter singular

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nouns receive an -(e)s ending in the genitive (Section 3.4). This nominal genitive -(e)s also occurred in older Dutch (4b). The concord or agreement holding within the noun phrase in German and older Dutch is central to this investigation. (4) a. Die interessierte Dozentin sprach mit the.nom.sg.fem interested.nom.sg.fem lecturer.fem spoke with dem fleißigen Studenten the.dat.sg.masc hard-working.dat.sg.masc student.dat.sg.masc ‘The interested lecturer spoke with the hard-working student.’ b. de verbeelding des volks the imagination the.gen.sg.neut people.gen.sg.neut ‘the people’s imagination’ (formal written Dutch, 19th century) Thus, reference is made throughout this investigation to the concordial genitive, namely the genitive case involving concord within the genitive noun phrase (i.e. markers varying according to the number and gender of the noun involved, as in (4b)), as distinct from the possessive -s construction (defined presently in Section 3.4), which involves the attachment of an invariant marker (-s) just once at the right-edge of the noun phrase. The inventory and arrangement of cases in a language constitutes that language’s case system: A case system is defined as the sum total of similarities and dissimilarities of meanings between the cases, i.e., the sum total of oppositions between the cases. de groot 1956: 188

By case system I understand a system by which NPs are marked morphologically to indicate their grammatical functions. faarlund 1990: 137

A language with a case system is a case language. While it might be uncontroversial to describe Latin as a case language, and modern English or modern Dutch as non-case languages, German is more problematic in this respect. While it undoubtedly uses inflectional case marking to denote the semantic relationships between the constituents of a sentence, constituent order (albeit far less rigid than, say, in English) is relatively constrained and syntactic roles are indicated through a combination of morphological marking and

morphosyntactic change

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constituent order. On this basis, it has been suggested that German should no longer be regarded as exclusively a case language (Marschall 1998: 37). Furthermore, any account of case in modern German—or, for that matter, written early modern Dutch—must also allow for the existence of variation, with case sometimes going unmarked on particular members of the noun phrase, such as the pervasive omission of the nominal genitive -(e)s studied in Chapter 6, or the occasional omission of the nominal -en ending from weak masculine nouns (Thieroff 2003; Dovalil 2006: 89–91).

2.3

Number and Gender

In concordial case marking such as that exemplified in (1) to (4), the case markers vary according to the number and gender of the nouns involved. The singular-plural number dichotomy found in the Germanic languages is straightforward and needs little introduction beyond some notes on diachronic changes affecting it (2.3.1). The nominal gender system of the Germanic languages is of greater importance to this study as the weakening or loss of concordial case marking is often concurrent with the loss of gender distinctions and must therefore be taken into account when considering the processes and effects of morphosyntactic change; this is the topic of 2.3.2. 2.3.1 Number The Germanic languages all make a singular-plural number distinction. In English the distinction is marked on nouns (e.g. boot—boots) and on some determiners (e.g. this—these, but the—the); in Dutch the distinction is marked on nouns (e.g. speler ‘player’—spelers ‘players’) and there is a distinction on neuter determiners (e.g. het ‘the.neut.sg’—de ‘the.plu’), while for common nouns the singular and plural determiners are identical (e.g. de ‘the.common.sg’, ‘the.plu’; deze ‘this.common.sg’, ‘these.plu’). German, which also marks the distinction on nouns (e.g. Apfel ‘apple’—Äpfel ‘apples’) has a set of plural determiners (e.g. die ‘the.nom/acc.plu’, diese ‘these.plu’), but they are often syncretic with feminine singular determiners. In all three languages, therefore, only the entire noun phrase can reveal whether it denotes a singular or plural referent. In German and older Dutch the plural determiners are identical to the genitive/dative feminine singular determiners (5),1 only becoming unambiguous when combined with a noun (6).

1 The lists in (5) are illustrative, not exhaustive.

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(5) German: der ‘the.gen/dat.fem.sg’, ‘the.gen.plu’ dieser ‘these.gen/dat.fem.sg’, ‘these.gen.plu’ meiner ‘my.gen/dat.fem.sg’, ‘my.gen.plu’ Middle Dutch: der ‘the.gen/dat.fem.sg’, ‘the.gen.plu’ dier ‘this.gen/dat.fem.sg’, ‘this.gen.plu’ sijner ‘his.gen/dat.fem.sg’, ‘his.gen.plu’ (6) German: die Ansichten der Regierung the views the.gen.fem.sg government.sg ‘the government’s views’ die Ansichten der Regierungen the views the.gen.plu government.plu ‘the governments’ views’ This dichotomy has remained generally stable in the face of the numerous structural changes affecting the Germanic languages. One development of some (albeit limited) relevance to the present investigation, inasmuch as it affects the determiner selected to accompany a particular noun, is the treatment as plural of lexically singular nouns denoting a collective human referent (“team nouns” in the terminology of Lass [1987: 147]; “corporate” nouns in the terminology of Corbett [2001: 188]). This number mismatch arises through the singular noun’s semantic characteristics; the usage is particularly entrenched in British and New Zealand English, but is generally unacceptable in American English (Lass 1987: 147; Corbett 2001: 189). In British English the variation is pragmatically relevant: the plural variant may be the more natural one, as in (7a) (in which an attested singular American example is contrasted with an attested plural British example), or the more informal-sounding one (7b). When reference is made to sports teams and places, the variation is semantically relevant, with the singular variant generally denoting the place and the plural variant generally denoting the team (7c).2 2 The plural variant could also acceptably denote the place viewed as a collection of its inhabitants; for instance, Do you think Scotland are likely to vote for independence?. The use of the singular variant to denote a team would sound less natural—but not unacceptable—in modern British English.

morphosyntactic change

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(7) a. singular: The staff is working like mad to process over 600 used rock CDs and get them out on the floor today … twitter, usa, 30.5.12

plural: The staff are having an awesome tip day. twitter, uk, 27.5.12

b. singular: Is it just the Queen’s travel plans for the day that the BBC is obsessed with or everyone’s? twitter, uk, 1.6.12

plural: Everyone saying how bad the BBC are doing at this jubilee & how good Sky are, nothing on ITV? I take it they are showing Bond movies instead. twitter, uk, 5.6.12

c. singular: Yes, Scotland is as good as any other nation—in the Union or elsewhere. [i.e. the country] twitter, uk, 27.5.12

plural: Looks like Scotland are playing with the wind at the moment. [i.e. the team] twitter, uk, 5.6.12

In German and Dutch, the norm demands that a singular noun with a collective human be treated as singular. Thus (8b) and (8c), parallel to (8a), are unacceptable: (8) English: a. The government have decided that … Dutch: b. *De regering hebben besloten dat … the government.sg have decided that ‘The government has/have decided that …’

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German: c. *Die Regierung haben entschieden, dass … the government.sg have decided that ‘The government has/have decided that …’ Instead, the non-mismatched variants in (8b)ʹ and (8c)ʹ are used: Dutch: b.ʹ De regering heeft besloten dat … the government.sg has decided that ‘The government has/have decided that …’ German: c.ʹ Die Regierung hat entschieden, dass … the government.sg has decided that ‘The government has/have decided that …’ Nonetheless, the development is attested in those languages, too.3 It can occur, for instance, when reference is made to pop groups (9) whose name is a singular noun. Examples such as (9) seem to be restricted to informal language use. Notice that, as shown in (9a), the use of plural inflection appears to be restricted to proper names; the collective noun Band later in the example, with the same referent, takes a verb with singular inflection. (9) German: a. Karpatenhund sind zurück— mit neuem Album und neuem Karpatenhund are back with new.dat album and new.dat Sound. Die Kölner Band hat sich die musikalischen sound the Cologne band has refl the musical Siebenmeilenstiefeln angeschnallt seven-league-boots strapped-on ‘Karpatenhund are back—with a new album and a new sound. The band have strapped on their musical seven-league boots’ (Attested at http://www.korg.de/artists/karpatenhund.html [last accessed 28.2.13])

3 Whether this is as a result of English influence is beyond the scope of the present study.

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(Belgian) Dutch: b. Mintzkov hebben het gewoon, er zit toekomst in deze band Mintzkov have it just there sits future in this band ‘Mintzkov just have it, there is future in this band’ (Attested at http://s4.invisionfree.com/Festivalnoise/ar/t371.htm [last accessed 28.2.13]) Thus, just like case (2.2) and gender (presently in 2.3.2), number is also affected by diachronic changes to the morphosyntactic system of a language. Nonetheless, these changes are relatively limited and will play only a small part in this study. 2.3.2 Gender In a concordial case language such as German or Middle Dutch, knowledge of the gender of nouns is vital in order to select the appropriate case markers for use with a particular noun in a particular situation (van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 133). Originally the Germanic languages had a three way gender distinction of masculine, feminine and neuter. This distinction remains in modern German (both standard and dialectal), and in modern Icelandic (10). Gender distinctions are not made with plural nouns; that is to say, there is a single plural determiner for use with nouns of all genders. (10) German: masculine: der Wagen ‘the.masc.nom.sg car’ feminine: die Freiheit ‘the.fem.nom/acc.sg freedom’ neuter: das Singen ‘the.neut.nom/acc.sg singing’ Icelandic: masculine: hesturinn ‘horse-the.masc.nom.sg’ feminine: áin ‘river-the.fem.nom.sg’ neuter: borđiđ ‘table-the.neut.nom.sg’ (from Guðmundsson 1922: 83) In German, this three-way distinction remains sound although some nouns vary with regard to their gender within the standard norm (11a), across the German-speaking area (11b), or between everyday language use and specialist language use (11c) (Durrell 2002: 12; Duden 2005: 153, 228–254). (11) a. Biotop ‘biotope’: masculine and neuter Elastik ‘elastic’: neuter and feminine Zubehör ‘accessories’: neuter and masculine

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b. Dispens ‘dispensation’: masculine in Germany, feminine in Austria Spargel ‘asparagus’: masculine in Germany, feminine in Switzerland Taxi ‘taxi’: neuter in Germany, masculine in Switzerland c. Filter ‘filter’: masculine in everyday language, neuter in specialist language Meteor ‘meteor’: masculine in everyday language, neuter in specialist language Mündel ‘ward’: neuter in everyday language, masculine in legal language Elsewhere in the Germanic languages, the lexical gender distinctions were lost over time. The most extreme example is English, which no longer makes a gender distinction in its determiners; masculine and feminine natural gender are distinguished in pronouns with animate referents (i.e. referents that are biologically masculine or feminine). Feminine pronouns are sometimes encountered with referents with no biological gender, such as vehicles (particularly boats and locomotives) and countries. The mainland Scandinavian languages are less extreme in this respect, retaining a two-gender distinction between common gender (a conflation of the former masculine and feminine genders) and neuter gender. As in English, masculine and feminine pronouns continue to refer to referents with masculine and feminine natural gender, respectively. The Dutch gender situation is more complex than that of the other Germanic languages. Given its relevance to the early grammarians’ (temporarily) successful prolongation of the life of the concordial case system (van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 241–244, 294–296), the current semantics-based gender assignment in the modern language (Audring 2006; Kraaikamp 2010), and the present-day use of the adnominal genitive fragment described in Chapter 5, which suggests that modern Dutch language users have more knowledge of a grammatical masculine-feminine distinction than usually assumed (Scott 2012), the Dutch gender system is considered now in more detail. Concurrently with the weakening of the case system, the Dutch gender system lost its distinction between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, at least in the north of the Dutch-speaking area; in the south—including Flanders and, in the Netherlands, Brabant and Limburg—the original distinction remains (Hoppenbrouwers 1983: 3). In northern Dutch the weakening and eventual loss of the masculine-feminine lexical gender distinction is attested from the 16th century (van der Horst 2008: 803). Today, the former masculine and feminine genders together comprise the common gender (de-words), distinguished from neuter nouns (het-words). Nonetheless, for pronoun selection there remains a masculine/feminine distinction after a fashion: while some

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nouns are referred to by a masculine pronoun, others are referred to by a feminine pronoun (Audring 2006; De Vos 2009). When a noun denotes a person, pronoun selection is guided by natural gender: a noun with a male referent takes a masculine pronoun and a noun with a female referent takes a feminine pronoun (rare exceptions include the neuter het kind ‘the child’ and het meisje ‘the girl’). The selection of a pronoun to refer to a noun denoting an inanimate referent, is often informed by the referent’s semantic characteristics, rather than their lexical gender (Kraaikamp 2010). Although masculine pronouns are the ‘default’ for reference to nouns that do not denote (individual) humans (Booij 2002: 37), masculine and feminine pronouns are found referring not only to common nouns, but also to neuter nouns (and vice versa, see Audring 2006: 88–89). De Vos (2009) describes the tendency to select a feminine pronoun over a masculine pronoun when referring to a collective noun. This is illustrated by the examples in (12) in which the noun stichting ‘foundation’ (i.e. a collective or corporate noun) is referred to by feminine pronouns (in boldface). Of particular relevance to the present investigation, which—in Chapter 5—deals with the continued use of a former feminine determiner (i.e. the genitive marker der), nouns denoting collective human referents, and some nouns denoting an abstract concept, may be referred to with a feminine pronoun (Audring 2006: 92; Kraaikamp 2010: 11). In addition, many common gender nouns with inanimate or collective human referents are marked in (larger) dictionaries as masculine or feminine (e.g. Van Dale 2005–2008); in such dictionaries, nouns ending in -age, -de, -heid, -ie, -iek, -ij, -ing, -iteit, -nis, -schap, -st, -te and -uur are marked as feminine. Thus a masculine/feminine distinction of sorts may be familiar to some speakers. (12) a. Sinds december 1998 is de SLAS een officiële stichting; since December 1998 is the SLAS an official foundation zij ontvangt steun van de gemeente. she receives support from the local-authority ‘Since December 1998, the SLAS [Stichting Literaire Activiteiten Soest ‘Foundation (for) Literary Activities, Soest’] has been an official foundation; it (lit. she) receives support from the local authority.’ (Attested at http://www.deweekkrant.nl/pages.php?page=2188862 [last accessed 28.2.13]) b. De stichting heeft haar eigen postzegel. the foundation has her own stamp ‘The foundation has its (lit. her) own postage stamp.’ (Attested at http://www.barsingerhorn.nl/site/?pageId=274 [last accessed 28.2.13])

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Another motivating factor is that the morphological structure of the noun to which the pronoun refers may influence the selection of a feminine pronoun; that is to say, if the noun’s suffix associates it with feminine gender (i.e. if it is one of those listed above as being marked as “feminine” in dictionaries), then some speakers may choose a feminine pronoun (see Donaldson 1983: 62, 162; Audring 2006: 92; Scott 2012). This factor, which is unexpected in modern Dutch, is returned to in more detail in Chapter 5. The early grammars of Dutch—as well as grammars and word lists published through to the 19th century—also contained information on nominal gender because, in order to accurately use the prescribed case morphology (i.e. to select the case marker appropriate to the particular noun), it was necessary for language users to know the gender of the nouns they were using; from the 17th century, grammarians attempted to increase language users’ gender awareness although there was disagreement among the grammarians as to the gender of certain nouns (van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 241–244, 294– 296). In the north of the Dutch-speaking area, the determiner de had come to be used with masculine and feminine nouns and, accordingly, the gender distinction between those groups was lost; in the south, in contrast, the originally accusative -n forms of determiners (e.g. den, eenen) had become reanalysed as masculine determiners, and a masculine/feminine distinction remained (van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 242–243). It is observed in Chapter 5 that language users’ use of an incorrect determiner with a particular noun (e.g. a feminine determiner with a masculine noun, or a masculine/neuter determiner with a feminine noun) decreased strongly from the 16th to the 19th century, suggesting that the grammarians may have had some success, both in promoting “correct” nominal gender use and in promoting the accurate and consistent use of concordial case morphology in general.

2.4

The Effects of Language Change on Case Systems

A central topic of this study is the effect that language change has had on the morphological case systems of German and Dutch, with focus on the changes affecting the genitive case. In this section, therefore, the key concepts relating to this topic are defined and the most important existing research is reviewed as a background to the analysis pursued from Chapter 5 onwards. 2.4.1 Drift and Deflection The history of the development of the morphosyntax of the Germanic languages is centred on the movement from using synthetic constructions—

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i.e. ones in which grammatical categories are marked morphologically—to using analytic constructions, in which grammatical categories are marked periphrastically, i.e. by individual words. This can be exemplified clearly by comparing an Old High German phrase with its Middle High German and modern translations, with each version progressively less synthetic than the previous one (13). (13) Old High German: heiligemo geiste holy.def.dat.masc.sg spirit.dat.masc.sg Middle High German: dem heiligen geiste the.dat.masc.sg holy.dat spirit.dat.masc.sg Present-day German: dem heiligen geist the.dat.masc.sg holy.dat spirit ‘to the holy spirit’ The synthetic language type and the analytic language type may be viewed as poles on a cline. An attempt to formalise this cline is made in Figure 2.1.4 The further to the right one moves on this cline, the fewer grammatical distinctions are marked by morphological endings, with other means such as individual words and constituent order taking precedence as indicators of grammatical categories. On this cline, Latin and the Old and Middle periods of the Germanic languages would be close to the synthetic pole; as far as the modern languages are concerned, Icelandic and Standard German would remain close to the synthetic pole, the German dialects would be somewhere in the middle, with the mainland Scandinavian languages and Dutch closer to the analytic pole, and French and English even closer still to that pole (Faarlund 2001a: 7). A language need not be uniformly synthetic or analytic, however. Barðdal (2009: 126–130) notes that the synthetic ditransitive construction (e.g. English I’ll throw you the ball) has not been replaced by an analytic alternative in which the indirect object appears as a prepositional phrase (although I’ll throw the ball to you is

4 The cline proposed in Figure 2.1 is intended as an illustration of the nature of the relative syntheticity (or analyticity) of various Germanic languages (and stages of those languages). It is not a firmly defined apparatus.

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figure 2.1

The place of certain Germanic languages on a cline of syntheticity (or analyticity)

also possible in English), and that, in Icelandic, prepositional objects (analytic) are not used at the expense of dative direct objects (synthetic). The developments involving the genitive case studied here involve rightward shifts on this cline of syntheticity (or analycity). Such a shift is interpreted by Tschirch (1969: 185) as resulting from the speakers’ need for increased transparency, which analytic marking with its individual lexemes (versus the affixes of synthetic marking) can offer. The term drift denotes rightward movement along the cline illustrated in Figure 2.1 (Vezzosi 2000, passim; Faarlund 2001a: 5): Drift is understood as a unidirectional series of changes whereby languages go from being more synthetic to more analytic. The changes that constitute this drift include loss of morphological case, its function being taken over by word order, and the increased use of function words. faarlund 2001a: 5

As languages move rightward, they may undergo deflection:5 It should be noted that the term deflexion, as here defined, refers to the loss of inflectional categories, not necessarily to the loss of all inflections. In the case of nominal morphology, for example, it refers to the loss of 5 The spelling deflection is used here instead of the deflexion found elsewhere (e.g. Norde 2001a,b, 2006; Allen 2008) simply because of the former’s orthographic resemblance to inflection, and to provide a transparent link to the verb and past participle/adjective deflect and deflected, respectively, which are also used in this study.

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case as an inflectional category. This resulted of course in the loss of a number of individual suffixes, but some of the old endings were retained as gender/number affixes [cross-reference omitted] or even exapted to new functions [cross-reference omitted]. norde 2001a: 240; see also norde 2001b: 242

Norde (2001a: 240) characterises deflection as “one of the most fundamental changes in the history of the Germanic languages”. Indeed, all Germanic languages have been affected by it to some extent. Modern Dutch, English and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, with their lack of concordial case marking and their reduced lexical gender systems, and their reliance on constituent order to mark grammatical relations, are the most deflected—and most analytic—Germanic languages. Modern Icelandic, in contrast, with its concordial case marking and rich inventory of inflectional affixes, and its three genders, is the least deflected (and the most synthetic); nonetheless, its constituent order has become more rigid (a development associated with deflection) over time (Barðdal 2009: 130). Modern Standard German, as suggested by its position in Figure 2.1, is more deflected than Icelandic but less deflected than its fellow mainland Germanic languages: while it retains three genders and a concordial four-case system, those cases often face competition from each other or from equivalent non-case constructions, and its inventory of casemarking affixes (/ə/, /əm/, /ən/, /ər/, /əs/) is both smaller than that of modern Icelandic and that of the oldest period of German as a distinct language.6 Consequences of deflection within the Germanic languages include the existence of competition between case constructions and non-case constructions. An ongoing example of this is the competition in German between the adnominal genitive and an analytic equivalent in which the preposition von ‘of’ marks the “genitive” relationship between the two noun phrases. Completed examples, in which the analytic construction has prevailed over the synthetic original, include the competition in Dutch between the dative case and a periphrastic construction with the preposition aen [aan in modern orthography] ‘on’ which took place from the 16th century onwards (van der Horst 2008: 801), and the competition in the earliest stages of German between the instrumental case and a periphrastic construction with the preposition mit ‘with’ (Keller & Mulagk 1995: 204). 6 The weakening of full vowels to schwa in unstressed syllables, which contributed to the reduction of the inventory of distinct inflectional affixes, is a key development in the transition from Old to Middle High German and had consequences for the development of concordial case morphology in German. It is returned to again in Chapter 6.

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A move from concordial to once-only marking can occur in the process of deflection; examples of this are the pervasive omission of the nominal genitive -(e)s suffix in German (giving, for example, des Wissen ‘the.gen knowledge.∅’ instead of the expected des Wissens ‘the.gen knowledge.gen’), and the development of the possessive -s construction, in which possession is only marked on the right-edge of the possessor noun phrase. Once-only marking of case— i.e. single encoding—is more efficient, and therefore advantageous to both speaker and hearer/reader, than the concordial marking that demands agreement markers on every element in the noun phrase (Norde 2001b: 258). This fits with the principle of minimize forms as formulated by Hawkins (2004: 38): Minimize Forms (MiF) The human processor prefers to minimize the formal complexity of each linguistic form F (its phoneme, morpheme, word, or phrasal units) and the number of forms with unique conventionalized property assignments, thereby assigning more properties to fewer forms. These minimizations apply in proportion to the ease with which a given property P can be assigned to a given F. Within MiF the number of units making up a form can be reduced; for instance, a long word can be abbreviated, or a pronoun can replace a complex noun phrase (Hawkins 2004: 38). As Norde (2001a: 240; see also Barðdal 2009 and Barðdal & Kulikov 2009) notes, the origin of deflection has been variously attributed to phonological changes (e.g. the reduction to schwa of full vowels in unstressed syllables), the weakening of case government by verbs and prepositions, and language contact. Because the origins of deflection predate the periods focused on in the present study—whose focus is, instead, on the consequences of deflection— they are not dealt with further here. 2.4.2 The Survival of Case Morphology Nevertheless, despite the actions of deflection within a language, case morphology may remain. Often, the survivors are former case markers in a now caseless language, which have been exapted to perform a new function. The most celebrated example of such a survivor is the possessive -s construction (a former concordial genitive marker) in English, Mainland Scandinavian and Dutch; another widespread example in Dutch and Mainland Scandinavian is the linking element -s- in compounds, which also emerged from the concordial genitive -s. The absence of concordial case is not a prerequisite for

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such exaptation, however: even standard German, which retains the genitive -s ending as part of its case system, has a possessive -s and linking -s. A much rarer occurrence is the survival of a whole chunk of concordial case morphology as a productively used construction complete with a determiner-noun agreement relationship that reflects very closely the agreement relationship that would have held when the language still had its concordial case system: such a survivor is the Dutch adnominal genitive construction (Scott 2011a, 2012). Relics of the lost case system can still be found in English, Dutch and Mainland Scandinavian in the form of some of their pronouns; this cross-linguistically attested phenomenon does not imply that those languages still have case (Spencer 2009: 195). For example, in English and Dutch we find pronoun distinctions of the kind exemplified in (14); English also continues to make a distinction between a subject and object interrogative pronoun (15), but this is now an artificially learned distinction made only in prestigious language use (Lass 1987: 152; Lasnik & Sobin 2000: 344–347). (14) English: he ‘3sg.masc.subj’—him ‘3sg.masc.obj’—his ‘3sg.masc.poss’ we ‘2plu.subj’—us ‘2plu.obj’—our ‘2plu.poss’ Dutch: zij ‘3sg.fem.subj’—haar ‘3sg.fem.obj/poss’ jij ‘2sg.subj’—jou ‘2sg.obj’—jouw ‘2sg.poss’ (15) subject: Who is that? object: The student whom I used to teach is standing over there. Entire concordial case systems can also survive in the face of deflection, but generally need the support of standardisation to do so. Deflection had removed concordial case morphology from English and Mainland Scandinavian by the early modern period, but had been slower to take effect in Dutch and German. The relatively rapid loss of case morphology from English and Swedish is ascribed by Barðdal (2009: 125, 155) to those languages’ relatively early (i.e. pre-standardisation) exposure to language contact while German and, most extremely, Icelandic were less subjected to contact (Dutch is not mentioned). The contact between northern English speakers of Old English and Danish speakers of Old Norse led to deflection occurring in northern English dialects around two centuries in advance of dialects in the south (Jespersen 1912: 81; see also Kroch 2001). Accordingly, German and Dutch retained a concordial case

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system, albeit one that was in some disarray (particularly in Dutch). This case system was therefore familiar to the earliest grammarians, who included it in their prescribed norm for the standard language. Even before the grammarians’ work had taken effect (or had even taken place), concordial case morphology was part of the written convention in both languages: evidence of this comes in the shape of Martin Luther’s 16th century Reformation texts (predating the earliest German grammars by over a century) and the 17th century Dutch texts studied here (which are roughly contemporary with the appearance of the first Dutch grammars). Once their position in the norm was secure, the German and Dutch concordial case systems became entrenched and remained in use, at least in the written languages. The Dutch concordial case system survived until a spelling reform in the 1940s, while the German system remains in use to this day, making it an anomaly among the mainland Germanic languages.

2.5

The Popular Reception of the Manifestations of Morphosyntactic Change

It is beyond the scope of the present investigation to attempt a comprehensive overview of popular approaches and attitudes to the manifestations of diachronic change; for German, the reader is referred to Davies & Langer (2006). Nonetheless, given the often prominent position of concordial case marking in prescriptive works from the 16th century onwards, an overview of linguistic prescriptivism and the field of lay linguistics is sketched out here—with particular reference to morphosyntactic change—as a backgrounds to the statements made on the relationship between prescription and developments affecting the genitive (for example, in Sections 5.3 and 6.6, and Chapter 7). Linguistic prescriptivism, at its most basic, can simply denote an instruction by a particular language authority (whether a teacher, grammar book, journalist, etc.) to use, say, a particular construction in a particular way, or one particular construction instead of another, synonymous one. More usually, however, it refers to “[t]he imposition of arbitrary norms upon a language, often in defiance of normal usage” (Trask 1999: 246). As Davies & Langer (2006: 46) observe, the prescriptive preference for a particular variant or the stigmatisation of another has nothing to do with how widely used a variant is; using the examples of the stigmatised English split infinitive and the use in German of a dative complement with the preposition wegen ‘because of’, they also note that prescriptive rules are

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not necessary for communication to take place on a referential level, but if these rules are not followed, communication may be negatively affected in the sense that certain sections of the population will not take the speaker seriously. From a social-indexical point of view, they are therefore not necessarily redundant. davies & langer 2006: 47

A number of the constructions investigated in this study have, at some point in their history, been either promoted or stigmatised (and, in some instances, both) by prescriptivists. This investigation therefore straddles an interesting interface between morphosyntactic change and pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Ever since the earliest grammarians, everyday language usage has often been regarded as having a damaging influence on a language. In the 17th century, the German grammarian Schottel—along with his fellow grammarians of the time—saw the language use of the uneducated speakers as having harmed a once ideal language: grammars were seen as a means of rectifying this harm (Lange 2005: 64). Thus, despite the deflection that would have been clear in the Dutch and German case systems of the time, the early grammarians of both languages (e.g. Twe-spraack 1584, Schottel 1663) included a morphological case system—emulating the Latin paragon as well as keeping alive the system present throughout the history of the Germanic languages up to that point—as part of their precept. While linguistic prescription and the production of prescriptive grammars are centuries-old, a more recent phenomenon, pervasive in the German- and Dutch-speaking countries, is lay linguistics: ‘Laien-Linguistik’ ist eine an die breite Öffentlichkeit gerichtete praxisorientierte Sprach- und Kommunikationslehre zur Lösung muttersprachlicher Probleme. Sie ist eine für und bisweilen auch von (gebildeten) Laien betriebene handlungsorientierte Thematisierung des Gebrauchs von Sprache in Kommunikation in Form von bestimmten Publikationen und Lehrangeboten (‘Seminare’, ‘Trainings’). “Lay linguistics” is a practice-oriented teaching of language and communication aimed at a broad public for solving problems relating to one’s native language. It is an action-oriented taking as a theme, run for and now and then also by (educated) lay people, of the use of language in communication in the form of specific publications and teaching-events (“seminars”, “training sessions”). antos 1996: 13, my translation

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The most prominent German prescriptivist of recent times is the journalist Bastian Sick, whose scope covers lexical and pragmatic issues as well as manifestations of morphosyntactic change. When dealing with lay linguistic prescription relating to the genitive, Sick’s work (2004 and later)—which started off as a column in the news journal Der Spiegel—is particularly relevant, both in terms of its content (manifestations of diachronic change on morphology and syntax are the topic of many of his columns and chapters), and, famously, in terms of its title. The title makes specific reference to the perceived suppression of the genitive by the dative, and makes jocular use of the periphrastic possessive construction which is one of the genitive case’s competitors in modern German: Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod ‘the dative is the.dat genitive its death, i.e. the dative is the death of the genitive’. Although the idea that the genitive case is in mortal danger (particularly as a result of encroachment from the dative) is not new (Section 6.6), Sick has certainly contributed greatly to the perception of a genitive under threat, and his title has entered the popular consciousness. Nonetheless, the genitive and its competitors are just one of many manifestations of morphosyntactic change dealt with by Sick (see also Scott 2011b: 56); among the topics he deals with are the increasing productivity of the derivational suffix -bar, inflection of loan words (e.g. plurals of loan nouns, conjugation of English verbs in German), and weak and strong verb inflection. The success—or notoriety—of these modern lay linguistic works and others like them has generated a backlash from linguists and non-linguists alike. While the value of Sick’s work (which encompasses his book series, newspaper columns, lecture tours, a DVD, and more) in drawing interest to the German language and to certain aspects of its use is recognised, criticism of his work focuses on both its linguistic value (and accuracy) and the tone in which Sick addresses his audience (or, more precisely, with which he describes the producers of “inaccurate” language use): Der Ton, wenn er auch meist geschickt gewählt ist, kommt zuweilen etwas ironisch und provozierend, bisweilen sogar besserwisserisch daher. Und das kann sich der Autor nicht immer leisten. Denn neben den guten und treffenden Darstellungen strotzt das Sick’sche Werk eben auch von Ungereimtheiten, Unstimmigkeiten, Halbwahrheiten, Pedanterien bis hin zu reinen und groben Fehlern. The tone, even if it is mostly adroitly chosen, comes over at times somewhat ironic and provocative, and now and again even in a know-it-all manner. And the author cannot always afford that. For beside the good

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and apposite portrayals, Sick’s work is just also full of inconsistencies, discrepancies, half-truths, pedantries, all the way up to pure and gross mistakes. meinunger 2006: 10, my translation

Sicks Publikum scheint weniger aus jenen Leuten zu bestehen, die vor ihren Reisen die ‘Visas’ beantragen und ‘leckere Pizza’s’ auf die Tafeln ihrer Imbißbuden schreiben. Vielmehr scheinen es die zu sein, denen der Unterschied zwischen dem Dativ und dem Genitiv bekannt ist, normal gebildete Mittelschichtsbewohner, denen Sicks dumme Späße die angenehme Gewißheit verschaffen, daß es zu denen da unten noch ein ganzes Stück Wegs weit ist. Sick’s audience seems to consist less of those people who apply for “Visas” before their travels and who write “tasty pizza’s” on the boards of their cafés. Rather, it seems to be those who are already aware of the difference between the dative and the genitive, normal educated members of the middle class, for whom Sick’s silly jokes provide the comfortable certainty of there being a fairly long way to those down below. seidl 2006, my translation

[The attachment of a plural -s to the plural form Visa ‘visas’ (< Visum ‘visa’), and the use of the apostrophe before plural -s are topics dealt with by Sick. Whether Seidl’s use of the archaic nominal partitive genitive in ein ganzes Stück Wegs ‘a whole piece way.gen, i.e. a fairly long way’ is a reference to Sick’s promotion of the genitive, is unclear.] Sick’s success is viewed by Klein (2009: 154) as a backwards step towards older prescriptive attitudes to language use. The inclusion of genitive-related phenomena in some of the modern German prescriptive works means that their pronouncements on the genitive will necessarily form a part of this investigation. It is therefore necessary— particularly in view of the existence of the linguistic works that aim to debunk the lay linguists—to adopt a position on lay linguistic prescriptions regarding genitive use (and language use in general): for the purposes of this investigation, these lay linguistic works are regarded simply as a source of data on attitudes towards genitive use. Lay linguistic prescriptions relating to the genitive case in Dutch and German are addressed in detail, and compared to the situation in usage data, in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively.

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chapter 2

Codification

While the efforts of the present-day lay linguistics can be viewed in the context of trying to protect one’s language from perceived misuse, and of taking particular usages as markers of certain groups of people (Section 2.5), the work of the early grammarians, who also shared these aims, must be viewed in a broader context, namely that of codifying and standardising the languages. While Lange (2005: 83), for instance, concludes that the 17th century German grammarians were not the creators of the standard German norms—indeed, the levelling of dialectal differences by 16th century printers in order to make their products more widely sellable, and Martin Luther’s use of his relatively neutral east central variety in his Reformation writings and Bible translations, among other factors, predate the grammarians by over a century (Stedje 2007: 146–154)—and there is, at most, sparing evidence of the influence of the earliest Dutch grammars in contemporary texts, those grammarians—and their successors—were involved in the standardisation of their language and in the promotion of certain constructions and stigmatisation of others. The example of English and Mainland Scandinavian makes clear that, in the absence of prescriptive support, a morphological case system can succumb to deflection and vanish from a language; the same is shown by the loss of the concordial instrumental case in favour of an analytic alternative in Old High German. Equally, early modern Dutch and modern German indicate that, with the support of a standard norm, a concordial case system may remain. Regardless of their role as creators or assistants, the grammarians and their work is therefore relevant to the present investigation. The tension between the standardisation of a language and the deflection going on in that language is the fundamental phenomenon in the research described here. Four stages of standardisation are identified by Haugen (1966: 18–24): 1. Selection of norm, i.e. a particular variety is chosen to become the standard 2. Codification of form, i.e. the standardisation of the structural features of a language; this involves the production of normative works such as grammars and dictionaries (Swann et al. 2004: 41) 3. Elaboration of function, including the use of the language beyond everyday situations, such as scientific and poetic language 4. Acceptance by the community The stage most relevant to the present study is codification, because this is the one in which particular variants become promoted and propagated, and

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others stigmatised. For example, it was at the codification stage of German and Dutch that a morphological case system was taken as part of the norm despite the deflectional developments that had affected the system up to that point. Morphological case marking vanished from written Dutch usage once it was removed from the code in the 1940s; in contrast, morphological case marking continues to be promoted as part of the standard German norm, while various deflection-related constructions are stigmatised. This relation between codification and deflection is dealt with implicitly throughout Chapters 5 and 6, and is addressed in detail in Chapter 7.

2.7

Summary of Chapter 2

The purpose of this chapter was to explore the nature of the process which is central to the present investigation, namely morphosyntactic change. The nature of case and, in particular, concordial case marking were explored, with number and gender also considered in view of their relevance to concordial case marking (that is to say, because case markers vary according to number and gender). Then, the central processes of this investigation were introduced, namely the reductive effects of language change on case systems (the concept of deflection, which is in the spotlight throughout this book, was defined), the survival of case morphology (whether isolated relics or a whole case system), and the reception of the manifestations of morphosyntactic change by grammarians and lay linguists. Finally, the matter of standardisation—particularly the codification stage—was considered in light of its revelvance to morphosyntactic change: the interface between codification and morphosyntactic change is the focus of this book. This chapter, along with Chapter 3, which focuses on the genitive case, provides a basis for the investigation described in Chapters 5 and 6.

chapter 3

The Genitive Case 3.1

Introduction

This section builds upon the overview of morphological case marking and language change given in the previous chapter, and focuses on the genitive case. The cross-linguistic characteristics of the genitive are sketched in Section 3.2, showing that the roles performed by the genitive case in the Germanic languages are much the same as those found throughout the languages of the world. In Section 3.3 the use and development of the genitive across the Germanic languages is addressed. It is noted that, as far as empirically based diachronic investigations are concerned, attention has been focused on English and Swedish. The present investigation is an attempt at providing an equivalent portrayal of the developments in Dutch and German. Finally, in Section 3.4 the constructions referred to throughout this investigation—namely the genitive and the non-genitive “competitors”—are identified, defined and exemplified.

3.2

A Typology of the Genitive

The term genitive comes from Latin: cāsus genetīvus or genitīvus ‘case denoting origin, belonging’ (Bußmann 2002: 246; Duden 2011a: 700). The sense of the Latin name is reflected throughout the genitive’s various uses to varying extents. A factor characterising the genitive case cross-linguistically is its semantic generality; Wellander (1956: 159) observes a “Farblosigkeit” [‘colourlessness’] of the (Germanic) genitive. In essence, the genitive denotes a “thingto-thing relation” (De Groot 1956: 189). This generality can lead to problems in classification (Palmer 1961: 290), or at least to divergences between different scholars’ classifications of the roles performed by the genitive. Latin grammars typically list upward of thirty types of genitive, but differ from each other in the exact arrangement and classification (De Groot 1956: 192, 194; Bondzio 1967: 3), while the number of genitive types in German can vary greatly depending on the scholar, with Helbig (1973: 210–213) listing 25 adnominal and eight adverbal genitive types, Bondzio (1967) listing seven adnominal genitive types and Duden (2005: 833–839) nine adnominal genitive types; Ballweg (1998), in contrast, attempts to provide a single, unified—if abstract—interpretation of the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_004

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adnominal genitive. The classifications of the German genitive are returned to in Section 3.4, where the simplified classification (albeit more complex than that of Ballweg [1998]) adopted for the present investigation is set out. Semantic emptiness is often noted in definitions and explanations of the genitive although, often, the possessive sense—typologically, the most widespread role of the genitive (Bußmann 2002: 246)—is mentioned: This case is used to signal the fact that one noun is subordinate to the other, i.e. one noun is the head and the other noun is the modifier which adds some further specification to the head. katamba 1993: 240

Case whose basic role is to mark nouns or noun phrases which are dependents of another noun. matthews 1997: 144

Morphologischer Kasus, der primär zur Kennzeichnung des → Attributs eines Substantivs dient Morphological case which primarily serves to indicate the attribute of a noun bußmann 2002: 246, my translation

A distinctive case form typically marking a noun phrase which serves a possessive role within a larger noun phrase. […] The genitive is unusual among case forms in that it does not normally express an argument or adjunct of a verb; nevertheless, in languages with well-developed case systems, it is usually integrated morphologically into the case system. trask 1993: 118

Possessive relations are usually induced from the context or the lexical semantics of the corresponding nominals [references omitted]. Thus, (1) [Russian kniga Lizy ‘book.nom.sg Liza.gen.sg’] could mean “the book that Liza owns” or “the book that “Liza wrote” or “the book that Liza photographed” etc., depending on the context […]. lander 2009: 581

A genitive case occurs in many different language families, such as Altaic, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Semitic and Uralic (Blake 2001: 151). Crosslinguistically, the genitive is generally an adnominal case—denoting a rela-

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tionship between two noun phrases—with the genitive relationship marked on the noun phrase that is the dependent of the head noun phrase within a larger noun phrase; it is also encountered adverbally, that is, as the case of the complement of certain verbs (Blake 2001: 98, 151; Lander 2009: 581). Butt (2006: 8) classes the genitive as a nominal case on account of its being marked on “nominals which are licensed by other nominals”, as opposed to a verbal case, which is licensed by verbal predicates. The relative use of the adnominal and adverbal genitive varies between languages and over time within a single language. The Latin genitive—like the modern German genitive—is predominantly used adnominally to denote a possessive relationship—in a broad sense—between two noun phrases and is accordingly often referred to as the “possessive case” with the genitive-marked noun phrase denoting the “possessor” of the head noun phrase (e.g. Blake 2001: 98, 151; see also Haspelmath 2009: 513) (1). A role of the genitive in Latin and German (but not exclusive to those languages; cf. also the present-day English possessive -s construction [sometimes also termed “genitive”, e.g. Butt 2006: 8]) is to render adnominally an adverbal complement (2); the subjective genitive (2b) corresponds to the subject of the verb (2a), while the objective genitive (2d) corresponds to what would be the object of the verb (2c) (Blake 2001: 98). In modern German, the subjective and objective genitives are the two most frequent uses of the adnominal genitive, with the former being a great deal more frequent than the latter (Chapter 6, Figure 6.18). Canonically, genitive marking appears on the noun phrase denoting the possessor (Lander 2009: 582); this is shown in the examples in (1) and (2). (1)

Latin a. consulis equus the-consul.gen horse ‘the consul’s horse’ (Blake 2001: 98) German b. das Pferd des Konsuls the horse the.gen consul.gen ‘the consul’s horse’1

1 The formal characteristics of German concordial case marking are dealt with in Section 3.4. Until then, the unspecific gloss ‘gen’ is sufficient to indicate the presence of genitive inflection.

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(2) a. Der Mann singt das Lied. the man sings the song ‘The man sings/is singing the song.’ b. der Sänger des Lieds the singer the.gen song.gen ‘the singer of the song’ c. Jemand bemisst die Entschädigung. somebody calculates the compensation ‘Somebody calculates the compensation.’ d. die Bemessung der Entschädigung the calculation the.gen compensation ‘the calculation of the compensation’ The Latin adverbal genitive was restricted to a small group of verbs, while in Old English it was much more widespread (Blake 2001: 151). In present-day standard German only a handful of verbs demand a genitive complement, sixteen being encountered in the course of the present investigation (Section 6.4.11); which is far fewer than the circa 260 verbs that assigned a genitive complement in Middle High German but which, over time, came to take accusative or prepositional complements instead (Ágel 2000: 1870; Paul 2007: 340–341; Sections 6.2.1, 6.2.3 and 6.3.6). Besides its adnominal and adverbal uses, the genitive also appears crosslinguistically as the case of complements of certain adpositions, particularly when these adpositions have emerged from nouns (Lander 2009: 589), for example: (3) German: anstatt einer Möwe instead a.gen seagull ‘instead of a seagull’ (Dortmund) Aghul: Xul-ar-i-n üdih house.plu.obl.gen front ‘in front of the houses’ (Lander 2009: 589)

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Language-specific peculiarities notwithstanding, the genitive case is used in a broadly similar way cross-linguistically. This is exemplified now with three non-Germanic languages: two Indo-European and one non-Indo-European. The Latin genitive is principally used adnominally (4a) with a variety of senses—including a partitive sense (4b)—and is the case assigned by a number of verbs (4c) and adjectives (4d) (Woodcock 1985 [1959]: 50–60). The generality of the Latin genitive—common also to its Dutch and German counterparts, as Chapters 5 and 6 make clear—is reflected in Palmer’s (1961: 294) statement that “a noun in the genitive defines and delimits the range of reference of another noun or a verb”. (4) a. patris amicus father.gen friend ‘father’s friend’ (Palmer 1961: 290) b. cadus vini cask wine.gen ‘a cask of wine’ (Woodcock 1985 [1959]: 53) c. Miltiades proditionis accusatus est. Miltiades treachery.gen accused is ‘Miltiades was accused of treachery.’ (Cicero, in Woodcock 1985 [1959]: 56) d. pauper aquae poor water.gen ‘poor in water’ (Woodcock 1985 [1959]: 55) Unlike the Germanic languages, the main alternatives to the Latin adnominal genitive are not a prepositional paraphrase or another case, although both are possible to an extent, but rather a phrase involving an adjective (4e) (Woodcock 1985 [1959]: 50). Competition between the adnominal genitive and an adjectival phrase also occurs in German (Wellander 1956: 156), although adjectival alternatives such as that in (4f) now often have an archaic character.2

2 Furthermore, the adjectival alternative is limited in its type frequency: das väterliche Buch ‘father’s book’ or das väterliche Auto ‘father’s car’ are, at best, dubious.

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e. fratris mors brother.gen death ‘a brother’s death’ fraterna mors brotherly.gen death ‘a brother’s death’ (Woodcock 1985 [1959]: 50) German: f. das Haus des Vaters the house the.gen father.gen ‘father’s house’ das väterliche Haus the fatherly.neut.acc.sg house ‘father’s house’ (Wellander 1956: 156) The Polish genitive is used, among other roles, adnominally to denote possession (5a), adverbally, particularly if the verb is negated (5b), for the complements of certain prepositions (5c), and partitively (5d) (Bielec 1998: 106). Note the once-only marking on the forename rather than the surname (in contrast to the Germanic possessive -s) in (5a). (5) a. Nowa piosenka Edyty Bartosiewicz na antenie Programu new song Edyta.gen Bartosiewicz on antenna programme Trzeciego. third ‘Edyta Bartosiewicz’s new song (broadcast) on Channel 3.’ (Attested at http://www.edytabartosiewicz.pl/PRASA/WPR800.HTM [last accessed 28.2.13]) b. Nie lubįe jabłek. not I-like apples.gen ‘I don’t like apples.’ (Bielec 1998: 26) c. do Anglii to England.gen ‘to England’ (Bielec 1998: 97)

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d. Kupįe mleka i sera. I’ll-buy milk.gen and cheese.gen ‘I’ll buy some milk and cheese.’ (Bielec 1998: 121) As in Polish and German, the Finnish genitive denotes possession adnominally (6a), and is the case of the complements of certain prepositions (6b); it also occurs adverbally as the subject of certain verbs (6c). (6) a. Kirjojen sisältö on muuttunut. the-books.gen content has changed ‘The content of the books has changed.’ (Karlsson 1999: 95) b. talon sisällä the-house.gen inside ‘inside the house’ (Karlsson 1999: 97) c. Saksalaisten täytyy lähteä. the-Germans.gen must leave ‘The Germans must leave.’ (Karlsson 1999: 98) The genitives exemplified so far in this chapter have all been synthetic; that is, in all of them, genitive case is marked by morphological means. As was noted in Chapter 2, case relations can also be marked analytically; thus, for example, the German synthetic genitive examples (2b) and (2d) could also be rendered by means of an analytic construction, as in (2bʹ) and (2dʹ).3 (2) b.ʹ der Sänger von dem Lied the singer of the.dat song ‘the singer of the song’ d.ʹ die Bemessung von der Entschädigung the calculation of the.dat compensation ‘the calculation of the compensation’ In Chapter 2 it was also noted that, for the purposes of the present investigation, such non-synthetic marking is not treated as case morphology although

3 The dative markers in (2bʹ) and (2dʹ) are a consequence of the preposition von ‘of’ taking a dative complement; the nature of the von-construction is returned to in Section 3.4.

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such constructions are semantically equivalent to their synthetic counterparts. Indeed, Lander (2009: 584) states that there may be reasons for considering “analytic genitives” to be “case expressions”. In view of this investigation’s focus on the competition between the morphological genitive and analytic alternatives in the Germanic languages, it is worth noting that such competition also exists elsewhere. In colloquial Modern Greek, in which, as in German, the genitive is more frequent in formal writing than speech, a prepositional phrase is often used instead of the morphological genitive, generally with nouns denoting an inanimate referent (Stephany & Christofidou 2008: 9). Blake (2001: 157–158) posits a case hierarchy (7) according to which, “[i]f a language has a case listed on the hierarchy, it will usually have at least one case listed from each position to the left”. For example, modern standard German has a dative case, and it also has nominative, accusative and genitive cases. However, the German dialects fit less easily into the hierarchy, lacking a genitive case but retaining a dative, and in some dialects combining the accusative and dative (Section 6.4.2); furthermore, the development of standard German towards a nominative-accusative-dative system as posited by some scholars (e.g. Gallmann 1990: 287–288; Section 6.1), likewise does not conform to the hierarchy. These issues would be overcome should one assume that the vonconstruction (defined presently in Section 3.4) functions as a “genitive” (see, e.g., de Wit [1997: 4], who analyses the cognate Dutch van-construction in this way).4 (7)5 nominative accusative/ genitive dative locative ablative/ others ergative instrumental

3.3

The Genitive in the Germanic Languages

3.3.1 Introduction Alongside concordial case morphology as a whole, the genitive case has been affected by deflection in the Germanic languages; it was already possible by the 1950s to look back at “ein lebhaftes Interesse” [‘a lively interest’] which the topic had attracted (Wellander 1956: 156). With the exception of Icelandic and Faroese, there are two diachronic developments affecting the genitive case

4 In de Wit (e.g. 1997: 4), van-phrases such as these are termed “[p]ostnominal genitive phrases”. 5 Originally (68) in Blake (2001: 157).

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which are common to the Germanic languages: the masculine/neuter genitive -s marker became reused as an invariant marker of possession, and a periphrastic construction—with a preposition indicating the possessor noun phrase—emerged as a synonymous competitor of the adnominal genitive. In English and Mainland Scandinavian, these constructions outlived the concordial genitive; in Dutch and German, in contrast, the concordial genitive continued to be used, at least in the formal, standard varieties. With one minor exception (portrayed in Scott [2011a, 2012]), the Dutch concordial genitive was lost by the first half of the 20th century; its German counterpart survives to this day. In both Dutch and German, the development of the genitive case was affected by the codification of those languages. In English and Mainland Scandinavian, on the other hand, the deflectional developments affecting the genitive case had concluded before codification began. Thus, a concordial genitive never became part of the standard for those languages, the possessive -s and prepositional constructions taking on the role of “genitive” described in those languages’ early grammars. In this section, the diachronic development of the genitive case in English and Mainland Scandinavian is sketched out on the basis of existing research in order to show the effect of deflection, unaffected by the disruptive factor of codification, on genitive morphology. Throughout the Germanic languages, the most resilient role of the genitive has proved to be its adnominal use (Wellander 1956: 156). This is the genitive type that is strongest—and most resistant to competition—in modern standard German, and the one that was strongest in written Dutch until it was lost from the language. Indeed, preserved by usage factors, a fragment of the Dutch adnominal genitive survives in productive use in the modern language. In both German and Dutch, the adverbal and adjectival uses of the genitive were already in decline at the time of the earliest grammarians and have remained weak throughout the history of the standardised languages. This fits with the “general trend towards restricting the use of the genitive case to its most central functions” observed by Allen (2008: 177) for Middle English; it also held in Swedish. The Old Norse genitive had been used adnominally, adverbally, prepositionally and adjectivally; genitive objects of verbs were not typical transitive objects (Toft 2009). Case distinctions were lost during Old and Middle Swedish (Norde 2001: 250), and the case system broke down during the 15th century (Platzack 2002: 170). On the nature of case reduction in the Scandinavian languages, primarily Norwegian, including the rise of the genitive -s marker in late Old Norse (and paralleled in other Germanic languages), see also Wetås (2008) and Enger (2010). The use of the genitive with verbs, adjectives and prepositions was lost (Haugen 1976: 294, Platzack 2002: 170), with the exception of some fossilised expressions (Askedal 2002: 176), but remained as a marker of possession.

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3.3.2 The Genitive in German Genitive case in German—exemplified in (8), in which the genitive-marking elements are shown in boldface—is marked within a noun phrase on determiners and adjectives, and on masculine and neuter singular nouns.6 The definite articles are des (masculine and neuter singular) and der (feminine singular and all genders plural); the indefinite articles are eines (masculine and neuter singular) and einer (feminine singular). Other determiners, such as possessives and demonstratives, follow this pattern: those ending in -es relate to masculine and neuter singular, and those ending in -er relate to feminine singular and, where relevant, all genders plural. Adjectives in a genitive noun phrase receive an -(e)n ending regardless of gender or number. With rare exceptions (see Durrell 2002: 27–29), masculine and neuter nouns heading a genitive noun phrase receive an -(e)s ending. Syncretism within the German case system means that not all these markers are exclusively genitive. For instance, the determiners der and einer (and all other determiners ending in -er) are common to the genitive and dative singular; thus, einer fleißigen Lehrerin (8b) is—in isolation—ambiguous between a genitive and a dative interpretation (see, e.g., Flämig [1991: 541], Ronneberger-Sibold [2010: 90], and, on the dialectal situation, Henzen [1954: 262]). Additionally, adjectival -(e)n is common to the genitive and dative cases, accusative masculine singular, and plurals in all cases. (8) a. das Buch des alten Lehrers the book the.gen.masc.sg old.gen teacher.gen.masc.sg ‘the old male teacher’s book’ b. das Buch einer fleißigen Lehrerin the book a.gen.fem.sg hard-working.gen teacher.fem ‘a hard-working female teacher’s book’ A structural constraint prohibiting the use of the genitive is formulated in Duden (2005: 979–980) as the Genitivregel [‘genitive rule’]: only noun phrases containing a determiner or adjective which can take genitive inflection may occur in the genitive; the absence of such a determiner or adjective necessitates the use of one of the other, semantically equivalent constructions (see also Paul 1919: 327–328; Bondzio 1967: 140; Gallmann 1990: 258, 287; Flämig 1991: 132;

6 The tendencies towards once-only marking encountered in actual usage—in the form of omission of the final nominal -s on masculine and neuter singular nouns, and the possessive -s construction—are examined in Chapter 6.

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Ballweg 1998: 163; Pérennec 1998: 168, 172). Thus, (9a) is ungrammatical; if the genitive is to be used, an inflectable word (underlined in (9)) must be inserted (9b,c), otherwise an alternative construction must be used (9d). (The examples in (9) are in part taken from and in part based on those in Duden [2005: 980].) (9) a. *der Konsum Wassers the consumption water.gen ‘the consumption of water’ b. der Konsum des Wassers the consumption the.gen water.gen ‘the consumption of water’ c. der Konsum frischen Wassers the consumption fresh.gen water.gen ‘the consumption of fresh water’ d. der Konsum von Wasser the consumption of water ‘the consumption of water’ Genitive noun phrases occur in German not only adnominally and adverbally, but also as the complements of certain adjectives and prepositions. While the classification of the adverbal, adjectival and prepositional genitives is fairly straightforward (although Duden [2005: 828–829] lists a specific adverbal genitive type used in verbs belonging to the legal semantic field and denoting accusation and suspicion), the classification of the adnominal genitive has, as noted in Section 3.2, caused disunity among researchers. Given the largely arbitrary nature of these classifications, and the fact that they are based on the individual scholar’s interpretation rather than on specific structural characteristics (Bondzio 1967: 8), a simplified classification is followed here, based primarily on whether the genitive noun phrase would be the subject or the object of a corresponding verbal paraphrase. Thus, the nine adnominal types identified by Duden (2005: 833–839) (Table 3.1) are reduced to five, to which another genitive type, not mentioned by Duden (2005), is added (Table 3.2). The terminology of Table 3.2 is applied also to the Dutch adnominal genitive in this study. As early as the start of the 20th century, it was noted—for example, by Brandstetter (1904: 21) and Kiefer (1910: 5)—that the German genitive had been widely studied. Nonetheless, despite this long history of research, the German genitive has tended to be studied on the basis of relatively small scale

40 table 3.1

chapter 3 The adnominal genitive types in Duden (2005: 833–839)

Genitive type

Example

Genitivus possessivus (‘possessive genitive’) Genitivus subiectivus (‘subjective genitive’) Genitivus obiectivus (‘objective genitive’) Genitivus Auctoris (‘authorial genitive’) Genitiv des Produkts (‘genitive of product’) Genitivus Qualitatis (‘qualitative genitive’)

der Koffer des Diplomaten ‘the suitcase the.gen diplomat.gen’ die Freunde der Kinder ‘the friends the.gen children’ der Überbringer dieser Nachricht ‘the bearer this.gen news’ die Sinfonien dieses Komponisten ‘the symphonies this.gen composer’ der Komponist dieser Sinfonien ‘the composer these.gen symphonies’ ein Mann mittleren Alters ‘a man middle.gen age.gen, i.e. a man of middle age’ ein Strahl der Hoffnung ‘a ray the.gen hope, i.e. hope is like a ray’ die Möglichkeit der Rückkehr ‘the possibility the.gen return, i.e. the return is a possibility’ eine Tasse heißen Kaffees ‘a cup hot.gen coffee.gen, i.e. a cup of hot coffee’

Genitivus explicativus (‘explicative genitive’) Genitivus definitivus (‘definitive genitive’)7 Genitivus partitivus (‘partitive genitive’)

investigations. The usual position taken is that the genitive is restriucted to careful high-register language use, and is not found in casual, colloquial language (Kiefer 1910: 5, 11; Lockwood 1968: 18–20; Barbour & Stevenson 1990: 84, 161; Debus 1995: 46; Roelcke 1997: 133; Hentschel & Weydt 2003: 171; Ronneberger-Sibold 2010: 101). In his survey of the history of the German language, Lockwood (1968: 18) states that the “decline of the genitive is one of the most remarkable developments in the history of German syntax”, and the use of the genitive in contemporary German is characterized as “labil” [‘frail, unstable’] by Debus (1999: 45). This interpretation is reflected in some of the evaluations of the status of the genitive in the literature (and, as described below, to a much greater 7 This is a sub-type of the Genitivus explicativus category involving the verb sein ‘to be’ in the paraphrase (Duden 2005: 838).

41

the genitive case table 3.2

The grouping of adnominal genitive types followed in this investigation (with the examples from Table 3.1)

Genitive type

Example

Subjective genitive

der Koffer des Diplomaten die Freunde der Kinder die Sinfonien dieses Komponisten der Überbringer dieser Nachricht der Komponist dieser Sinfonien ein Mann mittleren Alters ein Strahl der Hoffnung die Möglichkeit der Rückkehr eine Tasse heißen Kaffees das Buch der Bücher ‘the book the.gen books, i.e. the book of (all) books’

Objective genitive Qualitative genitive Explicative genitive Partitive genitive Elective genitive

extent in lay linguistic work), albeit usually not on the basis of quantified usage data. Gallmann (1990: 258, 287) forecasts an uncertain future for the genitive case and, in particular, the disappearance of the prepositional genitive. Such predictions are often encountered in earlier empirically based work (Rausch 1897: 21–22; Kiefer 1910: 89; Behaghel 1923: 480–481). Nevertheless, while the genitive is declining in some of its roles, it is prospering in others (Ebert 1978: 50–51; Glück & Sauer 1997: 49–51; Lockwood 1968: 20). There exist a number of investigations into the nature of the competition facing the prepositional genitive. The stigmatisation of the use of the dative case with traditionally genitive prepositions has been dated to the 18th century, with such usage being around a century older (Davies & Langer 2006: 202–208), and particularly associated with the language use of inexperienced writers (Elspaß 2005a: 321). In present-day formal written language, Di Meola (e.g. 1999, 2002, 2004) finds not only that the dative is used with genitive prepositions, but that the genitive is frequently and regularly used with a number of accusative and dative prepositions. In a small-scale investigation into the relative use of the genitive and its competitors on the web-based communication tool Twitter, Scott (2011b) found that the prepositional genitive outnumbered its competitors to a surprising extent in informal language. In a spoken corpus, Petig (1997) found no straightforward increase in the use of the dative since 1960 with the genitive prepositions (an)statt ‘instead of’, trotz ‘despite’, während ‘during’ and wegen ‘because of’ (1997: 38); the variation he observed was due to register and

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speakers’ geographical origin; this is confirmed, based on informant questioning, by Dux (2010). There is not a great deal of published corpus-based research into the relative use of the adnominal genitive and its competitors. Scott (2011b) showed the genitive to outnumber the von-construction in interchangeable contexts in the Twitter data. This finding, which is expanded upon in Chapter 6, fits with those of Bondzio (1967: 140) and Roelcke (1997: 133). Pérennec (1998: 175) observes that a particular strength of the adnominal genitive is its semantic vagueness, and therefore its flexibility. A rare empirically based investigation into adnominal genitive use in the Early New High German period is the MA thesis Tükör (2008), which investigates the use of the genitive case in legal documents produced in Lower Austrian monasteries and nunneries. Tükör’s findings are studied alongside data from the writings of Martin Luther in Chapter 6 to illustrate the state of the genitive just as moves towards a standard language were beginning. 3.3.3 The Genitive in Dutch Case is no longer marked synthetically or concordially in Dutch (see, e.g., de Vries 2006: 19; Van Eynde 2006: 144–145). Therefore, to denote a “genitive” meaning in the modern language, other constructions are used instead. Adnominally, the default construction for doing this is an analytic construction involving the preposition van ‘of’ (10a); the ascendance of the van-construction over the adnominal genitive during Middle Dutch is illustrated by Weerman & de Wit (1999) on the basis of quantified data, while Vezzosi (2000) addresses the unexpected resurgence of the adnominal genitive during the post-Middle Dutch period. In the modern language, besides constructions that feature exapted former genitive markers (Hoeksema 1998; Booij 2010a: 216–231) and fossilised phrases containing a genitive (Booij 2002: 35), the adnominal genitive remains in the form of a productive—if restricted—fragment that preserves an original genitive marker and the original agreement relationship between the marker and the noun (Scott 2011a, 2012). With animate possessors, a further analytic construction is possible (10b) and, if the possessor is denoted by a proper name or is animate and denoted by a common noun, the non-concordial synthetic possessive -s construction (10c) is possible. Non-adnominally, in situations in which earlier periods of Dutch would have required a genitive complement of a verb, preposition or adjective, case marking is now simply absent, or it has been replaced by a prepositional phrase. (10) a. het boek van mijn vader the book of my father ‘my father’s book’

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b. mijn vader zijn boek my father his book ‘my father’s book’ c. mijn vaders boek my father.poss book ‘my father’s book’ The situation was different in the early modern period, however. Although case marking in the spoken language was already close to the modern situation (i.e. with non-concordial and analytic constructions replacing synthetic, concordial ones), the formal written language retained a concordial case system similar to that of modern standard German. Thus, genitive case in early modern written Dutch—exemplified in (11), in which the genitive-marking elements are shown in boldface—is marked within a noun phrase on determiners and adjectives, and on masculine and neuter singular nouns. The definite articles are des (masculine and neuter singular) and der (feminine singular and all genders plural); the indefinite articles are eens (masculine and neuter singular) and eener (feminine singular). Other determiners, such as possessives and demonstratives, follow this pattern: those ending in -es relate to masculine and neuter singular, and those ending in -er relate to feminine singular and, where relevant, all genders plural. Adjectival inflection within a genitive noun phrase varies: -e, -(e)n and -∅ occur without regularity in the data. With rare exceptions (mainly certain loan words), masculine and neuter nouns heading a genitive noun phrase receive an -(e)s ending. Syncretism within the Dutch case system means that not all these markers are exclusively genitive. For instance, the determiners der and eener (and all other determiners ending in -er) are common to the genitive and dative singular; thus, eener lange tafel (11b) is—in isolation—ambiguous between a genitive and a dative interpretation. Additionally, adjectival -(e)n is common to the genitive and dative cases, accusative masculine singular, and plurals in all cases. A restriction similar to the modern German Genitivregel held in early modern Dutch: not only was the genitive impossible in the absence of an inflectable word in the noun phrase, but it was also avoided (completely in the data) in the absence of a determiner in the noun phrase. This restriction is studied in Chapter 5. (11) a. de ontleeding des Menschelyken lichaams the dissection the.gen.neut.sg human.gen body.gen.neut.sg ‘the dissection of the human body’ (18th century)

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table 3.3

The constructions referred to in this investigation

Role

Genitive

adnominal adnominal genitive (connecting two noun phrases)

Competitors von-construction (German) van-construction (Dutch) periphrastic possessive possessive -s

prepositional (complement of a preposition)

prepositional genitive prepositional dative accusative case (early modern Dutch) von-construction (German) van-construction (Dutch)

adverbal (object of a verb)

adverbal genitive

accusative case prepositional paraphrase

adjectival (complement of an adjective)

adjectival genitive

prepositional paraphrase

b. het benedeneinde eener lange tafel the lower-end a.gen.fem.sg long.gen table ‘the lower end of a long table’ (19th century)

3.4

The Constructions

The constructions which play a part in the deflectional developments affecting genitive case marking in German and Dutch—and which are therefore also central to this investigation—are divided into genitive constructions and competitors. The term competitor refers here to synonymous, potentially interchangeable constructions; competition refers to the existence of one or more of these constructions alongside an equivalent genitive construction (see Chapter 1). The terminology is constant for both German and Dutch although not all competitors appear in both languages. The competition involving the adnominal, adverbal, prepositional and adjectival uses of the genitive—i.e. those which are the focus of this study—is summarised in Table 3.3. The terms shown in Table 3.3 are used throughout the study.

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The constructions listed in Table 3.3 are exemplified now, with comparisons made between the genitive and its competitors. The adnominal genitive has, in both German and Dutch, faced competition from a prepositional paraphrase, a periphrastic construction, and the possessive -s construction. These constructions are shown in (12) and (13). (12) German adnominal constructions adnominal genitive a. das Buch meines Vaters the book my.gen father.gen ‘my father’s book’ von-construction b. das Buch von meinem Vater the book of my.dat father ‘my father’s book’ periphrastic possessive c. meinem Vater sein Buch my.dat father his book ‘my father’s book’ possessive -s d. (?mein) Vaters Buch (?my) father.poss book ‘(my) father’s book’ (13) Dutch adnominal constructions adnominal genitive a. het boek mijns vaders the book my.gen father.gen ‘my father’s book’ (obsolete) van-construction b. het boek van mijn vader the book of my father ‘my father’s book’

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periphrastic possessive c. mijn vader z’n boek my father his book ‘my father’s book’ possessive -s d. mijn vaders boek my father.poss book ‘my father’s book’ The von- and van-constructions (12b, 13b)—in which the possessor noun phrase is marked by the preposition with the sense ‘of’ (cf. the corresponding English of-genitive or of-construction)—have been, historically, the prime competitor of the adnominal genitive in German and Dutch. In modern German the preposition von assigns a dative complement (12b) and has thus contributed to the popular perception that the dative case is taking over from the genitive. This perception is further reinforced by the construction exemplified in (12c) and (13c), in which possession is denoted by a possessive determiner and—in German—dative (occasionally genitive) marking on the possessor; this construction is known by various names in the literature, but is referred to here as the periphrastic possessive construction (following Davies & Langer 2006 and Hendriks 2012).8 It, too, is popularly known as a competitor of the adnominal genitive in modern German. In many of the Germanic languages, a possessive marker -s (12d, 13d) developed from the genitive masculine and neuter singular suffix -s (see, e.g., Allen [2008] on English). This -s marker does not vary according to the gender or number of the noun to which it attaches, and it is used only adnominally to mark (broadly possessive) relationships; that is to say, it is used quite differently to the genitive case. To avoid confusion between the concordial genitive case and the -s construction, a distinction is made here between the two, following Lanouette (1996: 90) and Weerman & de Wit (1999: 1179): the term genitive is reserved for the concordial case marking, while the invariant -s construction is referred to as possessive -s. Possessive -s and the (prenominal) concordial genitive differ in a number of important respects, not only the structural

8 Hendriks (2012) actually refers to the prenominal periphrastic possessive construction, which differentiates the construction terminologically from the von-/van-construction, which is postnominal and periphrastic.

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considerations noted above, and are therefore classed as two separate (albeit diachronically linked) entities in this investigation. The extension to possessive -s described in Chapter 6 shows the possessive -s moving even further from the concordial genitive. The reasons for keeping the two constructions apart are as follows: – possessive -s attaches to proper names of any gender or number, whereas the genitive -s suffix is restricted to singular masculine and neuter common nouns – prenominal genitives are stylistically marked in modern German (Demske 2001: 210; Duden 2005: 834), whereas prenominal possessive -s is not stylistically marked – possessive -s is marked once only at the right-edge of NPpossessor; in the concordial genitive, determiners, adjectives and masculine or neuter singular nouns are marked – possessive -s is acquired by children by the age of about two and a half years, whereas the concordial genitive is not attested in children younger than six years (Mills 1985: 185; Clahsen et al. 1994: 114) The German prepositional genitive competes with the dative case and with a prepositional paraphrase (14). Its Dutch counterpart has been replaced by a prepositional paraphrase and a caseless construction; previously it also competed with accusative case (15). (14) German prepositional constructions prepositional genitive a. wegen meines Lehrers because-of my.gen teacher.gen ‘because of my teacher’ prepositional dative b. wegen meinem Lehrer because-of my.dat teacher ‘because of my teacher’ von-construction c. anstatt von meinem Lehrer instead of my.dat teacher ‘instead of my teacher’

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(15) Dutch prepositional constructions prepositional genitive a. op grond der berigten van M. Christ on-the-basis the.gen reports of M. Christ ‘on the basis of M. Christ’s reports’ (early modern Dutch) accusative case/no case in modern Dutch b. van weegen de Staten on-behalf-of the.nom/acc.plu states ‘on behalf of the states’ (early modern Dutch) van-construction c. op grond van de berichten on-the-basis of the reports ‘on the basis of the reports’ (modern Dutch) The German adverbal genitive, to the extent that it is used at all, competes both with prepositional paraphrases and with the accusative case (16). The Dutch adverbal genitive, barely attested in the early modern period, was wholly replaced by prepositional paraphrases or caseless constructions (17). (16) German adverbal constructions adverbal genitive a. ich erinnere mich meines Urlaubs I remember refl my.gen holiday.gen ‘I remember my holiday’ es braucht keines Beweises it needs no.gen evidence.gen ‘it needs no evidence’ prepositional paraphrase b. ich erinnere mich an meinen Urlaub I remember refl on my.acc holiday ‘I remember my holiday’

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accusative case c. es braucht keinen Beweis it needs no.acc evidence ‘it needs no evidence’ (17) Dutch adverbal constructions adverbal genitive a. […] beclaechde hy sich zijns ongelucx complained he refl his.gen accident.gen ‘[…] he complained about his accident’ (early modern Dutch) hongers sterven hunger.gen die ‘to die of hunger’ (early modern Dutch) no case in modern Dutch b. […] beklaagde hij zich zijn ongeluk complained he refl his accident ‘[…] he complained about his accident’ (modern Dutch) prepositional paraphrase c. aan honger sterven on hunger die ‘to die of hunger’ (modern Dutch) The German adjectival genitive is still found—albeit to a small extent—alongside prepositional paraphrases (18), while its Dutch counterpart has been replaced by prepositional paraphrases and caseless constructions (19). (18) German adjectival constructions adjectival genitive a. eines Verbrechens fähig a.gen crime.gen capable ‘capable of a crime’ prepositional paraphrase b. zu einem Verbrechen fähig to a.dat crime capable ‘capable of a crime’

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(19) Dutch adjectival constructions adjectival genitive a. der Latynsche taale onkundig the.gen Latin.gen language.gen ignorant ‘not good at Latin’ (early modern Dutch) no case (modern Dutch) b. de Nederlandse taal onkundig the Dutch language ignorant ‘not good at Dutch’ (modern Dutch) prepositional paraphrase c. onkundig van mijn lot ignorant of my fate ‘knowing nothing of my fate’ (early modern Dutch)

3.5

Summary of Chapter 3

Following on from the overview of morphosyntactic change given in Chapter 2, this chapter focused on the genitive case, i.e. the other focus of this book. First, the genitive was viewed typologically, with the Dutch and German genitive placed in a cross-linguistic context alongside the genitive case in other languages, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European. Then, the nature and the development of the genitive case throughout the Germanic languages were considered. The remainder of the chapter concentrated on the genitive case in Dutch and German: the structural and functional characteristics of the genitive—which are studied in detail in Chapters 5 and 6—were explained, and a review of existing research into the genitive in each language was given. Finally, an overview was provided of the constructions—genitive and non-genitive—which are investigated here.

chapter 4

Data and Methodology 4.1

Introduction

To achieve the aims set out in Chapter 1, the basis of the research must be a selection of usage data, both historical and contemporary, from Dutch and German. Only in this way can the structural and contextual variation and division of labour between the competing constructions, and the diachronic changes in the nature of this variation, be accurately accounted for. The dataset must include language use from a variety of registers and, where possible, include speech as well as written language use. The methodology adopted for locating suitable data sources, and for retrieving and then analysing the data, is described in Sections 4.3 and 4.4; the individual sources are described and evaluated in Sections 4.3.2 to 4.3.6. Before this, however, the usage-based construction grammar approach taken to analyse the data—both the synchronic situation and the diachronic transitions—is described in Section 4.2.

4.2

Theoretical Basis

4.2.1 A Usage-Based Approach The usage-based approach taken here to account for the synchronic state of the grammar and for the diachronic changes which that grammar undergoes assumes that language users’ knowledge of their language is informed and moulded by their experience of their language, and that the use of a language follows general cognitive principles; abstract structures—constructions— are identified (and then used) by language users in the course of their everyday language use (see 4.2.2) (Langacker 2000; Bybee 2006a, 2006b, 2010; see also Eckhoff [2009], who takes a usage-based approach to the diachronic changes affecting possessive constructions in Russian). These constructions become entrenched through repetition and familiarity (Haiman 1994: 3, 22–25; Kemmer & Barlow 2000: viii–xxii; Langacker 2000: 3; Bybee 2006a: 711; Bergs & Diewald 2008: 9); the apprehension of these constructions through usage and encountering them in context means that information on structure as well as meaning (including pragmatic information) is learned as part of a construction (Rumelhart 1980: 34; Goldberg 2009: 94; Bybee 2010: 76). Langacker (2000: 3) puts it thus: “the schemas that emerge spring from the soil of actual usage”.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_005

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Construction grammar, the view that grammar consists of constructions and is ultimately informed by an individual language user’s experience of his or her language, is one particular usage-based approach: it is described in more detail presently in Section 4.2.2. The usage-based analysis allows a unity of structural and pragmatic factors in the analysis; it is a recognition of the fact that the developments affecting the genitive case (and equivalent constructions) in Dutch and German since the early modern period have been strongly to do with pragmatic considerations, and not just matters of structure. (This contrasts, for example, with the division of labour between the English possessive -s and of-construction, in which structural factors are decisive.) In any event, the investigation necessarily cannot concentrate solely on structural analysis: this would have revealed little about the developments that have affected the genitive and its competitors; rather, it must go beyond structure in order to compare the use of the constructions (their shared meaning serving as a constant) in various pragmatic contexts and in various periods. A greater focus on structural factors would have led to the important pragmatic factors—relating, for instance, to register variation, or to the influence of standardisation—receiving less attention. The inclusion of usage factors proved to be profitable in shedding light on the factors that have controlled and, where applicable, continue to control, the development and use of the genitive and its competitors in both languages. The effect of frequency is crucial to the way in which a construction develops and how it changes over time, and indicates to language users which constructions are conventionalised (Bybee 2006a: 711); both type frequency (the number of items that can be used in a particular construction) and token frequency (the number of instances of a particular construction) are relevant: High token frequency of an instance entrenches the instance and weakens (or at least, does not strengthen) the schema. High type frequency of the instances entrenches the schema and weakens (or at least does not strengthen) the instances taylor 2002: 2771

Thus, if a particular example occurs frequently, the example becomes familiar but the construction that produced it does not necessarily become entrenched as a construction in the mind of the language user; for instance, the numerous fixed expressions containing now obsolete masculine and neuter genitive mor1 Originally (11) in Taylor (2002: 277).

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phology in modern Dutch (Section 5.1.1) have not triggered a reanimation of that use of the genitive (or preserved its productive use). Conversely, if there are many products from a particular construction, but these products are not necessarily very frequent, the construction can become entrenched; for instance, to use an example from English derivational morphology, once a language user has encountered a number of base—derivative pairs like bald—baldness, big— bigness, and so on, the schema [[x]A ness]N becomes established in that language user’s mind and can then be used to produce further deadjectival nouns in -ness (Booij 2010b: 543–544). Beyond language acquisition, this accretive emergence and expansion of a construction has been found also to characterise the diachronic emergence and growth of constructions in a language as a whole (Croft & Cruse 2004: 325). Accordingly, in this investigation it is assumed that, just as usage factors contribute to the way in which an individual learns his or her language, diachronic developments affecting the structure and use of constructions are also caused by the use of those constructions. This point is returned to in Section 4.2.3. The repetition of events leads to the process of chunking: the “process of organizing or grouping the input into familiar units or chunks” (Miller 1956: 93; emphasis added); the process of chunking can be conceived of as “learning from experience” (Newell 1990: 185). The chunks themselves are “unit[s] of memory organization” (Newell 1990: 7). Chunking is not only a part of language acquisition, but is a general cognitive principle characteristic of human memory as a whole and “appears to be a ubiquitous feature of human memory” (Newell 1990: 7). The identification of chunks is a consequence of repetition (Bybee 2010: 34) and is fundamental to the acquisition of constructions, the use of constructions to produce new formations, and the comprehension of the encountered products of constructions. One memorised unit, i.e. a chunk, can—through repetition—become combined with other chunks to form greater or more complex chunks; that is to say, “[i]f two or more smaller chunks occur together with some degree of frequency, a larger chunk containing the smaller ones is formed” (Bybee 2010: 34). The number of chunks a speaker knows increases along with that speaker’s experience (Newell 1990: 8; Ellis 1996: 107). The process of chunking, which is also known as composition (Langacker 2000: 4) and automatization (Haiman 1994: 8, who also uses “chunking”), led, for example, to the survival of phrases containing genitive morphology in Dutch, and to the freezing of case morphology inside proper names in German (Section 5.1.1); Bybee (2010: 34–35) notes the chunking of units as small as formulaic expressions (take a break, break a habit, etc.) and as large as proverbs, poems and practised speech sequences. The claim will be advanced in Section 5.5.3 that chunking was responsible for the survival

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of a fragment of the Dutch adnominal genitive—complete with agreement relationships within the noun phrase—beyond the demise of the case system. Within the present investigation, reference to chunking will primarily be made in the context of the identification and storage of peripheral constructions. However, as Bybee (2010: 35) notes, “[a]ll sorts of conventionalized multi-word expressions, from prefabricated expressions to idioms to constructions, can be considered chunks for the purposes of processing and analysis”. A usage-based analysis allows for redundancy inasmuch as a concrete realisation of the product of a particular construction may be stored as a chunk in the mind of a particular speaker (and, likely, of a group of speakers) despite the storage of the abstract construction itself. An extreme example relevant to the present investigation concerns Dutch phrases involving the genitive which were first coined when the genitive was still in productive use in Dutch: there was a time when, for instance, steen des aanstoots ‘stone the.gen offence.gen (i.e. ‘bone of contention’)’ or Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen ‘National Company the.gen Belgian Railways’ could have been produced by any speaker of standard Dutch. Nonetheless, these phrases became stored themselves—the former on account of its familiarity as a frequently used expression, the latter on account of its naming a particular organisation—and, as a result of this, remained in the language even when genitive morphology finally disappeared. Less extremely, as noted in the previous paragraph, formulaic expressions (even those which are semantically completely transparent) can also become stored, even though they could be constructed from scratch. This tolerance of redundancy fits with what studies of the brain have shown; namely, that the brain “favors redundancy rather than economy in its functioning” (Paradis 2004: 35). Nonetheless, despite the adherence to cognitive principles in describing grammar, it must be borne in mind that the constructions identified may not necessarily correspond to the representations in the minds of speakers: Speakers may behave “as though” they have internalized a particular explicit rule, but this only means that, through practice, they have internalized computational procedures that allow them to produce (and understand) sentences that can be described in terms of a particular explicit rule. Generally, more than one explicit rule can account for a particular form. There is no known way to ascertain which (if any) is the actual representation in implicit memory that is used automatically. Grammar rules are abstractions, not descriptions of actual cerebral computational procedures. paradis 2004: 33–34, emphasis in original; see also paradis 2009: 2

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This corresponds to Newell’s (1990: 8) note that “[a] chunk is essentially a pattern that describes an environmental situation” (emphasis added). Viewed diachronically, an individual language user’s grammar is altered in some way every time he or she uses language. If it is assumed that one language user’s experience is broadly identical to that of his or her contemporaries, with circumstances peculiar to the individual language users (e.g. social background, level of education, exposure to and knowledge of specialist registers, contact with other varieties of his or her native language, and so on) making their idiolects different in some, relatively minor, ways from those of their contemporaries, then it may also be assumed that all language users have more or less identical knowledge of the morphosyntactic constructions of their language. More highly educated individuals, or those who simply have more contact with the formal written language, may be more familiar with prestige constructions (such as the English who vs. whom distinction, or the English or German subjunctive), but such idiolectal differences are minimal in comparison to the grammar as a whole. Diachronic changes are manifested in individuals’ grammars to differing extents; if there are two semantically equivalent and broadly interchangeable constructions, one older and one more recent, some language users favour the original one, while others prefer the novel one (without necessarily knowing which is which). Through individuals’ usage, trends become visible across the language community as a whole: one construction may turn up more frequently in formal language, a different one in informal language; one construction may be favoured with a simplex noun phrase, another one with complex noun phrases. Individuals perceive these trends and conventionalisations in their everyday language use: the absence of a particular construction in a particular pragmatic context will be noted (if not consciously), the favouring of a particular lexical or morphosyntactic item in a particular construction will also be duly noted. In sum, “[t]he grammars of speakers will change through every spoken and written usage event” (Hilpert 2008: 9). When the synchronic usage of a particular construction—or group of competing constructions—by a particular cohort of language users is compared to the use of the same construction(s) by an earlier cohort, the nature of the diachronic change in use of the construction(s) becomes apparent, as does the way in which usage factors have contributed to this change. The usage-based view—which allows for variation and diachronic changes in a speakers’ grammar—contrasts with a traditional view that considers grammar to be acquired in childhood and that any grammatical knowledge learned subsequently is peripheral and accounted for by exception rules. On such a view, due to its absence from children’s speech, the genitive case—the

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principal means of connecting two noun phrases in a possessive relationship in German, regardless of register or medium (Chapter 6)—is excluded from the core grammar of German (Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1187). A usage-based approach, in contrast, allows for the addition to a language user’s grammar of such late-acquired constructions, regardless of how frequent or peripheral they are. Particularly with regard to such a large piece of grammar such as an entire case, even if it is only widespread in adults’ usage, the usage-based approach therefore seems preferable. On the other hand, a caseless language such as English or modern Dutch has fewer constructions which are acquired late but turn out to be among the most frequent constructions of (adult) language; rather, the late acquisitions tend to be prestige variants that would not be learned in normal use, i.e. outside explicit language instruction, such as pronoun usage (e.g. ?my friend and me vs. my friend and I) and the use of whom (Emonds 1986; Lasnik & Sobin 2000) and, in Dutch, the adnominal genitive construction (Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1186). A small and relatively peripheral construction (in comparison to a whole grammatical case) might conceivably be learned as a patch or a grammatical virus, i.e. “a rule which checks a feature that the grammatical system cannot otherwise check” (Lasnik & Sobin 2000: 349), on top of the naturally acquired, non-prestige variant. The relative merits of such an approach against the usage-based approach adopted here are returned to in Chapter 7. 4.2.2 Construction Grammar and Construction Morphology The research and analysis in this investigation have been carried out in the construction grammar framework, which assumes that grammar consists of stored abstract structures—“form-function pairings”—from which sentences are put together (Goldberg 2009: 93–94; see also Michaelis & Lambrecht 1996: 216). These pairings—constructions (also schemata)—contain structural (morphosyntactic and phonological) and functional (semantic and pragmatic) information (Rumelhart 1980: 34; Croft 2001: 45–47; Fried & Östman 2004: 19–21; Hilpert 2008: 14; Goldberg 2009: 94; Bybee 2010: 76). Structure and function are taken to be inseparable in construction grammar (Fried & Östman 2004: 12); an assumption throughout this investigation, therefore, is that each construction investigated contains a great deal of information relating to its use, determining which items occur in the construction (e.g. any noun, proper names only, only noun phrases containing a determiner, and so on) and how they are inserted into the construction (e.g. constituent order), the semantic content of the construction, in which pragmatic contexts (e.g. register or medium) the construction is used, and any particular restrictions on the use of the construction (e.g. whether it would be unusual or even unacceptable outside

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Degrees of openness and complexity in constructions (adapted from croft & cruse [2004: 255] and goldberg [2009: 94])

Filled or open? Construction

E.g.

Lexicon → syntax

filled filled partially filled filled partially filled partially filled

tentacle, gangster, the textbook, drive-in post-N, V-ing like a bat out of hell believe ⟨one’s⟩ ears/eyes The more you watch the less you know

word/lexicon word/lexicon morphology idiom idiom subcategorisation frame

fully open

fully open

Word Complex word Word Idiom Idiom Covariational Conditional The Xer the Yer Ditransitive Subj V Obj1 Obj2 Passive Subj aux VPpp (PPby)

She gave him a kiss; syntax He fixed her some fish tacos. The cell phone tower syntax was struck by lightning.

a particular register, whether it carries particular connotations, such as an archaic or prestigious effect) (cf. Hilpert [2008: 1] on future constructions). Each of these features is liable to change over time; this matter is returned to in Section 4.2.3. In construction grammar no distinction—beyond the relative complexity of the two—is made between words and phrases (Michaelis & Lambrecht 1996: 216; see also Jackendoff 2008: 15 and Goldberg 2009: 95). Its principles can therefore be extended from syntax—the topic of most early construction grammar work—to morphology: this is demonstrated in detail by Booij (2010a). Thus, on a continuum from the lexicon to syntax, items referred to as constructions have varying degrees of complexity (Croft & Cruse 2004: 255; Goldberg 2009: 94); this is shown in Table 4.1. This property of the constructional approach is important to the present investigation as it allows the synonymous synthetic and analytic constructions (e.g. the German concordial adnominal genitive and the von-construction) to be dealt with on the same terms. The majority of the constructions dealt with in the present investigation are either fully open (cf. the English ditransitive and passive) or partially filled (or partially underspecified) (cf. the English convariational conditional); constructions belonging to the latter group contain fixed, immovable words alongside

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empty slots into which appropriate words (for instance, words of a particular word class) are inserted (see, e.g., Goldberg 2009: 95; Booij 2010a: 14). The items inserted into these constructions are, themselves, constructions of varying complexity (see Taylor 2002: 565). A further merit of the construction grammar approach that is relevant in this investigation, which deals both with frequently occurring constructions and with constructions which, while productive and regular, are peripheral (and not necessarily acceptable to all native speakers), is that “core” and “peripheral” constructions are accounted for within the same framework (Goldberg 2009: 98), with no patches or exception rules necessary to deal with constructions that contravene rules that otherwise hold for a language (see Fillmore et al. [1988: 534]; an example studied in the present investigation is the adnominal genitive construction in modern Dutch). The principle is as follows: If speakers use grammatical patterns that a speech community (through its normative grammars) does not readily embrace, then the combined facts that such patterns (a) are used, and (b) have not been (explicitly) taught, guarantee the importance of such structures in language; it is not an indication of their triviality. fried & östman 2004: 15–16

A tenet of construction grammar which is relevant to the present investigation is the principle of no synonymy (of grammatical forms), namely ‘that a difference in form always translates into a difference in meaning’ and that ‘[i]f two forms are distinct, a strong assumption is made that there is a difference in usage on some level’ (Hilpert 2008: 14–15; see also Bolinger 1968: 127; Goldberg 1995: 3, 67). This means that two constructions with the same semantic content will differ pragmatically in some way (“meaning” includes semantic and pragmatic information), and that two pragmatically synonymous constructions must differ from one another in their semantic content (Goldberg 1995: 67). Examples relevant to this study include the distribution of the genitive or dative with certain prepositions in modern German, or the adnominal genitive’s association with higher register language and the avoidance of its semantically equivalent competitor, the von-construction, in that register. That the principle of no synonymy is not always absolute is shown, for instance, by the co-existence in a single register of the interchangeable adnominal genitive and von-construction, or the possessive -s and von-construction in the same register in modern German. In this investigation, the term synonymy is retained as shorthand for denoting semantically equal constructions; it is

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always borne in mind, however, that there may be other differences between two (semantically) “synonymous” constructions, i.e. they may not be absolutely interchangeable. During this investigation reference is made to the productivity of the constructions involved; that is to say, “the ability of a construction to be used to generate novel phrases (i.e. phrases that did not previously exist, whether in the language as a whole or in the lexicon of the language user who produced the phrase)” (Scott 2012: 84): Productivity is a matter of how available a pattern is for the sanction of novel expressions. langacker 2000: 26; emphasis in original

The principle is defined by Taylor (2002), thus: A schema captures the commonalities over its instances. At the same time, the schema may be able to sanction new instances which conform with its specifications, and to this extent the schema may be said to be productive. taylor 2002: 566

In fact, the conception of productivity pursued here is the regularity or regular performance, which Barðdal (2008: 30) defines, with reference to morphology and to syntax, thus: i. morphology: “The application of a morphological pattern to create new word forms of already existing words” ii. syntax: “The application of a syntactic process to create new instances of already existing syntactic patterns” Accordingly, as noted in Scott (2012: 84), regularity “relates to language users’ knowledge of the constructions and lexemes of their language, and their ability to combine constructions into meaningful utterances”. 4.2.3 The Diachronic Application of Construction Grammar The synchronic situation relating to a construction and its competitors can, up to a point, provide an insight into diachronic change. For example, the very existence of the synonymous adnominal genitive and the von-construction alongside one another in modern German is evidence of the emergence of an analytic construction alongside an earlier, synthetic one, or the competition

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between the genitive and dative as the case assigned by certain prepositions testifies to some rearrangement taking place in the case system. Put differently: It is assumed that the synchronic multifunctionality of any given construction reflects on stages of the historical development of that construction (Heine et al. 1991). This does not entail that diachronic developments are fully reconstructable on the basis of synchronic data, or that the synchronic meanings can be brought into diachronic order without recourse to actual historical data. Synchronic usage can merely serve to form hypotheses about earlier developments. hilpert 2008: 10

Thus, synchronic information alone is insufficient if we are to learn about the nature of the diachronic development of a construction. A usual assumption in constructional approaches to diachronic change is that whole syntactic structures can change, and that change can relate to pragmatic factors: (a) linguistic change often does not affect only single linguistic items, like words, morphemes, or phonemes, but also syntagmatic structures up to the sentential and utterance levels (i.e. the relevant co-text comprises all levels of explicitly expressed linguistic material) (b) linguistic change can be very con-text-sensitive, i.e. motivated, triggered or influenced by pragmatic extra-linguistic factors bergs & diewald 2008: 3–4

These tenets are also fundamental to the conception of change in the present study, in which changes affecting an entire syntactic string are examined (e.g. the favouring of a dative complement over a genitive one with certain prepositions), and in which a central notion is that the changes observed may be sensitive to the usage context in which they occur (e.g. one construction may become conventionalised—at the expense of another one—in a particular register or medium); the difficulties in accounting for language change by traditional approaches that do not include contextual factors are noted by Bergs & Diewald (2008: 9–10). The diachronic development of the genitive case in German and Dutch is observed in this study by assembling a chronological sequence of synchronic studies of periods from the early modern time to the present day. The developments observed are explained within a usage-based framework. It is assumed

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that every feature of a particular construction (as set out in Section 4.2.2)— whether structural or functional—may change over time; thus, a construction’s structure might remain constant while the register in which it is used changes, or the structure might change while the meaning remains the same. The merits of including the semantics of a construction as a variable in a diachronic study are noted by Hilpert (2008), whose focus is on grammaticalisation: It stands to reason that the semantics of a construction is subject to diachronic change, much as the semantics of lexical items. Studies of grammaticalization have often focused on the semantic developments of items at the word level, so that a shift in perspective towards the constructional level promises new insights and a refined view of the workings of grammaticalization. hilpert 2008: 2

In the approach adopted here, each group of competing constructions is considered in turn, with the semantic content of each group as a constant. For example, one group of competitors in modern German contains the synonymous prepositional genitive, dative and von-construction; another, both in early modern Dutch and in modern German, comprises the adnominal constructions, namely the genitive, the von- or van-construction (depending on the language), the periphrastic possessive and possessive -s. In the data sources introduced presently in Section 4.3, the relative occurrence of each construction is compared to the others within its group (controlling for constructionspecific factors such as a particular construction’s type frequency). In the first instance, the time variable is kept constant, thus producing a picture of the competition between the synonymous constructions during a given period and highlighting, in particular, any sociolinguistic, pragmatic or stylistic variation or conventionalisations. Once this methodology has been repeated on data from various periods, these individual synchronic portrayals are combined and viewed in chronological order to show the diachronic trends affecting the developments of the competing constructions and the interactions between them over time. It is assumed that language change—including morphosyntactic change— is a gradual process, based around individual utterances and spreading throughout a language community, and involving variation over an extended period. Even a cursory look at the affected constructions in modern German and early modern Dutch suggests that this approach is valid: variation persists over centuries, rather than changing abruptly from one generation to the next. The notion that usage affects language change also allows for the inclusion of

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codification as a variable in the process of change, with the norm taught at schools and elsewhere serving as part of the input to language users’ experience of their language. Two diachronic processes relevant to the present investigation are constructionalisation and constructional change. The former process, constructionalisation, refers to “the emergence of new constructions of different degrees of schematicity and substantivity” (Hoffmann & Trousdale 2011: 12); the new construction arises from an older one (Mauri & Sansò 2011: 3496). An example of constructionalisation that predates the periods covered in this investigation but which—as it produced the main competitor of the adnominal genitive throughout the history of German and Dutch—is an important factor here, is the emergence of the Dutch van-construction and the German von-construction, in which the prepositions van and von, respectively, whose original sense was one of direction, denote a “genitive” relationship between two noun phrases. A particular type of constructionalisation encountered in a language undergoing deflection is the process whereby a concordial case marker assumes a new role as something other than a concordial case marker. The nominal genitive -s suffix—across the Germanic languages—has been particularly susceptible to this process, now appearing in several constructions in which it is no longer a concordial genitive marker (see Sections 5.6 and 6.5). The redeployment of a morphological marker in a new role is known by terms such as exaptation and recycling. Lass (1990), taking the term exaptation from evolutionary biology, where it denotes “[a] feature of an organism that was initially moulded by selection for one function but is later further elaborated by selection for another function” (Arthur 2011: 341),2 outlines the possibilities for obsolescent morphology thus (Lass 1990: 81–82; emphasis in original): Say a language has a grammatical distinction of some sort, coded by means of morphology. Then say this distinction is jettisoned, prior to the loss of the morphological material that codes it. This morphology is now, functionally speaking, junk; and there are three things that can in principle be done with it:

2 One example of exaptation in evolution, of interest here as an analogy of the redeployment of the genitive -s suffix, is the change in function of birds’ feathers: now used as a means of achieving flight, the original role of feathers was to provide warmth (Schaffner 1993: 381; Arthur 2011: 197–198).

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(i) it can be dumped entirely; (ii) it can be kept as marginal garbage or nonfunctional/nonexpressive residue (suppletion, ‘irregularity’); (iii) it can be kept, but instead of being relegated as in (ii), it can be used for something else, perhaps just as systematic. A morphological marker does not have to be “junk” to become exapted, however. This is particularly clear in modern Standard German, in which the exapted possessive -s construction co-exists alongside its exaptatum, the -s suffix of the concordial genitive; it was also the situation in early modern Dutch in which the genitive agreement morphology, while obsolescent and supported by codification, was too productively and flexibly used to truly be describable as “junk”. This is recognised by Lass (1997: 318) who states that, while “junk” is frequently exapted, “[u]seful (or at least not marginal, decaying) features can be exapted too, and this can lead to massive innovation”; that is to say, “junk”-status is not a prerequisite for exaptation. Booij (2010a: 211) uses the term recycling of morphological markers, which leads to the existence of construction-dependent morphology, in which a particular marker becomes associated with a particular construction (2010a: 215). In contrast to constructionalisation, constructional change involves only an alteration to an existing construction: Konstruktionswandel erfasst selektiv ein konventionalisiertes FormBedeutungs-Paar einer Sprache und verändert es in seiner Form, seiner Bedeutung, seiner Frequenz, seiner Verteilung in der Sprechergemeinschaft oder in einer beliebigen Kombination dieser Aspekte. hilpert 2011: 69

Constructional change seizes selectively a conventionalised form-meaning pairing [i.e. a construction] of a language and alters it in its form, meaning, frequency, distribution in the community of speakers or in any combination of these aspects. (my translation) Accordingly, constructional change resembles extension, defined by Harris & Campbell (1995: 97) as “change in the surface manifestation of a syntactic pattern that does not involve immediate or intrinsic modification of underlying structure”. Several examples of constructional change turn up in Chapters 5 and 6; for example, the gradual restriction in type frequency of the Dutch possessive -s construction between the 16th and 19th centuries, the concurrent expansion

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in use of the Dutch concordial genitive over the same period, and the conventionalisation of the German prepositional genitive in formal written language alongside its interchangeability with the dative in colloquial language.

4.3

Data Sources

4.3.1 Introduction In view of this investigation’s focus on variation both synchronically and diachronically, quantifiable usage data were identified as the most appropriate source; in order to make the findings as valid as possible, it was necessary to obtain a spread of data from various registers, different levels of formality, and from spoken and written media. The use of the term register follows that of Biber (e.g. 1994), being “a general cover term for all language varieties associated with different situations and purposes”, i.e. a register is a “situationally defined” variety of language (Biber 1994: 32, 51). Through usage, a register comes to be associated with particular linguistic features which mark it as distinct from other registers (Ferguson 1994: 20; Biber 1994: 35). A dual distinction is made for the variable formality; namely formal vs. informal. While Görlach (2001: 59), for instance, makes a tripartite distinction of formal vs. neutral vs. informal, the simpler dichotomy is adopted here on the understanding that, in practice, the two categories are merely poles on a continuum of formality and that, while it is unproblematic to classify a particular source as formal or informal, allocating a source to the intermediate “neutral” category might introduce inconsistency; here, therefore, the two categories are to be regarded as fuzzy indicators of a source’s general relative formality. The formal group contains, for instance, sources of public language use like journalistic texts, televised discussions and academic prose, while examples from the informal group include language that is more private in character, such as online chats, face-to-face non-broadcast oral history interviews, letters to a spouse, and telephone conversations between friends. As far as medium is concerned, a basic dichotomy of written vs. spoken is followed, albeit with some provisos: the oral characteristics of the medially written chat data are borne in mind (Section 4.3.5); the medially spoken read-aloud texts occurring in the spoken corpora are classed as written language because, for the purposes of this investigation (as opposed to, say, a phonological one, where the pronunciation would be relevant), they only reveal the morphosyntax of a written document. Existing research on genitive use, both in German and in Dutch (Chapter 3), shows the distribution of the relevant constructions to vary according to register, level of

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formality, and medium. Therefore, the spread of data according to the variables mentioned here plays a crucial part in the investigation. The written sources used, both contemporary and historical, can be broadly divided into two categories; namely, writings produced for publication (newspapers, novels, plays, etc.), and egodocuments, i.e. “text[s] in which an author writes about his or her own acts, thoughts and feelings” (Dekker 2002: 14) (personal letters, diaries, online chats, tweets, etc.). The writers of the historical letters and journals studied here are generally more literate than the inexperienced writers whose egodocuments served as a basis for research into 19th century German by Elspaß (e.g. 2002, 2005a). For the modern languages, transcribed spoken data would also be necessary; for the historical periods, personal letters and journals were used in lieu of the necessarily absent spoken data albeit in awareness of the fact that such sources reflect not only the writers’ spoken language, but also the language which the writers had been taught in school (van der Wal 2007: 94–95), and that even less educated writers may have expressed themselves more formally in their egodocuments than they would have done in speech (Pounder 2007: 286). It was decided not just to restrict the dataset to that accessible in publicly available corpora; experimental approaches were taken to fill gaps in the corpus provision. This section describes the methodology adopted in collecting and classifying the data. While the necessity of obtaining quantified data to illustrate the extent of use of synonymous constructions ruled out an intuitive approach, it might be wondered why informant questioning was not used as a route to finding out about the relative use of the constructions. Both for Dutch and for German a number of factors spoke against the use of informants (beyond the obvious impossibility of informant questioning for earlier periods of the languages). Among Dutch native speakers there appears to be a widespread ignorance of the characteristics of the present-day adnominal genitive construction (despite its regular use in formal written language) while, in German, there was felt to be too much awareness of the supposed “genitive decline”, even among non-linguists; this is the result of the very public status of the genitive case as a poster child of language decline (Chapters 3 and 6), and there was a risk that it would somehow affect the accuracy of informants’ responses. The use of real life usage data overcomes such potential problems. To fulfil the aim of the present research to investigate the developments affecting the genitive case in German and Dutch from the earliest codified period up to the present day, it was necessary to gather a broad set of data from the 16th century to the 21st, covering as many registers as possible and, at least for the 20th and 21st century data, speech as well as writing. The reasons for

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selecting the sources used are explained in the sub-sections that follow, and the characteristics of the registers included in the dataset are discussed. The sources of usage data studied in this investigation fall into three categories: – a corpus, i.e. “a body of text made available in computer-readable form for purposes of linguistic analysis” (Meyer 2002: xii; see also McEnery & Wilson 2001: 17, 29–32) – a corpus-like source, i.e. one from which data can be extracted systematically, but which is only available in printed form and was searched by reading the entire text manually and excerpting the relevant examples3 – a systematically collected list of attestations found through web searches, post-edited in a database and thereafter used as a basis for quantitative analysis. The collected attestations were obtained through systematic web searches; they therefore differ in nature from a straightforward collection of encountered examples such as the dataset of Appel (1941).4 The data were gathered from these sources systematically, i.e. according to objective, explicit criteria, and exhaustively, i.e. every example of every construction under investigation was collected (Hilpert 2008: 31–32). While the matter of exhaustivity was unproblematic, the exact criteria for systematic data retrieval were potentially problematic in view of the existence of borderline examples alongside the unambiguous examples; this is noted by Hilpert (2008: 31): […] once the object of study is a syntactic construction, search procedures become more complicated. Some grammatical constructions may take a wide variety of shapes, and there will often be borderline cases. Any systematic collection of examples must not only provide explicit criteria for the selection of examples, but also criteria for the exclusion of examples. For some constructions the net was cast widely in the first instance and even the borderline examples were included and imported into the database, but were ultimately not included in the quantified dataset; this was the case, 3 In a previous research project into morphological productivity in Early New High German (Scott 2002), the use of such data was found to be effective and reliable, its only strong disadvantage being the time-consuming nature of this method compared to electronic corpus searches. 4 Note, however, that Appel’s dataset does cover variables of register and situation (Appel 1941: 1).

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for instance, with fixed expressions involving the genitive as knowing the frequency of their occurrence would be important to being able to give a general, all round portrayal of the genitive’s use. Conversely, the uses of the prepositions van and von (in Dutch and German respectively) which do not compete with (i.e. they are not synonymous with) the genitive—that is to say, which are not instances of the van-construction or von-construction as defined in Section 3.4—were ignored from the start; while their inclusion could have shed light on the “genitive” use of van and von relative to their other uses, it was felt that this insight was not strictly relevant to the investigation and that the sheer frequency of those prepositions in their respective language would have entailed much labour for little useful result. All the data collected, regardless of source, were imported into a database where they were coded for factors relevant to their use (see Section 4.4). This method—combined with the fact that a number of the sources had to be manually read in order to find the data—is, by its nature, very time consuming. Accordingly, relatively small corpora were necessary; the value of such richly coded data compensates for the relatively small dataset. Additionally, with the exception of the Eindhoven corpus, none of the corpora were tagged for the features studied here, so a great deal of post-editing and removal of false positives was required even before the data could be imported into the database. The sources used in the investigation are described in Sections 4.3.2 to 4.3.5. They are summarised in Table 4.2 (in Appendix 2). 4.3.2 Historical Dutch Sources From the 16th to the 19th century the nature of Dutch morphosyntax varied starkly according to medium and register. Speech and informal language was strongly affected by deflection, while formal written language was much more conservative, characterised by its retention of obsolete (or, at least, obsolescent) features such as morphological case marking. Given the interest of the present research in investigating both the nature of deflection and the relation between deflection and standardisation, it was important to locate sources of formal and informal language. A corpus of published texts, balanced temporally and by register, was constructed to show formal language use (see Meyer [2002: xii–xiii, 18] on the nature of a “balanced” corpus). The best source of spontaneous, informal data—in the absence of sound recordings—was taken to be informal egodocuments and, in particular, private, personal letters; these have been demonstrated to be similar in nature to—or, at least, strongly shaped by—colloquial or spoken language (e.g. Russ 1998: 643; Elspaß 2002: 46). The egodocument data were drawn from edited volumes of collected private correspondence.

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4.3.2.1 The Early Modern Dutch Corpus To obtain evidence of formal written Dutch from the early modern period, a purpose-built corpus was compiled. The corpus had to cover the period from the 16th century to the 19th century and had to include texts from a variety of registers. A model for the corpus was the pilot version of the GerManC corpus of early modern German compiled at the University of Manchester.5 Although the role played by type-setters, proof-readers and editors in the publishing process means that the language in those texts cannot be ascribed solely to the original authors of those texts, these published texts do show how case morphology was encountered by a general readership, i.e. how it was used in the living written language of the time. Given that it was in the interest of the writers and publishers to sell as many of these texts as possible, the presence of case morphology in the texts implies its continuing familiarity to the language users of the time: presumably, case morphology would have been avoided if it had been alien—and thus, perhaps, a reason not to purchase or read a text—to the potential readers. The status of language as a covenant between language users, shaped by those language users’ experience and the basis for those language users’ further language use is a central assumption here (see, e.g., Carstairs-McCarthy 2005: 5; Tuggy 2005: 234). Texts were obtained from the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL) (‘digital library for Dutch literature’), an online portal containing freely accessible digitised texts from the Middle Ages to the present.6 The organisation and structure of the corpus were determined in part by the periodisation and content of the DBNL. Three temporally defined sub-corpora, equal in size and conforming to the time divisions of the DBNL, were compiled: Gouden Eeuw (16th and 17th centuries), 18th century and 19th century. The Gouden Eeuw [‘Golden Age’, literally ‘golden century’] sub-corpus draws from a longer period than the other two sub-corpora by following the DBNL, in which the 16th and 17th centuries are conflated to the single Gouden Eeuw period. The time-delimited sub-corpora each contain circa 100,000 tokens (each therefore comparable in size to the pilot version of GerManC). Each time-delimited subcorpus consists of five register-defined sub-sub-corpora of circa 20,000 tokens each. The registers, loosely based on the distinctions made in the DBNL and exploiting the various text types covered within the DBNL as far as possible,

5 GerManC website: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/germanc/ [last accessed 28.2.13]. 6 Accessible at http://www.dbnl.org [last accessed 28.2.13].

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were selected to give the broadest possible spectrum of public language use and to shed light on any potential register-based variation in the use of the genitive and its competitors (see also the GerManC website):7 – diaries8 – drama – fiction – academic prose – factual non-academic prose

(orally orientated language) (orally orientated language) (narrative prose) (print-orientated language) (print-orientated language)

4.3.2.2 Brieven van en aan Maria van Reigersberch (Rogge 1902)9 A volume of letters to and from Maria van Reigersberch (Rogge 1902) is used as a source of early 17th century informal egodocuments. The volume contains letters by three writers:10 Maria van Reigersberch (1589–1653), her brother Nicolaes van Reigersberch (1584–1654) and her husband Hugo de Groot (1583– 1645).11 References to this corpus indicate the identity of the writer, the number of the letter and the page number in Rogge (1902). Maria’s letters—the earliest one dating from 1613 (Rogge 1902: 10)—are a useful source of casual, informal language use; not only do they deal with personal, everyday matters (Molhuysen & Blok 1912: 1184), but they are also characterised by having been written in haste, sometimes as the messenger was all ready to leave (Rogge 1902: 3). In total, the letters account for approximately 45,408 words of running text. The known correspondence from Nicolaes to his

7 The texts included are listed in Appendix 1. 8 In contrast to the journals published in Barend-van Haeften (2002), the diaries included in the corpus appear to have been written with publication in mind. 9 Rogge (1902: 2) notes the occurrence of the spelling variants Reigersbergh and Reigersbergen (Reigersberg also occurs), and a presence and absence of the van, both during Maria’s lifetime and later; compare Maria’s signatures at Rogge (1902: 65, 142, 174, 233). Furthermore, in her letters, Maria signs her forename both as Maria and Marie (e.g. Rogge 1902: 129, 181). This investigation follows convention and uses Maria van Reigersberch throughout. 10 Three further letters, written by Johan van Reigersberch (Maria’s eldest brother) were ignored, primarily because, as a short note taking up just two printed pages (Rogge 1902: 325–326), their contents would be of little use in a quantitative study, but also because they did not contain any of the investigated constructions. 11 Like that of his wife, several variants of Hugo de Groot’s name are encountered, such as Huig de Groot and Hugo Grotius. Despite the latter being the name by which de Groot is best known in the English-speaking world, he will be referred to here by the most frequent Dutch version of his name, Hugo de Groot.

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sister amounts to 20 letters, alongside 296 to his brother-in-law (Molhuysen & Blok 1912: 1185); those 20 letters to Maria van Reigersberch are included in Rogge (1902) and account for approximately 7,430 words of text. They form part of the data studied for this investigation and allow a contrastive picture between the language of the van Reigersberch siblings and that of Hugo de Groot, whose letters to Maria, published in Rogge (1902), account for 3,509 words of text and exhibit a grammar more conservative than that of his spouse. 4.3.2.3 Op reis met de VOC (Barend-van Haeften 2002) A source of 18th century informal language use is a volume containing journals kept by two pairs of sisters travelling with the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC; in English known as the Dutch East India Company). The earlier of the two journals, containing approximately 25,116 words of text, was written in March–September 1736 by Maria Wilhelmina Lammens (1709–1738) and her younger sister Johanna Susanna Lammens (1713–1737) while on a voyage from their native Zeeland to Batavia. Their journal, the surviving copy of which was written up by their brother (from the sisters’ original texts), was written to be read by their family and friends; the language they used, while striving towards standard Dutch, retains features of the sisters’ native dialect (Barendvan Haeften 2002: 27–28). The later journal, containing approximately 17,532 words of text, was written in March–June 1751 by the sisters Helena Johanna Swellengrebel (1730–1753) and Johanna Engela Swellengrebel (1733–1798), who were sailing with their family from their (and their parents’) birthplace, the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), to the Dutch Republic (Barend-van Haeften 2002: 30). Initially, the sisters kept their journal for themselves, but later made an abridged version for their family; the journal was written by Helena, who wrote up Johanna’s notes into the final version (Barend-van Haeften 2002: 33). Both journals describe the daily life of privileged travellers on the VOC’s sailing ships, including private and social activities, and mealtimes. A note is necessary on the inclusion of the Swellengrebels’ journal as a source of Dutch, given that the sisters, like their parents, were natives of South Africa. A pertinent question is whether their language is not actually Dutch at all, but Afrikaans. While the history of Afrikaans can be dated to 1652 with the arrival of a party from the VOC at the Cape of Good Hope (Ponelis 1993: 1), and Dutch and the language spoken in South Africa were said to be clearly distinct by 1741 (de Villiers 1960: 11), it is unclear when the start date of Afrikaans should be set: Vekeman & Ecke (1992: 225) consider Afrikaans an individual language by 1780; Lockwood (1972: 102) places the start date about a century later, by which time the Afrikaners “could now rarely speak or even write Dutch correctly”. Roberge (2002: 83) states that the earliest texts which can be considered Afrikaans

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date from the late 18th/early 19th century but dates the development of Standard Afrikaans to the period 1900–1930 (Roberge 2002: 84), around the time (1925) when Afrikaans was recognised as an official language (Ponelis 1993: 54). Accordingly, the Swellengrebel journal, dating from a time when the language used in South Africa was still a variety of Dutch (albeit a distinctly South African variety), is perhaps best considered “South African Dutch”, and not straightforward Dutch or Afrikaans. Certainly, the Swellengrebels’ language is noticeably more deflected than that of their Netherlandic fellow diarists, the Lammens sisters, who were writing only fifteen years earlier; there are, for instance, no productively formed genitive phrases in the Swellengrebel journal.12 Nonetheless, their journal is more readily readable by a modern day Dutch speaker than an Afrikaans text would be. The Swellengrebels’ African background must be borne in mind when drawing conclusions based on their evidence. References to this source indicate the surname of the writer, the date of the journal entry in which the example occurred, and a page reference to Barend-van Haeften (2002). 4.3.2.4 Kikkertje lief. Brieven van Aagje Luijtsen (Moree 2003) A further source of informal 18th century Dutch language use is the volume of letters written by Aagje Klaasdr Luijtsen (1756–1797) to her husband Harmanus Kikkert (1749–1806), a steersman with the VOC. Comprising circa 28,631 words of text, the nineteen letters were written to Kikkert during his absence on two separate voyages (1776–1778 and 1779–1780). Both writer and recipient were born in Den Burg on the island of Texel; Luijtsen had attended school and was literate (besides her letter writing, references passim in her letters show her to have obtained information on the whereabouts of her husband’s ships from newspapers), and her handwriting shows her to have been a practised writer (Moree 2003: 11–14). Luijtsen’s letters had only one intended reader, namely her husband (Moree 2003: 40), and the tone is accordingly intimate and personal (Moree 2003: 39); noticeably more so than that of the letters of the other corresponding wife studied here, Maria van Reigersbergh. Like the van Reigersberch letters, Luijtsen’s letters are sometimes written in haste (Moree 2003: 40), a characteristic she herself refers to (e.g. in Letter 10 [23.7.1778] and Letter 17 [30.8.1780], [Moree 2003: 137, 188]), and are therefore likely to reflect her everyday, unforced language use. The transcriptions published in

12 On the other hand, the characteristic Afrikaans use of the periphrastic possessive with inanimate possessors (de Villiers 1960: 23; Donaldson 1993: 98, 99; Hantson 2001: 10), is also absent from the Swellengrebels’ language.

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the volume were made from photocopies of the original letters; the original orthography was left generally unaltered, including spelling mistakes but with certain alterations—clearly marked in the published edition (such as missing letters reinstated in square brackets)—undertaken for ease of reading (Moree 2003: 74–75). These alterations are reversed in the examples quoted in this investigation. References to this source indicate the surname of the writer, the date of the letter in which the example occurred, and a page reference to Moree (2003). 4.3.2.5 Waarde van Lennep: Brieven van De Schoolmeester (Mathijsen 1993) The letters from the exiled Rotterdammer Gerrit van de Linde (1808–1858)— also known as De Schoolmeester ‘the schoolmaster’—to Jacop van Lennep (whose own views on the discrepancy between real-life genitive use and that propounded in contemporary grammars are noted in Section 5.3.2) form the sample of 19th century personal letters studied here. The selected letters published in Mathijsen (1993), in which some changes were made to orthography and punctuation (but nothing that would have affected the integrity of the reproduction of the relevant morphosyntactic constructions) (Mathijsen 1993: 11), account for circa 40,512 words of text produced between 1831 and 1857. References to examples from this source indicate the date of the letter in which the example occurred and the page in Mathijsen (1993) on which the example occurred. 4.3.3 Historical German Sources The historical German sources are sparser than those for Dutch. This simply reflects the fact that the focus of this investigation is on the relative use of the genitive and its competitors in present-day German, and the parallel (and similar) situation in early modern Dutch. Nonetheless, it was necessary to obtain quantifiable information on how the present-day German situation was reached. Additionally, a German-specific matter was the attempt to establish when the possessive -s construction emerged; this was studied on the basis of certain texts, described below, which were expected to be interesting sources of possessive -s use. 4.3.3.1 Martin Luther (Jillings & Murdoch 1977) To provide an overview of genitive use in spontaneously written Early New High German, it was decided to use as data a sample of the polemical texts of Martin Luther (1483–1546). Luther’s German is typical of the time in that it displays a great deal of variation (Wolf 1980: 27; Fleischer 1983: 161) and varies strongly in style depending on his audience and purpose for writing

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The sub-corpora of the pilot version of GerManC including the number of tokens contained in each (obtained by the author using the word count function of Microsoft Word)

Period of sub-corpus

Tokens in sub-corpus

1650–1700 1701–1750 1751–1800

33,534 33,382 32,972

Total

99,888

(Bach 1985: 1443). His polemical texts—in contrast to his more carefully written Bible translation—were often written in haste, with little time for revisions and second thoughts: the influential Von der Freyheyt eyniß Christen menschen ‘Of the freedom of a Christian’ (1520), one of the texts included in the sample, was written in simple language over just two days (von Polenz 1991: 138). The texts date from the period 1520–1530 and provide 34,893 words. 4.3.3.2 GerManC The only historical German corpus consulted was the pilot version of the GerManC corpus, consisting of circa 100,000 words from newspapers published throughout the German-speaking area between 1650 and 1800. This corpus is available in electronic form, having been digitised from images of the original printed pages.13 One particular value of this corpus is its division into three near-equal-sized sub-corpora, allowing diachronic comparisons across the 150 year period; the period covered by each sub-corpus, and the size of each, is shown in Table 4.3. 4.3.3.3

Letters by Elisabetha Dorothea Schiller (in Schiller 1964, 1972, 1975, 1981, 1988, 1991) The letters of Elisabetha Dorothea Schiller (1732–1802) to her writer son Friedrich have been chosen as a source of informal, personal correspondence overlapping the late 18th and early 19th century. Despite a patchy education (Alt 2000: 61), E.D. Schiller was more than basically literate, her letters revealing her

13 http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/germanc/pilot/ [last accessed 28.2.13].

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to have read her son’s work and, while Alt (2000: 61) doubts that she would have read other than religious texts, Carlyle (1825: 5) notes her love of poetry. E.D. Schiller’s correspondence to her son (and one to her daughter in law) is contained in volumes 34 to 39 of the Briefe an Schiller (‘letters to Schiller’) section of the Nationalausgabe of Schiller’s works (Schiller 1964, 1972, 1975, 1981, 1988, 1991). The letters contain circa 33,501 words of text produced between May 1792 and February 1802 (two months before her death). Research into her correspondence by Russ (1998, 2005) has shown that her writings exhibit a use of the standard language influenced by her dialect, and that about 80 % of the words she wrote were spelled as they would be in modern standard German (Russ 2005: 144).14 Frequently, the orthographical deviations reflect her Swabian pronunciation (Russ 1998: 650; Russ 2005: 147). 4.3.4 Contemporary Dutch Sources The three corpora used to provide quantified data on modern Dutch (spanning the period 1960–2003) were all obtained from the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (INL) (‘institute for Dutch lexicology’). 4.3.4.1 The Eindhoven Corpus (Eindhoven)15 The Eindhoven corpus, published in 1975 and containing material from the period 1960–1973 is, in spite of its age and relatively small size (circa 720,000 words), a useful and important data source in the context of the present investigation; the corrected VU-versie of 1989, available for download from the INL, is used here. An important advantage of the corpus is the fact that it consists of seven equal-sized—and therefore directly comparable—sub-corpora (of approximately 120,000 words each). There is one sub-corpus of transcribed speech; the other sub-corpora contain written language, each one from a particular register. The exact details of each sub-corpus are shown in Table 4.4, which is reproduced from information in the corpus documentation.16 Refer-

14 Russ’s empirically founded verdict is more revealing than the characterisation of E.D. Schiller’s written language made by her son’s biographer Alt (2000: 61): “Ihre Briefe an den Sohn weisen eine stark fehlerhafte Orthographie auf und sind ohne stilistische Geläufigkeit verfaßt”. [‘Her letters to her son demonstrate a strongly erroneous orthography and are written without stylistic fluency.’ (my translation)]. 15 Corpus documentation available at: http://www.inl.nl/tst-centrale/images/stories/ producten/documentatie/ehc_documentatie_nl.pdf [last accessed 28.2.13]. 16 A further sub-corpus, Renkema, containing political correspondence from 1975–1976, was not included in the present investigation on account of its anomalous size—48,000 words— which make it incomparable with the core sub-corpora listed in Table 4.4.

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The contents of the Eindhoven corpus (based on corpus documentation, Section 5)

Sub-corpus

Sources

Period

dagbladen ‘daily newspapers’

Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, NRC, Het Vrije Volk, De Telegraaf, De Tijd, Trouw

1969–1970

opiniebladen ‘news magazines’

Elseviers Magazine, HP Magazine, Vrij Nederland, Accent, De Groene, Hervormd Nederland, De Nieuwe Linie

1970–1971

gezinsbladen ‘family magazines’

Avenue, Televizier, Elegance, Eva, Libelle, Margriet, Nieuwe Revue, Panorama, Prinses, Televizier, Sextant

1970–1971

romans en novellen 52 works by Dutch authors which were first ‘novels and short published in 1970 stories’

1970

populair wetenschappelijke boeken ‘popular science books’

art, medicine and psychiatry, religion and 1964–1973 philosophy, teaching and education, science, biology, geography and anthropology, transport and technology, history, psychology, law and economics, social sciences

gesproken taal ‘spoken language’

Part I: speakers of standard Dutch—group 1960–1973 discussions, interviews, spoken letters Part II: free conversations with people of low education

ences to this corpus indicate the sub-corpus (translated into English) and the sentence number. A further advantage offered by Eindhoven is its manual (and therefore highly accurate) lexical and grammatical tagging (see also van Oostendorp & van der Wouden 1998), which permitted searching for genitive-marked determiners and nouns. Following the searches for tagged examples, the corpus was manually read through in order to find the few mistagged genitives; namely, tokens of the genitive which had not been tagged as such. These mistagged examples

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generally involved a genitive occurring as part of a title and therefore tagged as a single unit. This corpus was used as the basis for a pilot study into the use of the genitive in modern Dutch (Scott 2009) which identified a particular association with the modern adnominal genitive construction with formal written language and prompted the use of the 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus as a means of obtaining more detail on the use of the construction (Scott 2011a). 4.3.4.2 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus 1995 (INL 27 Mil.)17 The INL’s 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus 1995, containing circa 27 million words of text drawn from articles published in the broadsheet newspaper NRC Handelsblad between 2 January 1994 and 30 April 1995, is the largest source of formal writing consulted in this study. The corpus is searched online via a Telnet client which delivers search results via email, with each example shown in a context of up to 50 words; while unproblematic for finding occurrences of the relatively rare adnominal genitive, this restricted searchability—combined with the corpus’s large size, the large number of expected results and the lack of suitable tagging—meant that the corpus could not be used, as the Eindhoven corpus had been—to investigate the van-construction and possessive -s. (The necessary search terms for all occurrences of van and all words ending in -s, from which the relevant tokens would have had to be manually separated from the false positives, would have produced more than the allowed maximum 1,000 hits allowed by the search program for each search carried out.) Reference is made to this corpus by citing the abbreviated title INL 27 Mil. and the month and year in which the example was produced. 4.3.4.3 Corpus Gesproken Nederlands (CGN) The third corpus of modern Dutch consulted was done so with the prior expectation that it would reap only a small amount of data. The pilot study based on Eindhoven—and native speakers’ intuitions—indicated that the modern adnominal genitive construction is only rarely used in spoken language. Nevertheless, in an attempt to test this expectation on the basis of a large data source, the CGN was deployed. The CGN contains approximately 9 million words of transcribed speech: 3.3 million from Flanders, and 5.6 million from the Netherlands; it covers the period 1991–2003 and contains spoken

17 Corpus documentation available at: http://www.inl.nl/tst-centrale/images/stories/ producten/documentatie/27mwc_handleiding_nl.pdf [last accessed 28.2.13].

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language both spontaneously produced and read aloud, and is divided into the following components:18 – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

spontaneous, face to face conversations interviews with teachers of Dutch telephone dialogues business negotiations broadcast interviews and discussions (radio and television) discussions, debates and meetings (particularly of a political nature) lessons broadcast spontaneous commentary (radio and television) broadcast current affairs reports and reportage (radio and television) broadcast news bulletins (radio and television) broadcast accounts and commentaries (radio and television) masses, readings and solemn speeches university lessons and lectures read-aloud texts

A value of the inclusion of the (admittedly sparse) data obtained from the CGN is that it confirmed that, on the one hand, the adnominal genitive is rare in spontaneous spoken Dutch (most of the CGN examples came from read-aloud texts and broadcast news bulletins), but that, on the other hand, it is used productively in spontaneous speech to some extent. When coding the CGN data in the database, only the examples from spontaneous speech were classified as having originated in spoken language; the examples from texts read aloud were classified as having originated in written language. 4.3.5 Contemporary German Sources Locating and accessing suitable sources of contemporary German was less straightforward than it had been for Dutch. The German data are drawn from a variety of sources; namely publicly available corpora, a corpus compiled by the author for a previous investigation, and printed volumes of transcribed speech published from the 1970s to the 1990s. In total, the various sources provide circa 1,700,636 words of writing and transcribed speech covering the period 1960–2005. This is a great deal less than the circa 36 million words of Dutch also used in this investigation. However, the aim of the Dutch data was

18 Information from online corpus documentation: http://lands.let.ru.nl/cgn/doc_Dutch/ topics/version_1.0/overview.htm#kerncorpora [last accessed 28.2.13].

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to investigate a marginal and rarely used construction, which necessitated a large sample simply to ensure that sufficient examples would occur in order to provide meaningful quantifiable information; in contrast, the German constructions investigated are—particularly in formal language and certainly far more than the popular perceptions noted in Section 6.6—pervasive and frequent. 4.3.5.1 Sources of Written Language The two sources of written contemporary German used in this investigation are conspicuously small alongside the several very large corpora of written German currently available. For example, the corpora of journalistic language available via the Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS) interface are all larger than the journalistic corpus used here: for example, the Die Zeit corpus contains 448 million words, the Berliner Zeiting corpus contains 252 million words and even the smallest newspaper corpus on the interface, the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten corpus, contains 15 million words. The format of the output of search results from those corpora, however, would have made their use problematic for the present investigation, for which a plain text file, easily importable into a database, was necessary. The results from the DWDS corpora would have had to be copied and pasted from the web browser in which they were displayed, often over many pages and in rather complex form, and re-arranged; furthermore, it is likely that the number of tokens of the searchedfor constructions would have exceeded the maximum allowed by the search function in the online interface. A further potential pitfall might have been that the sheer number of tokens would have hindered one of the fundamental aspects of the present methodology; namely, the manual coding of each example for structural and pragmatic information. It was therefore decided to focus on smaller corpora, within which the totality of the competition involving the genitive case could be accounted for. Certainly as far as formal written language is concerned, this approach appears to have been effective. 4.3.5.1.1 The Spiegel Online Corpus (Spiegel) The Spiegel Online corpus, providing 711,248 words collected during the period November 2004-January 2005, was specially constructed for a previous investigation by the author (Scott 2006). 4.3.5.1.2 The Dortmunder Chat-Korpus (Dortmund) The full version of the Dortmunder Chat-Korpus contains 1.09 million words of running text produced in online chats. The corpus is divided into two components: the “professional” chats were produced in situations such as teaching

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and learning contexts, and in advisory situations, as well as discussions with professionals, politicians and celebrities; the “Plauder” (‘conversational’) chats were produced in free time situations (Bestandsdokumentation Releasekorpus: 2). As such, the professional-free time dichotomy is not identical with a formal-informal distinction. Those chat files which could be made publicly available appear in the Releasekorpus, which is the version used in the present research. The Releasekorpus contains 551,762 tokens of text; there are 433,064 tokens of “professional” chats (i.e. 78.5% of the Releasekorpus) and 118,698 tokens of “Plauder” chats (i.e. 21.5%) (Bestandsdokumentation Releasekorpus: 3). The Releasekorpus covers the period 2000–2006. The nature of the language of synchronous online chats—which are particularly characterised by “radical linguistic innovation” (Crystal 2006: 135)—makes the Dortmund corpus an especially interesting source for the present investigation. Although chatters communicate through typing (i.e. through “written” language), a maxim followed, particularly in informal chats, is to write as one would speak and to do so as quickly as possible (Vandekerckhove 2009: 34). The relative use of the genitive case and its competitors is known to be related to register and medium and, as a register existing in the tension between medial writtenness and conceptual orality (Wirth 2006: 118), and in which language production tends to be very spontaneous, the division of labour between the genitive and its competitors in a corpus of chat language is difficult to predict in advance (in contrast, for example, to the Spiegel corpus of formal German produced for public consumption, in which the dominance of the genitive over its competitors was predictable from the outset). On the one hand, the relative informality of chat communication (even in the “professional” chats) might lead to increased use of the von-construction and dative objects of genitive prepositions; on the other hand, given the importance of economy to a medium characterised by speediness (Siever 2006: 82; Diekmannshenke 2007: 220; Vandekerckhove 2009: 34), the adnominal genitive—which, in terms of number of typed characters, is more economical than the von-construction—might be favoured. Nonetheless, relatively formal chats—such as moderated chats dealing with politics—exhibit an adherence to the written norm (Diekmannshenke 2007: 219). Chat communication involves the use of computers as a “Beziehungs-Medium” (‘relation-medium’) (Thimm 2001: 104); other examples of this include emails and newsgroups and, postdating Thimm (2001), social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Although it is medially a form of written language— being produced, for example, by precisely the same means (i.e. a computer) as the prototypically written journalistic data in the Spiegel corpus—chat communication differs strongly from more typical types of written language.

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Indeed, as demonstrated by Storrer (2001), it exhibits many of the characteristics of spoken language; many of the peculiarities of chat communication are a natural consequence of accelerated writing in a setting that is, conceptually at least, oral, with participants viewing themselves as speakers rather than authors (Storrer 2001: 440, 444–445; but compare also Albert [2013: 145– 174, 192], whose data suggest the opposite). The description of conversation given by Liddicoat (2011: 1) also covers the general nature of chat communication: Conversation is the way in which people socialize and develop and sustain their relationships with each other. When people converse they engage in a form of linguistic communication, but there is much more going on in a conversation than just the use of linguistic code. Much that is important in conversation is carried out by things other than language, including eye gaze and body posture, silences and the real-world context in which the talk is produced. liddicoat 2011: 1

The paralinguistic phenomena noted in the second part of the above quotation, and which characterise spoken language, such as facial expressions and gestures, can be reproduced by typed characters (Storrer 2001: 447–449; Vandekerckhove 2009: 36); other than, for instance, emphatic use of bold or italic type, underlining, or exclamation marks, paralinguistic phenomena are absent from core written language. In the convention of online communication, in contrast, paralanguage is rendered typographically, such as using emoticons or words to describe an action (Crystal 2006: 38–45). Examples of the replication of facial expressions, gestures or actions by more or less elaborate graphic means in the Dortmund corpus are shown in (1).19 (1)

a. emoticon, animated in the original source: Beleg: Message Nr. 123 aus Dokument 2223001_degu-chat_18-03-2003.xml im Teilkorpus Plauder-Chats / 2200000 Ausserhalb Medienkontext / 2220000 Webchat / 22223000 Degu-Chat / 123 19:48:08 Denise ich hoffe mal, ihr werdet euch einig, baloo. Ich wurde wegen meinem Nachnamen schon zuhauf gehänselt, wie würde das dann erst bei “Würmchen” ….. ☺

19 The examples in (1) reproduce the output of searches in the Dortmund corpus.

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b. combination of letters and punctuation marks (*g* = grinsen ‘grin’) Beleg: Message Nr. 465 aus Dokument 2221002_unicum_11-02-2003.xml im Teilkorpus Plauder-Chats / 2200000 Ausserhalb Medienkontext / 2220000 Webchat / 2221000 Unicum / 465 MissMess kommst du zufällig aus dem ruhrpott … wegen deines dialekts mein ich *g* A major consideration of chat communication, just as in prototypical spoken conversation, is the matter of turn-taking; however, the nature of the order of the turns differs between spoken and chat communication. The following principles of order, assumed in the field of conversation analysis, hold in spoken discourse: 1. Order is produced orderliness. That is, order does not occur of its own accord nor does it pre-exist the interaction, but is rather the result of the coordinated practices of the participants who achieve orderliness and the[n] interact. 2. Order is produced, situated and occasioned. That is, order is produced by the participants themselves for the conversation in which it occurs. The participants themselves orient to the order being produced and their behaviour reflects and indexes that order. […] 3. Order is repeatable and recurrent. The patterns of orderliness found in conversation are repeated not only in the talk of an individual speaker but across groups of speakers. The achieved order is therefore the result of a shared understanding of the methods by which order is achievable. (from liddicoat 2011: 5)

In contrast, the matter of order in chat communication is to some extent out of the hands of the chat participants, being determined by the technology involved and punctuating chats with time lags between utterances (Crystal 2006: 34); chatters’ attempts to exert some control over these conditions shapes their language use. The “default setting” of spoken conversation is that one participant is speaking at a time (Liddicoat 2011: 80); this is the only possibility in chat communication because the order of turns as displayed in the window of the chat program is determined by the order in which the individual participants’ contributions reach the server (see also Crystal 2006: 161). Overlapping turns, regardless of whether they occur through speakers’ following turn-taking rules (see, e.g., Hutchby & Wooffitt 2008: 54–57), through interruption (or “problematic overlap”—Liddicoat [2011: 118–136]) or through “a simultaneous start by two self-selecting speakers” (Liddicoat 2011: 119) are impossible

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in chat communication (see also Crystal 2006: 33, 158). Here, speakers cannot follow the turn-taking conventions that shape prototypical conversation interactions (as described, for instance, by Hutchby & Wooffitt [2008: 41–65] and Liddicoat [2011: 80–136]). Thus, to ensure one’s turn is visible (and not pushed out of view by other participants’ near-simultaneous turns), speedy typing is a necessity which, by its nature, results not only in a high instance of typos and other fluency errors, but also in the use of the most economical linguistic forms possible (Storrer 2001: 442, 450); in practice, the turns may become disjointed, with two turns relating to one another separated by other chatters’ contributions which arrived at the server in the meantime. The relative speed of chat language compared to other medially written (or typed) language matches spoken language in its “fast, almost instantaneous production and understanding” (Leech & Svartvik 1994: 10). Furthermore, in the interest of economy, turns tend to be short (Vandekerckhove 2009: 35): the 551,762 words of the Releasekorpus of Dortmund appear within 59,876 Chat-Beiträge (‘chat-contributions’, i.e. turns); the average length of each turn is therefore 9.2 words.20 The accelerated nature of chat communication leads to a conventionalised disregard—but not a complete suspension (see Diekmannshenke 2007: 221)—of the orthographical norm without a detrimental effect on the content of the discussion: in German chats, for instance, the use of lower case initial letters on nouns in accepted, and there is a great tolerance of violations of the norm, and simple spelling mistakes, in general, even from language users who can be assumed to have a good grasp of the norm (Diekmannshenke 2007: 221) Another aspect in which the medial writtenness of chat communication shines through, and marks it as different to speech, is the fact that chat utterances are not transient (although this is relative, given that they will, in practice, be lost quickly from display on screen; see, on this, Crystal [2006: 32]), disappearing as soon as they are produced, as in speech (Leech & Svartvik 1994: 10), but that they remain on screen for some time (Wirth 2006: 119); the possibility of “recording” the proceedings of a chat without being noticed, listed by Wirth (2006: 119) as a non-oral characteristic of chat communication, would

20 This is lengthier than the average of 4.23 words per contribution in a sample studied by Crystal (2006: 162) and may reflect the fact that not all the chats in Dortmund demanded extreme speed; while the discussion following a broadcast television programme in real time might have required speed and brevity, the academic discussions and quizzes would have been taken at a more relaxed pace; the question-and-answer sessions with university administrations would have been hindered by too much speed and brevity. In addition to considerations of economy, placing excessively long utterances is viewed as a breach of netiquette (Crystal 2006: 161–162).

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seem in fact to come closer to recording a spoken conversation with a hidden microphone and without the knowledge (or consent) of the other participants. While Wirth (2006: 119) characterises chat communication as oscillating between orality and writtenness, Storrer (2001) concludes that chat language constitutes typed speech: Der Chat ist trotz seiner genuinen Schriftlichkeit dem Diskurs zuzurechnen, ist also ein getipptes Gespräch […]. storrer 2001: 462

The chat is, despite its genuine writtenness, to be classed as discourse; it is, therefore, a typed conversation […]. (my translation) Diekmannshenke (2007: 220) disagrees, stating that chats, on account of the absence of simultaneity, do not represent typed conversations; on his view they represent, rather, inszenierte Mündlichkeit ‘staged orality’. The usefulness of chat language to a linguistic investigation such as this one is clear from Crystal’s description of this register (2006: 176), which he, too, likens to speech (notice the term “dialogue”): Chatgroups are the nearest we are likely to get to seeing written dialogue in its spontaneous, unedited, naked state. Siever (2006: 82), following Storrer’s (2001) conception, views chat communication as a modern equivalent of 19th century personal letters containing characteristics of orality; that is to say, the authors (i.e. the 19th century correspondents and the 20th/21st century chatters) are simply writing down their spoken language (see also Wirth 2006: 121). Throughout this investigation, therefore, the chat data will be classed as “informal writing” on the understanding that such informal writing is likely to contain characteristics of informal speech. Thus, the chat data are a useful supplement to the contemporary spoken data studied here and described below. 4.3.5.2 Sources of Spoken Language Some creativity was required in finding sufficient data of spontaneous modern German speech. The most important factor was to locate sources of authentic spontaneous speech—both formal and informal—from real life; that is to say, excluding speech elicited in a recording studio which, on account of the artificiality of the situation, is susceptible to the effects of the observer’s paradox and the possibility that speakers speak less often and more formally

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than they normally would do (Bungarten 1979: 39; Redder & Ehlich 1994: 3), as well as the speech produced in strictly defined contexts such as a map task or a calendar task in which there is little opportunity for demonstrating the use of particular morphosyntactic constructions.21 The two most obvious sources were unsuitable for the purposes of the present investigation: the Korpus Gesprochene Sprache, available via the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache interface and containing circa 2.5 million words, contains only formal speech, much of which is taken from interviews in journalistic publications and which therefore may have been normalised in the editorial process; the non-dialectal corpora accessible in the database Gesprochenes Deutsche at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim could have been used although in some cases finding information on the precise occurrence of a particular example may have been problematic. In any case, the most promising data from the database, those from the Freiburger Korpus of transcribed spontaneous speech from the period 1960–1974 are available in part as publications in the series Texte gesprochener deutscher Standardsprache, in which the nature of every transcribed speech situation is clear. The Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech, with data produced in a calendar task and designed for phonetic— rather than morphosyntactic—research, was also unsuitable on account of the constrained nature of the language it contains. Finally, spoken data were drawn from a variety of sources which, between them, cover a broad spectrum of spontaneous German speech. The largest single source is the relatively small Berliner Wendekorpus, accessible via the DWDS interface; additionally, a number of published volumes of transcribed spontaneous speech produced in various situations and in various registers were used. While not comparable with prototypical electronic corpora in terms of size or searchability, these volumes allow certainty on the origin of the transcribed conversations and on the size of the sample. Each volume was read manually, with every relevant example typed up and entered into the database. While time-consuming compared to searching electronic corpora, this approach still yielded reliable and exhaustive data, and permitted a familiarity with the nature of the transcribed conversations—invaluable when assessing pragmatic matters such as the level of formality and the use (or avoidance) of other case constructions—which would have been more difficult to achieve with straightforward searches of an electronic corpus.

21 On the nature of one particular example of a calendar task, see Kohler et al. (1995: 2–6).

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4.3.5.2.1 The Berliner Wendekorpus (Berlin) The Berliner Wendekorpus contains 282,000 words of transcribed (non-broadcast) interviews with Berliners conducted during 1993–1996, in which the interviewees discuss their personal experiences of German reunification. Despite its small size and geographical restriction, it is a good source of spontaneous, relatively informal spoken data. The possibility of the presence of a recording device leading to the interviewees’ language becoming more formal (Bungarten 1979: 39) is borne in mind when considering stylistic variables in the Berlin data, as is the likelihood that the interviewees were talking to a Standard Germanspeaking researcher; nonetheless, the strong Berlin accent of many of the interviewees, reflected in the corpus transcription, does not suggest a great degree of register-raising. 4.3.5.2.2 Sperlbaum (1975) This volume of transcribed colloquial language contains transcriptions of recordings made in 1960–1961 with speakers from West Germany and West Berlin; the aim of the publication was to provide information on geographical and social variation within the German language (Sperlbaum 1975: 9). The volume contains approximately 8,198 words of transcribed speech. 4.3.5.2.3

The Freiburger Korpus (Freiburg): Steger et al. (1971), van Os (1974), Fuchs & Schank (1975), Jäger (1979) The four volumes of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache’s series Texte gesprochener deutscher Standardsprache (‘Texts of spoken German standard language’) containing selected texts from the Freiburg corpus cover spontaneous, nondialectal speech in different, real-life (as opposed to laboratory) situations and contexts, varying in formality, familiarity of participants, and intimacy. In all, these transcriptions cover the period 1962–1972, which account for approximately 67,908 words of text. The definition of what constitutes standard language for the purposes of the Freiburg corpus is as follows: Standardsprache soll hier so verstanden werden, daß sie frei gesprochen sein muß, als überregionales Verständigungsmittel dienen muß und sich mit der hochsprachlichen Phonologie annähernd decken muß. [The concept of] standard language should be understood here as having to be freely spoken, as having to serve as a super-regional means of communication and as having to approximately coincide with the standard phonology. (my translation) van os 1974: 8, my translation; see also deutrich 1971: 310

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Furthermore, van Os (1974: 8) stresses that Standardsprache must not be confused with Umgangssprache (‘colloquial language’) although, as noted by Karch (1976a: 75), the transcriptions in van Os (1974) all, to a greater or lesser extent, contain words characterised as colloquial in the Duden dictionaries. It is this impossibility of credibly separating one from the other than has led to this investigation’s including colloquial language as a sub-type of standard language, defined as any non-dialectal language use. (The issue of distinguishing between prototypical dialect and standard language use that is simply regionally flavoured is discussed elsewhere.) Important to the undertaking was that only spontaneously produced speech was included; prepared speech—that is to say, texts read aloud—was excluded (Deutrich 1971: 21); cf. Ernst (2010: 226) on this matter. The corpus contains both specially made recordings (such as those in Jäger 1979), and recordings of radio and television broadcasts were used (such as those in van Os 1974) (Deutrich 1971: 20). The texts of transcribed speech are reproduced uncorrected and unaltered (Steger 1971: 13). An advantage offered by the specially recorded conversations of the 1970s vis-à-vis similar recordings made today is that the language recorded is completely uninhibited by the presence of recording equipment: speakers were only retrospectively told that they had been recorded (Deutrich 1971: 20); this is also the case with the telephone recordings transcribed in Brons-Albert (1984). Ethical considerations would prevent the replication of this method today. Transcriptions are given in standard orthography; the reservations expressed by Karch (1976b: 396) as to the obscuring of phonetic characteristics in this method are of secondary importance in a study of morphosyntactic constructions. 4.3.5.2.4 Brons-Albert (1984) Brons-Albert (1984), consisting of transcribed telephone conversations, provides the most informal and spontaneous spoken data studied here. The recordings were made by Brons-Albert, by means of a telephone adaptor attached to her telephone, between May 1977 and February 1978. Participants were only informed that they had been recorded after the conversation and recording had taken place; if a participant did not give permission for their recording to be included in the volume, the recording was erased. Participants were anonymised; proper names are replaced by single letters in the transcriptions. In all, the volume contains circa 44,025 words of transcribed speech which is noticeably more spontaneous—and often a great deal more intimate—than that of the other sources studied.

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4.3.5.2.5 Redder & Ehlich (1994) The most recent of the printed volumes consulted for the present investigation, Redder & Ehlich (1994) contains circa 35,495 words of transcribed speech recorded between 1980 and 1992. The volume contains speech from various fields, both institutional and non-institutional (Redder & Ehlich 1994: 5); for example, recordings of courtroom proceedings and job interviews, and recordings made in doctor’s surgeries and in a coalmine. The language is, as such, spontaneous but always relatively formal (although less so than, say, the broadcast discussions in van Os 1974). 4.3.6 The Web as a Source of Linguistic Data Since the mid-1990s, much has been written about the usefulness of the web as a source of linguistic data, the value of any data obtained through web searches, and of the suitability of search engines as tools for retrieving linguistic data from the web. In this section, the various ways in which the web was deployed as a research tool and a data source in the present investigation are described in the light of other scholars’ evaluations of such use of the web. As an immense and constantly updated source of language data, about which “it is reasonable to assume that all categories of written language are represented to some extent” (Lüdeling et al. 2005: 7), the web in particular is a valuable resource if “the phenomenon under investigation is rare […], or stems from a time that the corpus data do not cover (for example, it is too new)” (Lüdeling et al. 2005: 1). The “unfiltered” nature of the web, in contrast to the structured nature of many corpora, means that the language it contains is “unedited and thus reflective of how people actually use language” (Meyer et al. 2003: 253). This latter definition should be relativised a little: much of the language on the web has indeed undergone editing, appearing in online news and academic publications, or on relatively “official” websites where it is safe to assume that the writers put some care into their language use; compare, for instance, the discussion forum and chat data which form much of the basis of the analysis of German possessive -s (Section 6.5.2) and which are rich in misspellings, irregular punctuation, and features of spoken language, with the website of a newspaper, company or even an individual. Although doubtless a prime source of real-life data, the exact nature of the web as a type of data is harder to put a finger on. Defining a corpus as “a collection of texts when considered as an object of language or literary study”, Kilgarriff & Grefenstette (2003: 334) contend that the web itself can be regarded as a corpus; Meyer (2002: 28) calls it “the ultimate corpus”. Sinclair (2004) disagrees because “its dimensions are unknown and constantly changing, and because it has not been designed from a linguistic perspective”, but concedes

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that it is “a remarkable new resource for any worker in language”. Regardless of whether or not it is to be called a corpus, or whether or not it is to be used as if it were a corpus, the web must be used cautiously as a source of linguistic information. The advantages of the web are clear: it is a huge, constantly updated source of usage data from a wide spectrum of registers and levels of formality; unlike many corpora, it is freely accessible (within the limits of the individual search engines), and the data are displayed in an easily accessible form. In terms of sheer size and diversity, it eclipses even the largest prototypical corpora. The potential pitfalls when using the web as a source of data are well discussed in the literature, and relate not only to the vastness of the web and, hence, the fact that it is something of an unknown quantity, but also to the crudeness of the tools available with which to obtain data from the web. Corpora are generally constructed in such a way that the origin of the texts—and, in the case of corpora of transcribed speech, the origin and background of the speakers—is known; this is not the case with web searches. A measure of ingenuity and patience is necessary to ascertain, for instance, whether the writer of an entry on a discussion forum is even a native speaker of the language in question; a great many of the discarded false positives brought up by web searches for authentic examples of German possessive -s use, actually turned out to have been produced by non-native speakers (possibly applying the English possessive -s construction to German) and thus had to be discarded. Already in the 1990s, the desirability of a web search engine specifically designed for linguistic research was recognised (van Oostendorp & van der Wouden 1998). Barring attempts such as WebCorp,22 which was used experimentally in the early stages of the present project, this need has not yet been fulfilled. The extant search engines are not as fine as standard corpus concordancing programs, not allowing specialised or wildcard searches (although, usefully, exact phrase searches are possible), and potentially including duplicates in the results of a search (see, e.g., van Oostendorp & van der Wouden 1998; Kilgarriff & Grefenstette 2003: 344–345; Meyer et al. 2003; Fehringer 2004: 292; Lüdeling et al. 2005: 6). Despite the value of its consisting of so many different text types, web searches cannot be restricted to a particular text type (unlike corpora with a similarly varied make-up). In sum, the nature of the web and the tools used to search it means that the findings of web searches may not always be reliable and that it should therefore be used as a qualitative—and

22 WebCorp homepage: http://www.webcorp.org.uk/index.html [last accessed 28.2.13].

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not a quantitative—tool; the information provided by web searches “is ‘suggestive’ and can give a sense of which linguistic usages are common and which are not” (Meyer et al. 2003: 253). Accordingly, careful use is made of the web in the present investigation so as to make most effective use of the possibilities it offers, while keeping the potential problems to a minimum. In a previous investigation (Scott 2006), the web proved invaluable as a means of supplementing information gleaned from corpora and for providing further examples of marginal phenomena represented only sparsely in the corpora consulted. This use of the web was reprised in the present work; some of the examples presented throughout this work are drawn from web searches. Additionally, to provide data of one especially marginal construction—the extended use of German possessive -s—an experimental approach was adopted in which the web was exploited in a way as close as possible to the prototypical exploitation of a corpus, namely as a fixed and (relatively) known body of data, rather than a source of isolated ad hoc attestations. Given that speculative web searches had shown extended possessive -s to be a regular but relatively restricted phenomenon, it was felt that the web might profitably be used as a data source. These speculative searches indicated that extended possessive -s was found to occur with possessor noun phrases which have the structure “possessive determiner + kinship noun”. Accordingly, a list was compiled of all the kinship terms in German; the list was extended by trial and error to include other personal nouns which also occurred in the construction. In combination with a possessive determiner, these nouns were used as the basis of systematic, exact phrase searches carried out using www.google .de over two days in October 2009. Every possible inflected form of the determiner was searched for (19). The searches were carried out within a delimited period in order to make the web as much of a known quantity as possible and to make the token counts for each search term comparable with one another. Although unlike a proper corpus which can be described in terms of the number of words it contains, the data collected can be considered every example of the construction present on the web during that two-day period. (19) search terms for mein Vater ‘my father’:23 “mein Vaters” “meinen Vaters” “meinem Vaters”

23 The form “meines Vaters” was not searched for as this would be a concordial genitive formation, and not possessive -s.

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The data were copied and pasted into a .txt file, and imported into a database constructed using FileMaker Pro. This database was used to smooth out the roughness of the Google search results: duplicates were discarded, as were false positives (e.g. where the -s denoted plurality) and examples that had been produced by non-native speakers of German. The remaining examples—each of which received its own record in the database—were coded for information on their morphosyntactic structure and pragmatic factors. The resulting database contains 5,140 examples of extended possessive -s use which, with the exception of certain personal nouns which may have been missed, accounts for close to all tokens of the constructions present on the web during October 2009. Casual searches carried out roughly three years later seemed to show that the construction had greatly increased its online presence in the meantime; nonetheless, the 2009 data are focused on in this investigation as those are the data coded in the database. Another experimental approach at obtaining data from online sources was carried out during a pilot study for the research reported here; the findings formed the basis of Scott (2011b), investigating the use of the German genitive and its competing constructions, and are part of the dataset studied in Chapter 6. Rather than taking the entire web as a source, data were drawn from the social networking site Twitter using the site’s search function (similar in nature to Google searches).24 The cross-section of users, and the messages (‘tweets’) they post, is broad; for example, private users writing informally (these were classed as informal tweets for the purposes of this study), as well as media organisations posting news updates, and businesses advertising a product (these latter categories were classed as formal tweets). As such, Twitter provides a representative cross-section of the kinds of language produced and encountered in everyday life (see, for instance, the list in Heinemann 2000: 604). Data were gathered during February 2010. Searches were performed for the genitive masculine and neuter singular definite article des, its competitors von dem and vom (i.e. the contraction of von dem), and a selection of prepositions known to appear with both the genitive and the dative and, in some instances, also with the von-construction. The intention was to provide an overview (as a pilot study to more detailed research) of the relative occurrence of the genitive and its competitors in everyday German. The searches for the genitive and its competitors in use with nouns to mark possession were restricted to two hours’ worth of tweets in view of the large number of hits generated by these searches. The searches for the prepositions (with few excep-

24 http://twitter.com/, http://search.twitter.com/advanced [last accessed 28.2.13].

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tions) produced comparatively few hits; these were restricted to tweets produced in the preceding five days. Some post-editing was necessary to remove false positives and duplicates caused by retweeting (i.e. the re-sending of a tweet).

4.4

The Databases

Three separate databases, similar in nature to one another, were constructed for use in the present research: – Dutch: genitive case and equivalent constructions – German: genitive case and equivalent constructions – German: extended possessive -s Each database was constructed in a similar way; the fields for coding the records with information varied between the databases depending on the factors relevant to each. The databases are .fp7 files constructed using FileMaker Pro 8 and 10. Data were retrieved and entered into the database following these stages: 1. Collection of data: a. Corpora: data found using tag or lemma searches; relevant sentences/ contexts pasted into a Word document b. Non-corpus sources: data found by manually reading the source; relevant sentences typed manually into a Word document 2. Treatment of raw data file (Word document): a. Removal of false positives and other irrelevant sentences (this stage was repeated once the data were in the database) b. The raw data in the Word document were converted into a table in which each sentence/context was a separate row; additional columns were added for the corpus/source name, an ID number/reference (e.g. the unique identifier of the sentence in the corpus, the number or date of the letter or journal entry, etc.), the non-genitive noun phrase and the genitive noun phrase—the latter two columns were filled by copying the relevant words from the sentence; additional rows were added if there was more than one example in a sentence. Each column corresponded to a field in the database; thus, the data in each column would be automatically entered into the relevant field. c. The resulting table was converted to a tab-separated file saved in .txt format.

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table 4.5

The size of the three databases constructed for this investigation

Database

Number of records

Dutch genitive German genitive German possessive -s

21,075 30,438 5,056

3. Importation of data into database: a. The .txt document was imported into the database. b. Each example corresponded to an individual record. c. Each example was coded for structural and pragmatic information relating to its use. The exact contents of each database—and the information they reveal—are dealt with in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. For information, the size of each database is shown in Table 4.5.

4.5

Summary of Chapter 4

This chapter set out the theoretical framework which informs the analysis that follows in the rest of this investigation; a usage-based, construction grammar approach was adopted as it was felt that this would account most efficiently for the structural, functional and pragmatic factors relevant to the development of the genitive and its competitors in Dutch and German since the early modern period. The nature of the diachronic application of construction grammar was discussed and the methodology followed here—namely, assembling individual synchronic investigations across a particular period into chronological order to provide a diachronic overview—was explained and justified. The sources of data were then described and evaluated. The reasons for selecting the particular sources—namely, reaching from the early modern period to the present day, and covering as many registers and media as possible—were set out, and the methodology followed to exploit these sources was described. The necessity of including non-corpus sources to fill gaps in the coverage offered by prototypical corpora—and the manner in which these sources were exploited—was explained. Finally, the databases in which the collected data were coded, and on which the investigation in Chapters 5 and 6 is based, were described. The

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success of this approach is evaluated throughout the investigation when considering the results obtained; a more explicit evaluation both of the theory and data involved is given in Chapter 8.

chapter 5

The Dutch Genitive 5.1

Introduction

In Dutch the history of the genitive case is characterised by its preservation first as an obsolescent construction in the written standard of a deflecting language and, ultimately, in the form of a restricted, obsolete relic and a number of exapted constructions in a deflected language. To put this development in a cross-Germanic context, this chapter begins, in Section 5.1.1, by showing that the survival of obsolete case morphology—generally within fixed expressions—is common throughout the Germanic languages; an overview of the fate of morphological case marking in Dutch is given in 5.1.2. The effect of deflection on the genitive case in pre-standardisation Dutch—that is, during the Old and Middle Dutch periods—is examined in Section 5.2 before the influence of standardisation on the development of the genitive is considered; first, in Section 5.3, by studying 16th–19th century normative grammars and then, in Section 5.4, by looking at the situation in actual usage from the 16th to the 19th century. Sections 5.5 and 5.6 deal with the surviving remnants of the genitive case in present-day Dutch, and conclusions are drawn in 5.7. 5.1.1 Obsolete Case Morphology in Modern Germanic Languages In contrast to the other now caseless Germanic languages, modern Dutch still contains a great deal of evidence of its lost case system, which was all but gone from spoken language by the start of the early modern period, but remained in formal written language until the early part of the 20th century. In the modern language, these surviving remnants of case morphology usually occur within fixed, stored expressions formed when the morphological case system was still active; the case forms of determiners and other markings remained in place when the rest of the expression became entrenched. Thus, regardless of register, examples such as those in (1), in which the case-marked words are in boldface, are frequently encountered in everyday modern Dutch; a comprehensive list of such expressions compiled by the Nederlandse Taalunie contains circa 377 examples.1

1 This figure is approximate because of repetitions and multiple examples under a single entry in the list, making precise quantification difficult; it shows, nonetheless, that the survival of

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_006

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accusative: op den duur on the.acc duration ‘in the long run’ dative: te mijnen huize to my.dat house.dat ‘in my house’ genitive: een steen des aanstoots a stone the.gen offence.gen ‘a bone of contention’ commissaris der koningin commissar the.gen queen ‘the Queen’s commissar’

Obsolete inflectional morphology also remains in some place names. The official name of the town ’s-Hertogenbosch (literally ‘the Duke’s wood’) contains a genitive noun phrase (2a), while its informal name Den Bosch (literally ‘the wood’) features the objective form of the definite article (2b). (2) ’s-Hertogenbosch a. from: ’s hertogen bosch the.gen duke.gen wood ‘the duke’s wood’ b. Den Bosch the.obj wood ‘the wood’ The inflected forms of determiners and markings are now simply part of these expressions and names and are learned as part of the expression. As such, they are of little interest to the synchronic study of morphosyntax of the present-day language (Booij 2002: 36); as far as a diachronic study of Dutch morphosyntax

case morphology in fixed expressions is far from rare in Dutch. The list may be viewed at: http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/tekst/77 [last accessed 28.2.13].

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is concerned, such fixed expressions provide a closing chapter (or, perhaps, a postscript) to the history of the decline of the case system. Even in a language with an active case system, such as German, case morphology can become frozen and unchangeable inside a place name; this was also true in earlier periods of Dutch (hence the entrenchment of ’s-Hertogenbosch and the like). For example, as a consequence of the establishment of farms named after their owner on cleared former woodland, genitive-marked place names, in which the genitive ending is an immovable, invariant component of the name, are frequent (Steinhauser 1927: 179, 182; Kaufmann 1961: IX, 140); the final -s in place names such as Gaezweins, Jöstleins, Mollands, Pötzles, Robans, Trittings and Weczels is a genitive -s (Steinhauser 1927: 6–12). A final nominal dative -e is preserved in place names ending in -berge ‘mountain.dat’, -felde ‘field.dat’ and -walde ‘wood.dat’, while place names ending in -hausen ‘house.dat.plu’ and -stätten ‘place.dat.plu’ preserve a dative plural ending (Bach 1953: 117). This preservation of dative forms stems from the predominant use of place names in dative, rather than nominative, syntactic contexts; in names involving case marking, the dative form accordingly became the most familiar one and eventually became the established name for the place in question (Bach 1953: 116). More extreme examples occur when an entire phrase becomes entrenched as a name; for example, in the name of the German town Weil der Stadt (literally ‘Weil the town’, the postmodification serving to distinguish this Weil from other communities in the region also named Weil) (3), the determiner der is invariant, even when the name occurs as a subject or direct object; originally known as Weil die Stadt, repetition of the name following dative prepositions such as aus ‘from’ and nach ‘to’ led to the chunking of the whole noun phrase including the dative form of the determiner (Paulus 1852: 244 [footnote]; Schütz 1996: 5).2 (3) Weil der Stadt Weil the.fem.dat.sg town ‘Weil the town’ Obsolete case morphology also survives in English and the mainland Scandinavian languages, but to a much lesser extent than in Dutch. This reflects the 2 Despite an attempt in the 19th century to reintroduce the nominative variant Weil die Stadt as the official variant, the official orthography was fixed as Weil der Stadt in 1862 (Schütz 1996: 5). An alternative etymology of the name Weil der Stadt as having developed from Weil/Wil zu der Stadt ‘Weil to/in the.dat.fem.sg town’ is given by Bach (1953: 117). Either way, this name involves a case-marked determiner frozen inside a fixed unit.

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loss of morphological case marking from those languages centuries before its eventual disappearance from Dutch. In the mainland Scandinavian languages a nominal genitive -s is retained in some fixed expressions consisting of a prepositional phrase with the preposition til ‘to, at’, which originally assigned genitive case (4). In English, obsolescent morphosyntax is encountered within some frozen expressions (5) while, throughout the Germanic languages, obsolete lexical items survive in fixed expressions (6), as can a noun’s original (but no longer current) lexical gender (7). (4) Danish: til bords to table.gen ‘at table’

til søs to sea.gen ‘at sea’

(5) English: if need be ‘if there is a need’ would that it were ‘if only if was/were so’ In German, the noun Fug ‘decency’ remains in the modern language only as a base of derived lexemes such as Unfug ‘mischief’ and in some fixed expressions (Paul 1992: 298; Duden 2011a: 648, 1832) (6). (6) German: mit Fug und Recht with decency and right ‘rightly, justifiably’ In Danish, the noun sted ‘place’ was of common gender until the 18th century, but is neuter in modern Danish. It can no longer be used alone as a common gender noun but, in the secondary preposition i stedet/steden for ‘instead of’ it may take either the neuter (-et) or the common (-en) definite article; this preposition grammaticalised while sted was still of common gender, while the neuter variant has become entrenched in the meantime (7a). Both variants are acceptable in modern Danish although the neuter variant outnumbers the common gender variant in the modern language: in KorpusDK there are 8,435 tokens of the neuter variant and only three of the common gender variant. Only the neuter variant is listed in Politiken (2005), but prescriptive advice permits either variant.3 3 E.g. http://www.b.dk/viden/i-steden [last accessed 28.2.13].

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(7) Danish: a. common: i steden for in place.def.common for ‘instead of’ neuter: i stedet for in place.def.neut for ‘instead of’ The Dutch noun tijd ‘time’, which is now of common gender, is a similar case. The noun tijd ‘time’ is now of common gender. Until the Middle Ages it was both masculine and feminine (Oudnederlands Woordenboek, Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, Middelnederlands Woordenboek) but, by the early modern period and in 18th and 19th century prescriptive works, it was masculine only (e.g. Van Dale 1864). Both genders occur in frozen expressions with tijd (7b). b. feminine:

de loop der the course the.gen.fem.sg ‘the course of time’ masculine: de tand des the tooth the.gen.masc.sg ‘the test of time’

tijd time tijds time.gen.masc.sg

The surviving morphosyntactic remnants generally cannot be used productively; this is exemplified in (8) with hypothetical formations analogically based on some of the examples above. (8) Danish: a. *Hun er til togs. she is to train.gen ‘she is on a train’ English: b. *We could do that if requirement be. German: c. *Er hat nicht den Fug, das zu tun. he has not the decency that to do ‘he does not have the decency to do that’

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Danish: d. *Det er en smuk sted du bor i. it is a.common nice place you live in ‘It’s a nice place you live in.’ The English pronoun whom (9), the preserved objective form of who, is regularly encountered in the present-day language but is “no longer current in natural colloquial speech” (OED Online). Furthermore, it is now used differently to the other objective personal pronouns, occurring also as subject in the usage of some speakers, a tendency dating back to the 14th century (Lasnik & Sobin 2000: 345). The pronoun form whom is absent from child language (Lasnik & Sobin 2000: 346), and its use in colloquial language can create a particular pragmatic effect; as such, it is comparable to the modern Dutch adnominal genitive construction and the Standard German genitive (particularly the prenominal adnominal genitive) as an instance of morphology serving also as a stylistic tool or register marker (see also Sections 5.5 and 6.4.4). (9) Well, that’s true, but there are some people whom you’d rather not have in your house. british national corpus, spoken component, hm5 013

Obsolete morphological markers that can be used productively today have generally developed a new function, such as the possessive -s construction found in many Germanic languages, which emerged from the masculine/neuter genitive singular nominal suffix and would have been used with all roles of the genitive, but which now is only used adnominally to mark possession, is no longer restricted to masculine or neuter nouns, and which may (in some languages) attach to the right-edge of postmodification of the head noun of the possessor noun phrase (10). (10) English: They are the colour of the leader of the council’s shirt and as such ⟨pause⟩ as such I would have said cheap at half the⟨shift new=laughing⟩ price british national corpus, spoken component, jt7 95

the best I ever heard for not coming in was that a tree fell on the girl I sat next to’s house, and that it knocked over the power line, and she was afraid to go outside or she would get shocked to death. http://broken-inquisition.xanga.com/16187772/item/ [last accessed 28.2.13]

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Nonetheless, a fragment of the Dutch adnominal genitive has survived into the modern language, preserving the morphological agreement marking of the original genitive (11). This construction is analysed in Section 5.5, where an explanation, building on that proposed in Scott (2011a, 2012) is posited for its survival. (11) de kroonprins der keepers the crown-prince the.gen.plu keepers ‘the crown prince of (goal)keepers’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1995) 5.1.2 A Brief Overview of the Fate of Morphological Case Marking in Dutch Originally, the Dutch morphological case system consisted of nominative, genitive, dative and accusative cases; distinctions of number (singular, plural) and gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) were made. Within the noun phrase, case was marked on determiners, adjectives and, for some cases, also on nouns. Concordial case marking is absent from modern Dutch (Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1156; see also de Vries 2006: 19, van Eynde 2006: 144) but novel formations such as (11) are still encountered (Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1184). In contrast to English and the mainland Scandinavian languages, the history of the Dutch genitive case—and, indeed, that of the entire morphological case system—is strongly marked by the influence of codification, which prolonged the life of the obsolescent genitive—alongside much of the deteriorating case system— through the early modern period and into the 20th century, at least in written language. It is argued in Section 5.4 that the preservation of the adnominal genitive fragment exemplified in (11) is a side effect of this. A periphrastic prepositional construction is now used to connect two noun phrases in a (broadly) possessive relationship instead of the two adjacent noun phrases, one marked for genitive case, which would have been possible when the morphological case system was extant (see Weerman 1997: 437, but also Scott 2011a, passim), as shown in (12). (12) adnominal genitive > van-construction 18th century: de oorzaak der afstooting the cause the.gen.fem.sg repulsion modern Dutch: de oorzaak van de afstoting the cause of the repulsion ‘the cause of the repulsion’ A further periphrastic construction, performing the role of the adnominal genitive if the possessor is human, is the periphrastic possessive construction (often

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referred to in Dutch studies as the Jan z’n boek-construction [Hendriks 2012: 28]), in which a pronoun, agreeing in gender and number with the possessor noun, marks possession (13). (13) adnominal genitive > periphrastic possessive concordial genitive: mijns broeders ziel 19th century my.gen.masc.sg brother.gen.masc.sg soul periphrastic mijn broeder zijn ziel possessive: my brother his soul ‘my brother’s soul’ In other morphosyntactic contexts, case marking has simply been lost (or, on an alternative view, has been replaced by an equivalent zero-marking construction), as in (14) and (15). (14) partitive genitive > ∅ 18th century: een considerabele som gelds a considerable sum money.gen modern Dutch: een considerabele som geld a considerable sum money ‘a considerable sum of money’ (15) preposition + case marking > preposition + ∅ 16th/17th century: buuten der steden outside the.gen/dat.plu towns modern Dutch: buiten de steden outside the towns ‘outside the towns’ The ending -s, originally a nominal inflection attached to most masculine and neuter singular nouns in the genitive, developed into a once-only marker of possession, insensitive to the gender of the noun to which it attaches (16). (16) genitive -s > possessive -s concordial genitive: mijns broeders ziel 19th century my.gen.masc.sg brother.gen.masc.sg soul ‘my brother’s soul’ possessive -s masculine noun: 16th/17th century

myn Groot-vaders Broeder my grandfather.poss brother ‘my grandfather’s brother’

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possessive -s feminine noun: 16th/17th century

myn Moeders tranen my mother.poss tears ‘my mother’s tears’

In (12)–(16) the examples from older Dutch are taken from the Early Modern Dutch Corpus; the modern examples have been constructed to provide direct equivalents to the old examples. The adnominal constructions are not mutually exclusive: the periphrastic possessive is restricted to, and the possessive -s construction tends to take, human possessors, while the van-construction faces no such restriction; thus, with a human possessor, any of the three constructions is possible, albeit subject to pragmatic restrictions. This chapter portrays diachronically the development of the Dutch genitive case and its competitors, the division of labour between the synonymous constructions, and the tension between deflection and standardisation manifested in the use of these constructions. As such, the aim of this chapter is superficially similar to that of Vezzosi (2000), which is referred to at points throughout the chapter. However, Vezzosi (2000) tells a different story to the one told here. She follows the loss of the concordial genitive and its eventual replacement—via an unexpected development following the 15th century—by analytic constructions; in contrast, I view the concordial genitive as a constant from Old Dutch to the present day. Its role and nature change over time and new constructions appear alongside it, but it is nonetheless present in some form or other all the way through.

5.2

The Genitive in Old and Middle Dutch

5.2.1 Introduction The transition from medieval to modern Dutch marked an important stage in the development of morphological case marking in Dutch, with formal written Dutch exhibiting a resurgence in the use of case morphology, while informal, colloquial usage continued the decline that had been underway from the earliest period of Dutch as a language in its own right and across the medieval period. As a foundation to the empirical investigation of the early modern Dutch genitive in Section 5.4, this section provides a diachronic overview—on the basis of secondary literature and some primary sources—of the development of the genitive in the early stages of the Dutch language.

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5.2.2 Old Dutch (Pre-12th Century) The case system inherited by Old Dutch consisted of nominative, genitive, dative and genitive cases (Quak & van der Horst 1997: 47), but was already in decline (van der Horst 2008: 145); that is to say, the processes of deflection which are followed throughout this chapter (and, indeed, throughout this book) were already underway by the time Dutch emerged as a language in its own right. The genitive performed a number of roles (see van der Horst 2008: 148–150): it could be used adnominally to connect two noun phrases in a possessive or partitive relationship (17, 18), while the objects of certain verbs occurred in the genitive (19), as did the complements of certain adjectives (20). The temporal adverbial use exemplified in (21) remains in modern Dutch in the form of fossilised phrases that were already present in Old Dutch. The examples presented in (17) to (21) are taken from Zangemeister & Braune (1894: 45), van der Horst (2008: 149–150) and the Oudnederlands Woordenboek; the original attestation and date are given in parentheses. (17) Mines wines winstra liget under minemo hoiuede my.gen lover.gen left-hand lies under my head ‘My lover’s left hand lies under my head’ (Willeram van Ebersberg. c. 1100. (Expositio) Willerammi Eberspergensis abbatis in canticis canticorum) (18) wanda min hoiuet is fol douwes because my head is full dew.gen ‘because my head is full of dew’ (Willeram van Ebersberg. c. 1100. (Expositio) Willerammi Eberspergensis abbatis in canticis canticorum) (19) gehuge ouch minero wundon remember also my.gen wounds.gen ‘remember also my wounds’ (Willeram van Ebersberg. c. 1100. (Expositio) Willerammi Eberspergensis abbatis in canticis canticorum) (20) Ik thes uuirdig ni bium I the.gen worthy not am ‘I am not worthy of this’ (from the Old Saxon Heliand [Genesis], 9th century) (21) inde in euun sinro thenken sal dages inde nahtes and in law his think-he shall day.gen and night.gen ‘and about his law he shall think day and night’ (Wachtendonckse Psalmen, 10th century, Psalm 1)

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5.2.3 Middle Dutch (c. 1150–c. 1500) The effects of deflection that had already been visible in Old Dutch really started take effect during the Middle Dutch period, which is characterised by a morphological case system that was breaking up (Burridge 1993: 136). Noun gender fluctuated and, in the north of the Dutch-speaking area, the masculinefeminine distinction weakened (see, e.g., van der Horst 2008: 581–582, 803– 804). By the end of Middle Dutch, the genitive had all but succumbed to the van-construction, possessive -s and the periphrastic possessive; nonetheless, throughout the period, it retained the flexibility of use which it had had in Old Dutch. Adnominally, the genitive case continued to be used to mark a (broadly) possessive relationship between two noun phrases (Hogenhout-Mulder 1983: 41–42; van Kerckvoorde 1993: 80; Vezzosi 2000: 120). Prenominal order (22) and postnominal order (23) were both possible, with the former dominant (van Kerckvoorde 1993: 80). (22) eens ridders sone a.gen knight.gen son ‘a knight’s son’ (Der Leken Spieghel, c. 1325–1330; reproduced in Franck [1910: 199]) (23) de oorspronc des levens the origin the.gen life.gen ‘the origin of life’ (Jan van Ruusbroec. c. 1335. Die chierheit der gheesteliker brulocht; reporoduced in Franck [1910: 213]) Denoting partitive relations, both with nouns (24a,b) and with adjectives (24c), was another common use of the adnominal genitive (Burridge 1993: 258; Hogenhout-Mulder 1983: 42). (24) a. dat hii lettel tiits heeft that he little time.gen has ‘that he has little time’ (Flemish translation of the Apocalypse, 14th century; reproduced in Franck [1910: 207]) b. Hi […] begheert enen droppel waters he desires a drop water.gen ‘He […] desires a drop of water’ (Jan van Ruusbroec. c. 1360. Boec van seven trappen; reproduced in Franck [1910: 213])

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c. Aldus en coemt van gulsicheit niet veel goets, mer so en comes from greed not much good.part but ontellike veel quaets. uncountably much evil.part ‘So, little good and much evil come from greed.’ (Jan van Rode. 1437. Des Conincs Somme; reproduced in Franck [1910: 215]) A number of verbs continued to assign a genitive object (25) (Stoett 1977: 107; Hogenhout-Mulder 1983: 40–41; van Kerckvoorde 1993: 80–81); the verbs involved are characterised by Burridge (1993: 258) as “verbs of wishing or asking”, “verbs of thinking or perceiving” and “verbs with a sense of ‘doing without’ or ‘parting with’”. (25) Mi dinke dat men weldoens verget me thinks that one good-deed.gen forget ‘Methinks that one forgets a good deed’ (Jacob van Maerlant. 13th century. Spiegel Historiaci; reproduced in Franck [1910: 172]) Several adjectives continued to demand a genitive object (26) (Stoett 1977: 114; Burridge 1993: 258; van Kerckvoorde 1993: 82), as did certain prepositions (27). (26) Als hi sijns worts ghwaer, reet hi tot hem as he his.gen word.gen aware rode he to him ‘On hearing his word, he rode to him’ (Melis Stoke. c. 1300. Rijmkroniek; reproduced in van der Horst [2008: 353]) (27) overmits deser sonden in-view-of these.gen sins ‘in view of these sins’ (Jan van Rode. 1437. Des Conincs Somme; reproduced in Franck [1910: 214]) A deflectional development affecting the adnominal genitive, but not involving its replacement by another construction, is the omission of the nominal -s from masculine and neuter singular nouns (28) (Franck 1910: 148; Stoett 1977: 105; see also Willemyns & van der Horst 1997: 219). The omission of -s also occurred with proper names (29) (Franck 1910: 163). This development also occurs in early modern and modern German (Chapter 6). (28) Dus nederde des keyser crone thus lowered the.gen emperor.∅ crown ‘Thus lowered the emperor’s crown’ (Jacob van Maerlant. 1288. Spiegel historiael)

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The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in 13th century Belgian texts (weerman & de wit 1999: 1158 [originally their example (7)])

mijns oom kinder my.gen uncle.∅ children ‘my uncle’s children’ (reproduced in Stoett [1977: 105]) (29) Loduwijc des groten dood Ludovic.∅ the.gen great.gen death ‘the death of Luduvic the Great’ (reproduced in Franck [1910: 163]) Robbrecht broeder Robbrecht.∅ brother ‘Robbrecht’s brother’ (reproduced in Franck [1910: 163]) By Middle Dutch, the van-construction had become constructionalised as an alternative to the adnominal genitive (30); that is to say, the preposition van had become grammaticalised as a means of expressing (broadly) possessive relationships between noun phrases and was no longer solely used to denote direction (Vezzosi 2000: 125). (30) want hi is here van allen dieren because he is lord of all animals ‘because he is lord of all animals’ (Jan van Ruusbroec. c. 1335. De chierheit der ghestekleker brulocht; reproduced in Franck [1910: 213]) In the 13th century, the two constructions occurred to a roughly equal extent; this is shown by Weerman & de Wit (1999: 1158) on the basis of texts from Gent and Liège (Figure 5.1).

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figure 5.2 The relative proportions of the genitive and van-constructions in 13th–15th century texts from Brugge (expressed as percentages of the total genitives and van-constructions in each century) (weerman & de wit 1999: 1158)4

In his investigation into Middle Dutch genitive use, based on a corpus of 93,600 verses and 33,700 lines of prose (from 100 texts), van Es (1938: 1) observed a stronger use of the adnominal genitive, counting about 9,000 genitive tokens and 3,000 van-construction tokens (i.e. a split of 75 % to 25 %). As far as the diachronic development in the use of the two constructions is concerned, Weerman & de Wit (1999: 1158) demonstrate, on the basis of a corpus of Flemish texts, a steady decline of the adnominal genitive in this period, and a corresponding steady rise in the van-construction (Figure 5.2). In the 13th century the van-construction was slightly dominant but, by the 15th century, the adnominal genitive was rare. Vezzosi (2000: 125) gives different figures, with the van-construction accounting for 26.6 % of tokens in the 12th century, rising to 81.4% by the 15th century (i.e. less strong against the genitive than in Weerman & de Wit’s 15th century data). Up to the 15th century the development of the adnominal genitive is as expected; beyond this time, the picture changes somewhat (Vezzosi 2000: 124). The nature of—and reasons for—this development is returned to in Sections 5.4.2 and 5.4.3. As part of the process of deflection, by the start of the 13th century, masculine and neuter genitive inflection was also encountered with feminine nouns (31) (de Vooys 1970: 53). This occurrence of the -s-suffix on feminine nouns was a step on the way to the emergence of the possessive -s construction.

4 These data were originally presented in tabular form as example (6) by Weerman & de Wit (1999: 1158).

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(31) die rechte musijc des ghesondicheits the just music the.gen.masc/neut.sg health.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the just music of health’ (Dat Scaecspel 1479: 127, line 9) dat loon des dogets that wage the.gen.masc/neut.sg virtue.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘that wage of virtue’ (Dat Scaecspel 1479: 4, line 4) The once-only invariant possessive -s marker developed during the Middle Dutch period; this is observed by Vezzosi (2000: 121–122) as part of a tendency towards once-only marking mentioned earlier in this section. It was attached to the right-edge of possessor noun phrases consisting of a title and a proper name (32b), even when a genitive determiner was present (32c), with genitive inflection on the title (i.e the “true” concordial genitive) being an exception (32d) (all examples in (32): Franck [1910: 148, 163]). (32) a. Rachels kint Rachel.poss child ‘Rachel’s child’ b. coninc Puppijns wijf king.∅ Puppijn.poss wife ‘King Puppijn’s wife’ c. des coninc Ettels macht the.gen king.∅ Attila.gen power ‘King Attila’s power’ d. coninx Hughe Capets sone king.gen Hugo.∅ Capet.gen son ‘King Hugo Capet’s son’ It was also during Middle Dutch that the periphrastic possessive construction emerged; there is little evidence to suggest that the construction is a result of reanalysis of dative constructions, such as semantically ambiguous examples involving ditransitive verbs (33a), with the [noun phrase + possessive pronoun + noun phrase] structure becoming chunked and used to denote possession (Hendriks 2012: 32). It is commonly stated that the possessor could occur in the genitive or dative, or be unmarked for case (e.g. Stoett 1977: 49–50; Vezzosi 2000: 123); an example with a possibly dative possessor (but see also the footnote) is

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given in (33b). Hendriks (2012: 53), analysing 30 examples of the construction presented in the literature, found that, of the examples involving concordial marking, the nominative and dative occur to an equal extent (n = 5) (the dative occurring only after a dative preposition), while there were 11 genitive examples; a further nine examples were non-diagnostic for case. Possessors could be animate (33b) or inanimate (33c). (33) a. ze hebben Oscar zijn boek teruggeven they have Oscar his book given-back ‘they have given Oscar his book back; they have given Oscar’s book back’ (example from Hendriks [2012: 32]) b. Grote Kaerle sijn zoon was opghevoet daer ter stede great.dat Charles.dat his son was brought-up there to-the town ‘Charlemagne’s son was brought up there in the town.’ (Stoett 1977: 50)5 c. hi sal den grave gelden X pont ende dien dijck sijn scade he shall the count pay 10 pound and the dike its damage ‘he shall pay the Count 10 pounds and the (cost of the) dike’s damage’ (Keuren Zeeland [1290]; cited in Hendriks [2012: 34]) By the end of the Middle Dutch period, although it had not completely been lost, it appeared to be only a matter of time before the genitive case would meet the same fate as its English and mainland Scandinavian counterparts. A twist to this tale was waiting, however, in the form of the early grammarians of Dutch and the standardisation of the language. The influence of standardisation on the use of the genitive case and its competitors is considered now in Section 5.3, with the actual occurrence and use of the affected constructions studied in Section 5.4, and the consequences that this has had on the modern language discussed in Sections 5.5 and 5.6.

5.3

The Precept: Standardisation and the Genitive Case

5.3.1 Introduction By the end of the Middle Dutch period, the fate of the genitive case—and, indeed, that of the entire Dutch morphological case system—appeared to have 5 The glossing of Grote Kaerle as dative is in accordance with Stoett (1977: 50); Hendriks (2012: 37), however, with reference to the same example, notes that the form (Grote) Kaerle also occurred in subject position.

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been sealed. However, even a brief perusal of texts dating from the period immediately following Middle Dutch—namely the 16th century (and, indeed, through to the 19th century)—indicates that the genitive case was far from moribund. From the late 16th century onwards there emerged a disruptive factor which would ensure the continued use of the genitive case until the early 20th century; namely, the standardisation of Dutch. Influenced by Latin, the Dutch grammarians of the time took a language with morphological case marking to be an ideal and invariably included the (by this time ailing) Dutch case morphology in their precept. The treatment of the genitive case by these grammarians is the topic of this section. The effect of prescriptivists and grammarians on language use is not always clear and it can be difficult to establish a direct link between the use of a particular construction by language users and the inclusion of that construction in the prescribed norm of a language. For example, Auer (2009: 16) notes that, in research into the relationship between prescription and the use of the steadily declining English subjunctive in 18th and 19th century English, some scholars claim that the decline was temporarily reversed due to prescription, while others note no such influence; Auer’s own research suggests that prescriptivists did influence the use of the subjunctive, at least in the short term and in certain syntactic contexts (2009: 86). Taking the position that a “good” language was one with a case system, an aim shared by the Dutch grammarians from the 16th century onwards was to maintain—or reintroduce—the case system (van der Horst & van der Horst 1999: 311; van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 192), which was fading, if not wholly extinct (Hendriks 2010; also Section 5.4 below). A related aim was to preserve the distinction between masculine and feminine lexical gender, which was steadily being eroded—at least in the north of the Dutch-speaking area—at this time, and whose continued familiarity was necessary in order to ensure accurate use of the case system (van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 241–244, 294–296). As such, the picture of Dutch case morphology presented in these grammars is consistently idealised (or, perhaps, aspirational); as noted in this section, several do also present a more pessimistic or, at least, realistic view of the situation. A number of the ostensibly normative grammars took account of actual usage to some extent by noting, for instance, the restriction of case morphology to elevated registers, and the incipient productivity of the possessive -s construction. By the 19th century the artificiality of the written language was attracting criticism, even from grammarians and laymen with an interest in language; van Lennep’s (1985 [1865]) criticisms of grammarians’ recommendations is noted below (see also van der Wal & van Bree [2008: 301–303] for a summary of similar criticism).

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The precept for the use of the genitive case is portrayed here on the basis of a sample of Dutch grammars from the 16th century through to the early 20th century. This will illustrate the commonalities and divergences among the grammarians with regard to their aims for the use of the genitive case (and the extent to which they reacted towards each other’s work), and will illustrate how the later grammarians took greater account of usage without ever relinquishing their aspirational morphological case system. 5.3.2 The Grammarians and Case Morphology In Twe-spraack (1584), the first Dutch grammar, the six-case Latin system is explicitly imposed onto Dutch (1584: 41) although the case-marking paradigms (e.g. 1584: 45) show a great degree of syncretism, both with regard to the form of the determiner and to the form of the noun (on the importance of Twe-spraack [1584], see Willemyns [2003: 98–99]); this imposition of the Latin system was later criticised by the 19th century grammarian Bilderdijk (1826: 89). Only one singular genitive definite article, des (actually ‘the.gen.masc/neut.sg’), is listed as the genitive definite article for singular nouns of all genders (1584: 45); the article der (actually ‘the.gen.plu/fem.sg’) is only listed for plural nouns (1584: 46). In this respect, Twe-spraack (1584) is at odds with the other grammars, including its immediate successors, and (with rare exceptions) with the situation in the data. The article des does indeed occur with feminine singular nouns in the 16th century data (and later), but not in the systematic manner suggested by Twe-spraack. A six-case system is also posited by van Heule (1953a [1625/1626]: 23–26) but, in contrast to Twe-spraack (1584), he lists distinct articles for masculine/neuter and feminine singular nouns. The interchangeablity of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction was recognised by some grammarians. At the start of the 18th century, Moonen (1706), in an influential grammar that was reprinted at least four times (Willemyns 2003: 100), still posited six cases but noted that the van-construction often replaced the adnominal genitive (1706: 84). The adnominal genitive was preferred by Huydecoper (1782–1794: 182) as “veel deftiger” [‘much more dignified’] than the van-construction. The use of the van-construction to avoid strings of adnominal genitive phrases was advised by Moonen (1706: 287) and, roughly a century later, by Weiland (1805: 218);6 in modern Dutch, the situation is now reversed, with the surviving adnominal genitive fragment deployed to avoid strings of van-phrases (van Haeringen 1956: 32–33; van den Toorn 1984: 214; Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1184). 6 Genitive strings are, incidentally, also stigmatised in modern standard German (e.g. Stemmler 1994: 45; Duden 1997: 187).

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By the 18th century, grammarians were more likely to take actual usage and variation into account (Willemyns 2003: 101). Ten Kate distinguished between three levels of register; in each one, he noted a difference in the relative use of the genitive and its competitor van (1723: 334–340). In de hoogdravende/verhevene stijl [‘the high-flown/elevated style’], which is old-fashioned and formal, but still comprehensible to contemporary language users, the adnominal genitive is used, with the van-construction also permitted; in de deftige/statige stijl [‘the distinguished/stately style’], which is closer to everyday usage but still formal, the van-construction occurs with or without reduced case marking on adjectives and nouns; in de gemeenzame stijl [‘the common style’], used in everyday situations, the van-construction occurs without case marking on some determiners and adjectives. Huydecoper (1782–1794: 382) notes that the van-construction is used instead of the adnominal genitive in “common” style, but that the genitive is used in poetic language. This tallies with van Lennep (1985 [1865]: 41), who states that the genitive is used only in “voorzangersNederduitsch” [‘cantors’ Dutch’], the term he uses for a prestigious type of language characterised by forms not found in everyday language. Similarly, Bilderdijk (1826: 95) assigns both genitive and dative to the “deftig” [‘distinguished’] style and notes that they would be inappropriate in speech; the prepositions van and aan, respectively, appear instead in everyday language. Writing in the early 19th century, Weiland (1805: 74) distinguishes between four cases—nominative, genitive, dative and accusative—in contemporary Dutch, but notes that the van-construction was often used instead of the genitive (1805: 76). At the same time, he advocates the (adnominal) genitive as a concise alternative to cumbersome paraphrases involving a relative clause (1805: 77). Weiland’s four-case division faced criticism from the Flemish educationist Pieter Behaegel (1783–1857), who advocated a six-case division, not to emulate the Latin paragon as much as to sharpen young people’s ability to reason (Royen 1940: 160). Nonetheless, the acceptance that the genitive was restricted to high register language—and the fact that the grammarians did not attempt to prescribe the use of the genitive and other case morphology in everyday spoken language— suggests that the grammarians were aware of the artificiality of the preserved case system. Certainly, van Lennep described the adnominal genitive as the “heilig naamval” [‘holy case’] because, like certain sacred names in Judaism, it was written but not spoken; furthermore, he alleged that the cases were advocated by the grammarians primarily as a means of making their books longer and giving their work an appearance of learnedness (van Lennep 1985 [1865]: 41).

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5.3.3 Dealing with Deflection Despite their common aim of preserving the dying case system, many of the grammarians were open to the non-case constructions thrown up in the process of deflection. The extension of masculine and neuter genitive morphological forms to feminine nouns is noted by a number of the grammarians. The blanket use of the masculine and neuter singular determiners was prescribed, as noted above, in Twe-spraack (1584), presumably to ensure distinct singular and plural determiners. The use of masculine/neuter determiners with feminine nouns is tolerated (i.e. not explicitly forbidden) by van Heule (1953b [1633]: 40) who describes such use as usual, if against the rules, and as having originated “[d]oor gewoonte” [‘through habit’]. In fact, the use of feminine nouns in the genitive had a special status, both in the grammars and in actual usage. Both van Heule (1953a [1625/1626]: 71) and Moonen (1706: 286) recommend avoiding prenominal genitives involving a feminine noun; the data indeed testify to a general avoidance of feminine singular nouns in this structure. As the genitive complement of an adjective, a feminine noun may take the masculine/neuter -s ending (Moonen 1706: 102) Although it contravenes the otherwise prescribed rules of case morphology, the grammarians are generally unified in their acceptance of the noncongruent possessive -s construction, which is permitted on multiple-word possessors if the entire noun phrase forms a unit; for instance, if it consists of a fore- and surname, a title and a name, or a pronoun (which is not genitivemarked) and a name (van Heule 1953a [1625/1626]: 71; Moonen 1706: 287–288; ten Kate 1723: 353; Weiland 1805: 216). Reflecting English and Mainland Scandinavian use (although they do not state this), ten Kate (1723: 353) and Weiland (1805: 216), who uses ten Kate’s example, allow the attachment of possessive -s to postmodified possessors, at least if the head noun and postmodification are felt to form a unit (1723: 353); this is disapproved of, with specific reference to ten Kate, by Huydecoper (1782–1794: 166). 5.3.4 From the 19th to the 20th Century By the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th, the situation in the grammars was becoming more nuanced. Although a normative element remained, the accounting for actual usage became more widespread. Among educational reformers, language became viewed as a living thing constantly undergoing change; thus, for some, developments related to deflection were viewed as progress rather than decay (see van der Wal & van Bree 2008: 324–325). The dichotomy of speech and writing continued to be propagated by, for example, den Hertog, who stated that, the more “civilised” the language user, the more the spoken language resembled the written language (den Hertog 1903/1904:

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3). Although den Hertog (1903/1904: 11) recognised the widespread syncretism in the case morphology that remained in Dutch (presumably he was referring to the written language), and that genitive objects of many verbs had been replaced by accusative objects (1903/1904: 40), he advocates the use of the four cases (passim). A four-case system was still widespread among the grammars produced at the start of the 20th century (van der Horst & van der Horst 1999: 309). Around this time, in a grammar for English-speaking learners of Dutch, (Schnitzler 1950 [1902]: 16) gives a paradigm including a four-case system but notes that, in spoken language, the van-construction is used instead of the genitive and the aan-construction instead of the dative; the occurrence of the genitive in fixed expressions is noted, and it is stated that all prepositions take an accusative complement.7 In a later grammar for German-speaking learners of Dutch, van der Meer (1923: 18, 20–21) states that case inflection no longer exists in Dutch except among personal pronouns; he notes that the van-construction is used instead of the genitive, but that the genitive occurs in fixed expressions, and that novel phrases are still formed using the genitive determiner der in high register language (i.e. the modern adnominal genitive construction). With the exception of exapted markers performing a new role, and the adnominal genitive construction, regular morphological case marking finally left the Dutch language during the first half of the 20th century. In education minister Marchant’s orthography reform of 1934 (see van den Toorn 1997: 497– 498), case forms were abandoned with the exception of determiners preceding a clearly masculine noun, thus van den vorst ‘of the.masc monarch’ was preferred to van de vorst ‘of the monarch’ (Neijt 1991: 147). The Wet voorschriften schrijfwijze Nederlandsche taal [‘law of regulations for the orthography of the Dutch language’] of 14 February 1947 contains three clauses relating to case morphology: the case endings -e and -en are no longer attached to een ‘a’, geen ‘no’, or to possessive pronouns (§3), the ending -n may be omitted except in fixed expressions (§4), and rules were to be set regarding the use of genitive articles but, in the meantime, the rules of de Vries & te Winkel were to be followed (§10).8 In de Vries & te Winkel (1866), which is primarily a wordlist showing orthography and gender (including a masculine/feminine distinction) 7 Schnitzler (1950 [1902]) is a fourth edition in which the use of case morphology (and, for that matter, a three-way gender distinction) was still prescribed in the mid-20th century; genitive case morphology is used in reading exercises (e.g. 1950 [1902]: 47), including the nominal partitive genitive (e.g. 1950 [1902]: 63), a construction that was strongly in decline even before the book’s initial publication. 8 The 1947 orthographic law can be viewed at http://www.st-ab.nl/wetten/0968_Wet_ voorschriften_schrijfwijze_Nederlandsche_taal.htm [last accessed 28.2.13].

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and containing detailed guidance on nominal gender and verb inflection, no explicit prescription is given for the use of case morphology. It is noted that the genitive and dative are absent from normal speech, in which only the nominative and accusative cases remain, although these are syncretic to some extent; the loss of gender—and case—distinctions on determiners and adjectives (through apocope of word-final -n) is also mentioned (de Vries & te Winkel 1866: xi–xii). Genitive forms of nouns and determiners do appear in examples (e.g. de Vries & te Winkel 1866: xxxv); in the wordlist itself, however, only information about the gender and the plural form of nouns is given, with no information on case forms, such as the masculine and neuter singular -(e)s ending. By the second half of the 20th century, prescriptive grammars agree that Dutch no longer has a case system and that, at most, only remnants remain in the form of constructions such as possessive -s, and in fixed expressions (e.g. Tacx 1960: 120–122 [aimed at a general readership]; Kempeneers 1968: 88 [produced for use in Flemish secondary schools]; van den Toorn 1984: 153 [aimed at language teachers and aspiring language teachers (see 1984: v)]; E-ANS 1997: §3.4.1.1–3.4.1.3, §3.4.2).

5.4

The Genitive Case in 16th–19th Century Dutch: A Diachronic Portrayal

5.4.1 Introduction While the path followed by the Dutch case system until the 15th century was much the same as that already taken by English and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, from the second half of the 16th century the development of the Dutch case system started to deviate. Within Dutch, use of the case system exhibited pragmatic variation based on medium and register; this was a period when the discrepancy between written and spoken Dutch, which had started in the Middle Dutch period (see, e.g., van der Horst & van der Horst 1999: 310), grew ever wider. The effects of deflection were most strongly felt in spoken language and informal egodocuments while, in the written language, obsolescent morphosyntactic constructions and distinctions remained and, as shown in Section 5.4.2, actually consolidated their use—alongside the deflection-caused non-case constructions—over the early modern period. This can be linked to an increasing familiarity with the precept of the standardising works described in Section 5.3. The 16th century saw a continued decline in the case system, leading to confusion in the use of determiners and inflectional endings (van der Horst 2008: 795–796). That this confusion persisted in the 17th century is evident, for exam-

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ple, in the letters of Maria van Reigersberch. Although she fairly consistently uses the definite article de for feminine singulars and all genders plural regardless of their syntactic role (34a), her article use with masculine singular nouns fluctuates, with de and den occurring with subjects, objects and complements of prepositions (34b–e). (34) a. mijn penne ghebrucken om de trouweloosheyt van de Hollanders my pen use for the faithlessness of the Hollanders te beschrijven to describe ‘use my pen to describe the faithlessness of the Hollanders’ (Maria van Reigersberch, LI [Rogge 1902: 180]) b. den vierden hebbe ick zijn naem vergeten the fourth have I his name forgotten ‘I have forgotten the name of the fourth (man)’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XIX [Rogge 1902: 78]) c. het afsterven van den Prins the death of the prince ‘the death of the prince’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXX [Rogge 1902: 120]) d. Het staedt wel te ghelooven dat den Coninck van Spaenge het it stands emph to believe that the king of Spain the uterste daervoor sal waegen utmost there-for shall dare ‘It is conceivable that the King of Spain will dare (to do) his utmost for that’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXVII [Rogge 1902: 114]) e. den presiesen tijt van het vertreck van de boode niet en the precsise time of the departure of the messenger not en wist knew ‘didn’t know the precise time of the messenger’s departure’ (Maria van Reigersberch, X [Rogge 1902: 59]) The spread of deflection beyond informal speech and egodocuments and into even the most formal registers is evident in the scientific writings of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), an autodidact biologist, whose written language was

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strongly influenced by his spoken language (Jongejan 1940: 302); this is reflected in the occurrence of phenomena characteristic of speech in van Leeuwenhoek’s more formal work, such as his 1688 work on blood circulation and in a sample of his correspondence, and an apparently arbitrary use of the definite articles de and den (Jongejan 1940: 302, 305). The title of the 1688 publication, featuring one of van Leeuwenhoek’s few adnominal genitives as well as the article den with a masculine noun as subject, is shown in (35a); in (35b) the article de appears with a masculine noun appearing as the complement of a preposition; (35c) and (35d) are examples of his sparing use of the adnominal genitive in the text, the van-construction being his usual means of connecting two noun phrases in a possessive relationship. (35) a. Den Waaragtigen Omloop des Bloeds the true circulation the.gen blood.gen ‘The true circulation of the blood’ (van Leeuwenhoek 1688) b. D E. is een vinne digte by de staart gelegen. D E is a fin close by the tail laid ‘D E is a fin lying close by the tail.’ (van Leeuwenhoek 1688) c. de wijse der bloedeloose dierkens the manner the.gen bloodless animals.dim ‘the manner of the bloodless animals’ (van Leeuwenhoek 1688) d. het bloet der Aderen the blood the.gen veins ‘the blood of the veins’ (van Leeuwenhoek 1688) By the late 19th century there was a clear schism between a “regionally flavoured spoken variety” and a “normative, slightly old-fashioned written language variety” (Willemyns 2003: 110). In the mid-19th century, Brill (1863: 112) had observed that the dative was all but lost while the genitive still existed; at the end of that century, Muller (1891: 201–202) likened the deflection of spoken Dutch to that of English, and stated that morphological genitive marking was “lang dood en begraven” [‘long dead and buried’] in speech, existing only in written language; he also noted a trend which is observable in the data presented here, namely that genitive case marking had made a resurgence “in onzen tijd” [‘in our time’, i.e. the 19th century] in “de boekentaal” [‘the language of books’]. (In fact, the data presented here suggest that this development can be traced back even to before the 19th century, while Vezzosi [2000: 129] states

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that the genitive “came back to life” after the 15th century.) Obsolescent and obsolete linguistic variables such as case morphology, whose use was becoming increasingly problematic for Dutch language users, were perpetuated in grammars and school textbooks into the early 20th century although non-use of case morphology was often permitted by these works (van der Horst & van der Horst 1999: 310). In the sub-sections that follow, the use of the genitive case and its competitors from the 16th to the 19th century is portrayed and contrasted in egodocuments and more formal writings produced for publication. Special attention is paid to the tension between the processes of deflection and standardisation, both in formal and informal language. First, in Section 5.4.2, the general characteristics of the use of the genitive are considered; the subsequent subsections focus on the division of labour between the adnominal genitive and the van-construction (5.4.3), the exaptation of the possessive -s construction from a genitive marker (5.4.4), the use of the periphrastic possessive (5.4.5), the decline of the partitive genitive (5.4.6) and the decline of non-adnominal use of the genitive (5.4.7). Conclusions are drawn in 5.4.8. 5.4.2 Structural Characteristics of the Genitive in 16th–19th Century Dutch The use of the genitive in early modern Dutch was strongly dependent on register and medium. Not all writers of the period used the genitive productively (Table 5.1). Even if the occurrence of genitive morphology in a late-16th century personal diary is suggested to be archaic by van Leuvensteijn (1986: 127), the genitive is used in early modern Dutch egodocuments (Hendriks 2010; see also the writings of Hugo de Groot, Aagje Luijtsen and Gerrit van de Linde studied in this section). Nonetheless, despite a measure of deflection-induced uncertainty and some rare irregularities (noted later in this sub-section), writers of the 16th–19th century were generally consistent in their actual use of the genitive regardless of how much they actually used it, and regardless of whether they were writing an informal egodocument or a formal document for publication. These structural regularities, which apply to formal and informal registers, are set out here. The data studied here suggest that the use of the genitive case became consolidated over the early modern period and that, over time, the genitive case was actually used with increasing accuracy in written language. The developments described here also provide an explanation as to why a fragment of the adnominal genitive survives to this day in modern German; this is returned to in Section 5.5. In the early modern period the Dutch adnominal genitive could occur prenominally and postnominally (36).

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table 5.1

A summary of the occurrence of regular and productive use of the genitive case in the early modern Dutch sources consulted here

Century

Source

16th & 17th centuries EMDC (formal writing) Maria van Reigersberch (egodocument) Nicolaes van Reigersberch (egodocument) Hugo de Groot (egodocument) 18th century

EMDC (formal writing) Luijtsen (egodocument) Lammens (egodocument)

19th century

EMDC (formal writing) van de Linde (egodocument)

Regular & productive genitive use? yes no no yes

yes yes, but very rarely yes, but with semantic restrictions Swellengrebel (egodocument) no yes yes

(36) prenominal genitive: des schrijvers geboorte the.gen.masc/neut.sg writer.gen.masc/neut.sg birth ‘the writer’s birth’ (EMDC: A.W. Engelen. 1882. Uit de gedenkschriften van een voornaam Nederlandsch beambte [diary]) der vrouwen keur the.gen.fem.sg/plu women choice ‘the women’s choice’ (EMDC: H.C. Diferee. 1743. De bruiloft van Kloris en Roosje [drama]) postnominal genitive: de linker zyde des Ryns the left side the.gen.masc/neut.sg Rhine.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the left side of the Rhine’ (EMDC: J. Wagenaar. 1749. Vaderlandsche historie: Deel 1. [academic])

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The occurrence of the pre- and postnominal genitive orders in the EMDC data (tokens)

Period

Masculine pre- post-

16th–17th century 18th century 19th century

81 13 21

75 37 32

Feminine pre- post0 1 4

102 145 238

Neuter pre- post-

Plural pre- post-

9 15 8

16 3 6

136 50 29

190 213 296

de waterdeeltjes eener wolk the water-particles a.gen.fem.sg/plu cloud ‘the water particles of a cloud’ (EMDC: W.A. Holterman. 1859. De lucht: Gewone en zeldzame verschijnselen van den dampkring. [academic]) Postnominal order dominated from the 16th to the 19th century (Table 5.2); only among masculine nouns in the 16th–17th century sub-corpus does prenominal order dominate. The avoidance of the prenominal order is strongest if the noun is a singular feminine noun or is plural. Table 5.2 also shows that, while singular masculine and neuter nouns outweigh singular feminine nouns in the genitive in the 16th and 17th centuries, by the 19th century, most nouns occurring in the genitive were feminine singulars and plurals of all genders. The 16th–17th century situation is mirrored in a sample of the writings of Wouter Jacobsz (1521 or 1522–1595), in which there were 19 occurrences of the masculine and neuter singular des but, among the feminine singular and all genders plural markers, just one of der and three of deser (van Leuvensteijn 1986: 117). The high token frequency of feminine singular and all genders plural nouns in the genitive in the 19th century may well have aided the preservation of the x der y structure, but not a masculine/neuter singular equivalent, through to modern Dutch. This point, addressed previously in Scott (2011a, 2012), is taken up again in Section 5.5. Within postnominal order, in early modern written Dutch, the genitive determiner der is by far the most frequent of all genitive markers across all three sub-corpora; this is shown in Table 5.3, which also indicates that the markers used with feminine singular nouns and plural nouns of all genders generally have a higher token frequency than those occurring with singular masculine and neuter nouns. Notice also that, across the three periods, the masculine/neuter singular markers tend to decrease in use while the feminine singular/all genders plural markers tend to increase in use. The genitive structure

122 table 5.3

chapter 5 The occurrence of genitive markers in postnominal order in the EMDC (in tokens) (listed in alphabetical order by marker; excluding markers that occurred in none of the sub-corpora)

16th–17th 18th 19th century century century Feminine singular & der all genders plural dezer dier ener harer hunner mijner onzer uwer zijner

the.gen these.gen they.gen a/one.gen her.gen their.gen my.gen our.gen your.gen his/its.gen

251 15 2 0 1 0 1 3 2 7

304 7 1 6 3 6 16 5 0 11

447 10 12 19 6 6 18 10 2 27

Masculine/neuter singular

the.gen these.gen a/one.gen her.gen their.gen my.gen our.gen your.gen his/its.gen

117 2 1 0 0 2 5 0 5

70 4 1 3 0 0 3 1 0

33 1 1 1 1 7 1 3 4

des dezes eens haars huns mijns onzes uws zijns

that consistently had the highest token frequency, and which therefore would have been the genitive structure most familiar to language users, was x der y. In addition to having the highest token frequency of any genitive determiner, der, as a determiner used with any plural noun as well as feminine singular nouns, had a particularly high type frequency; that is to say, it was used with a large group of nouns. Based on the situation in the data, it seems that the adnominal genitive was, by early modern Dutch, only possible if there was a determiner—on which the genitive can be marked—in the noun phrase. If there was no determiner in the noun phrase (i.e. one of the markers in Table 5.3), then the van-construction was categorical (and the genitive impossible); even an adjective in the noun

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phrase, which could potentially receive a genitive ending, did not licence the adnominal genitive. This is already the situation in the 16th century data (suggesting that the development was already entrenched by Middle Dutch) and remained so throughout the remainder of the life of the genitive, even as morphological case marking made a resurgence up to the 19th century.9 It is noted by van der Horst (2008: 1033) that in the 16th century the prenominal genitive primarily occurred with human referents. The data show this to have been the case through to the 19th century; it was also true of usage in the first half of the 20th century (Peters 1939/1940: 251). Occasionally, nouns with non-human referents occurred in the construction (37). .

(37) des harts volmaakte the.gen.masc/neut.sg heart.gen.masc/neut.sg perfect ontlasting unburdening ‘the perfect unburdening of the heart’ (EMDC: H. Boerhaave. 1741. Kortbondige spreuken wegens de ziektens [academic]) der bolwerken uiterste punthoeken the.gen.fem.sg/plu bulwark.plu outermost point-angles ‘the outermost point angles of the bulwarks’ (EMDC: J. van Riebeek. 1652. Dagverhaal [diaries]) 5.4.2.1

Accuracy of Use of the Genitive in 16th–19th Century Written Language Bearing in mind the precarious state of the Dutch case system during the early modern period, an important matter to consider is writers’ familiarity with case morphology and, accordingly, the relative accuracy (or otherwise) of the case morphology that they do use. A reasonable starting assumption would be that the use of Dutch case morphology in this period would be similar to

9 Although there is no evidence of this in the 16th–19th century data, examples of the presentday adnominal genitive fragment suggest that noun phrases consisting of an adjective and a noun may have been possible in the early modern adnominal genitive, albeit to a low extent and only with certain adjectives. The examples involve the use of the genitive-marked adjective aller ‘all.gen’ in the modern adnominal genitive fragment (Table 5.17 in Section 5.5.2); an alternative explanation for these modern formations is that aller remains familiar through its occurrence in the partially filled construction ___ aller tijden ‘___ all.gen times, i.e. ___ of all time’ (see (23d) in Section 5.5.8), and has been analogically extended by speakers to replace der in the x der y structure.

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the use of case morphology as a stylistic tool in deflected 17th–19th century Swedish described by Norde (2007); there, as a result of unfamiliarity with the long-defunct system, case endings were used erroneously and irregularly. In one of the examples given by Norde (2007), a masculine form of the adjective (in boldface) is used with a feminine noun; moreover, the adjective has been given accusative inflection where it should be nominative (38). In the Dutch formal written texts examined here, in contrast, genitive case morphology was used with increasing accuracy across the early modern period, reflecting increasing awareness of the prescribed norm. (38) Rank hon är som *ungan lind slender she is as jong.masc.sg.acc lime.comm(fem) ‘She is slender as a young limetree’ (Per Henrik Ling. 1812. Agne; reproduced in Norde [2007]) One of the factors coded for in the database was whether there was a gender and number “mismatch” between the determiner and noun within a noun phrase; that is to say, a determiner of one gender appeared with a noun of a different gender, or a determiner of one number appeared with a noun of a different number. In the EMDC across the entire period studied, there were only 56 tokens (of 31 types) of a gender or number mismatch between determiner and noun. Most mismatches occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries, when there was one mismatch for every 17 correctly inflected genitive phrases (Table 5.4). One explanation for this is that, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the precepts for the use of case morphology were not yet widely known and that writers were accordingly uncertain when using the genitive case. Such mismatches were even tolerated by some contemporary grammarians (van Heule 1953b [1633]: 40). By the 19th century, when there were 249 non-mismatched genitives for every mismatch, the case system had been part of the prescribed codified norm for written language for longer and was thus more familiar to language users, who were therefore able to use case morphology accurately. Most mismatches involved the use of a masculine/neuter singular determiner with a singular feminine noun (39); more rarely, a feminine determiner appeared with a masculine or neuter noun (40). (39) a. ten tijde des belegerings to time the.gen.masc/neut.sg siege.fem-gen.masc/neut.sg ‘at the time of the siege’ (EMDC: W.J. Verwer. 1572. Memoriaelbouck. Dagboek van gebeurtenissen te Haarlem van 1572–1581[diaries])

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The number of determiner-noun mismatches in the data

Period 16th–17th centuries 18th century 19th century

Number of mismatches (tokens)

Number of non-mismatches (tokens)

Ratio of mismatches to non-mismatches

46 6 3

780 607 748

1 : 17 1 : 101 1 : 249

b. de paelen des waerheyt the poles the.gen.masc/neut.sg truth.fem ‘the poles of truth’ (EMDC: W. Baudartius. 1610. Morghen-wecker der vrye Nederlantsche Provintien. Crijn Vermeulen de Jonge [non-academic])10 c. int hart des bruits in-the heart the.gen.masc/neut.sg bride.fem-gen.masc/neut.sg ‘in the bride’s heart’ (EMDC: P.C. Hooft. 1602. Bruiloft-spel [drama]) d. uw’s Moeders man you.gen.masc/neut.sg mother.gen.masc/neut.sg man ‘your mother’s husband’ (EMDC: B. Wolff & A. Deken. 1784. Historie van den heer Willem Leevend: Deel 1 [fiction]) Example (40a) shows the use of a feminine determiner with a masculine noun. (40) a. de vervoering eener redenbedwelmende hartstogt the transporting a.gen.fem.sg reason-stupefying passion.masc ‘the transporting of a passion that stupefies reason’ (EMDC: E.M. Post. 1791. Reinhart, of natuur en godsdienst. (Deel I) [fiction]) In (40b), a correctly inflected feminine noun is followed by an incorrectly inflected masculine noun (in boldface).

10 Note the lack of a noun-final -s in this example.

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b. het meten der wannigheyt als the measuring the.gen.fem.sg/plu emptiness as der gheheelen inhout the.gen.fem.sg/plu whole content.masc ‘the measuring of the emptiness as well as of the whole content’ (EMDC: D. Bierens de Haan. 1878. Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis der wis- en natuurkundige wetenschappen in de Nederlanden. [academic]) Example (40c), a rare apparently novel genitive formation in the Luijtsen letters, features a neuter noun (lichaam ‘body’) with feminine inflection, albeit alongside a correctly inflected genitive formation with a masculine noun. c. de kroone mijns hoofds, ja het stuutsel the crown my.gen.masc.sg head.gen.masc.sg yes the support mijnner geheele lighaam. my.gen.fem.sg whole body ‘the crown of my head, yes, the support of my whole body.’ (Luijtsen, 15.11.1777 [Moree 2003: 115]) In the Lammens journals, the masculine noun wind ‘wind’ twice appears with feminine genitive inflection (and never with masculine genitive inflection); one example is given in (40d). d. en hart moest schreeuwen wilde men malkander door het and hard had-to scream wanted one each-other through the blaasen der wint verstaan blowing the.gen.fem.sg wind understand ‘and had to scream loudly in order to understand each other through (above) the blowing of the wind’ (Lammens, 28.8.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 107]) The generalisation of masculine/neuter determiners to feminine nouns was a stage in the rise of the invariant possessive -s, which also attaches to feminine nouns; this use also occurs in modern Swiss German (Chapter 6). The use of a masculine/neuter genitive determiner with a feminine noun is strongly associated with prenominal order, i.e. the same order as possessive -s: of the 27 tokens of a singular noun occurring in the prenominal genitive construction, 22 involve a masculine/neuter determiner. These formations suggest an association between prenominal order and masculine/neuter genitive morphology, in particular the marker -s. Indeed, correctly inflected feminine noun phrases in

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prenominal genitives are very rare in the data; van Heule (1953a [1625/1626]:71) and Moonen (1706: 286) explicitly proscribed the use of feminine nouns in prenominal genitive order. Variation—possibly indicating uncertainty—was apparent in the endings attached to adjectives within the genitive noun phrase (in boldface in the examples in (41)); -e, -en and -er are all attested. By the 19th century, however, it appears that the ending -e was consistently attached to adjectives appearing within the genitive noun phrase. (41) eenen vorst der hemelsche a.acc.masc.sg monarch the.gen.fem.sg/plu heavenly.gen heyrschaeren armies ‘a monarch of the heavenly armies’ (EMDC: Marcus van Vaernewyck. 1574. De historie van Belgis [academic]) de aller bloeyenste Eeuwe des Roomschen the all blooming.sup centuries the.gen.masc/neut.sg Roman.gen Rijckx empire.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the most blooming centuries of the Roman Empire’ (EMDC: S. de Bray. 1631. Architectura moderna ofte bouwinge van onsen tyt [academic]) eenige der gepasseerder Historien several the.gen.fem.sg/plu happened.gen stories ‘several of the stories that have taken place’ (EMDC: W. Baudartius. 1610. Morghen-wecker der vrye Nederlantsche Provintien. Crijn Vermeulen de Jonge [non-academic]) 5.4.3 Adnominal Genitive vs. van-Construction The use of a periphrastic alternative for genitive case marking is attested throughout the Germanic languages; the van-construction had almost completely suppressed the adnominal genitive by the end of the Middle Dutch period (Section 5.2). In egodocuments of the early modern period, the vanconstruction continued as the default variant (and had completely supplanted the genitive for some writers, such as the van Reigersberch and Swellengrebel siblings); in formal writing of the time, the adnominal genitive regained ground which had been lost during Middle Dutch (see also Vezzosi 2000). In this section, the division of labour between the adnominal genitive and the vanconstruction is considered first in egodocuments, and then in formal writing.

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figure 5.3a Relative use of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in Middle Dutch (13th–15th century) (data from weerman & de wit [1999: 1158]) and in early modern Dutch egodocuments (16th–19th century) (Expressed as percentages of the total adnominal genitive and van-construction tokens.)

As noted by Vezzosi (2000: 124), the ascendence of the van-construction at the expense of the adnominal genitive up to the 15th century (Section 5.2.3), i.e. the replacement of a synthetic construction by an analytic one, is the expected development in a deflecting language. In the egodocuments, this trend continued into the early modern period, with the 18th and 19th centuries marking a turning point, after which we find interference from the standard written norm in the shape of productively formed genitive phrases occurring even in personal egodocuments. This is quantified in Figure 5.3a, in which the relative use of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction is followed from Middle Dutch (with data from Weerman & de Wit [1999]) into the egodocuments of the early modern period. If the situation in the egodocuments shows a clear continuation from Middle Dutch up to the 17th century, the situation in the formal written data is rather different. Here, the 15th century marks a clear turning point in the use of the genitive. While the adnominal genitive occurred in only 4 % of possible situations in the 15th century, it appeared in over 40 % of possible situations in the 16th and 17th centuries; that is to say, its use had returned to something approaching its 13th century level. A similar leap was observed by Weerman et al. (2012). From the 16th century onwards the relative use of the two constructions stabilised at roughly 60/40, with the van-construction consistently more numerous than the genitive. This is shown in Figure 5.3b (again, with 13th–15th century data from Weerman & de Wit [1999]). The post-15th century divergence in genitive use in informal and formal language, also noted by Vezzosi (2000: 124), seems to be the result of standardisation and the conventionalisation of the adnominal genitive as part of the

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figure 5.3b Relative use of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in Middle Dutch (13th–15th century) (data from weerman & de wit [1999: 1158]) and in early modern Dutch formal writing (16th–19th century) (Expressed as percentages of the total adnominal genitive and van-construction tokens.)

standard written norm. More detailed research of the reception and acceptance of the earliest Dutch grammars (particularly by the writers whose work features in the data studied here), and of language teaching in the 16th and 17th centuries, would be necessary to confirm this. However, the sudden rise in genitive use in formal writing, and a delayed, less extreme development in the same direction in the 18th century egodocuments, coincides with the publication of the early Dutch grammars and suggests the influence of language users’ knowledge of the written norm, and that the knowledge of this norm, most strongly associated with formal registers, also filtered through into informal egodocuments. The post-15th century use of the Dutch genitive is thus an example of what Vezzosi (2000: 115) calls “interference between the spontaneous drift [here: deflection] and language standardization”; several more examples of this tension between the deflection and standardisation are encountered later in this investigation. Canonical use of the adnominal genitive was exemplified in (36) and (37); the van-construction is exemplified in (42). (42) de namen vande delinquaten the names of-the deliquents ‘the names of the delinquents’ (EMDC: M. van Vaernewyck. 1566–1568. Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt [diaries]) het finantieele gedeelte van mijn vak the financial part of my profession

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‘the financial part of my profession’ (EMDC: A.G. Bilders. 1860. Brieven en dagboek [diaries]) 5.4.3.1 Adnominal Genitive vs. van-Construction in Egodocuments The division of labour between the two constructions varies from writer to writer; while some writers reflect a continuation of the Middle Dutch situation, with the adnominal genitive strongly ignored in favour of the van-construction, others continue to use the genitive. The end-stage of the transition from the synthetic construction to its analytic competitor is found in the 17th century letters of the siblings Maria and Nicolaes van Reigersberch. The adnominal genitive as an active construction is wholly absent from both writers’ letters, remaining only in frozen, stored expressions; in its place we find the van-construction and, sometimes with personal nouns, possessive -s.11 The van Reigersberchs’ use of the van-construction is exemplified in (43). (43) de wtkompts van haer prosses the outcome of her trial ‘the outcome of her trial’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXV [Rogge 1902: 109]) de druppels van den regen the drops of the rain ‘the drops of the rain’ (Nicolaes van Reigersberch, IV [Rogge 1902: 295]) Maria van Reigersberch’s husband Hugo de Groot, however, continued to use the adnominal genitive (44a,b) alongside the van-construction (44d,e) in his personal correspondence (44), even when writing to his wife. The relative use of the two constructions in his letters is shown in Table 5.5; the van-construction was dominant and, whereas the genitive occurred with a restricted set of possessors with human referents, the van-construction faced no such restrictions. In de Groot’s writings, where a possessor noun phrase consists of a possessive determiner and a common noun with a human referent (44a), the genitive appears to be categorical (at least in the small sample studied). 11 A single adnominal genitive occurs in Maria van Reigersberch’s letters—mijns mans verlossynge ‘my.gen husband.gen release’—but in a letter transcribed by her brother Nicolaes van Reigersberch (VIII [Rogge 1902: 57]). As the letter is not taken directly from van Reigersberch’s own manuscript, the example is excluded from the analysis here. Nonetheless, it is worth bearing in mind that Nicolaes van Reigersberch, like his sister, makes no use of the adnominal concordial genitive in the sample of his own writings studied here.

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(44) a. om sijns meesters resolutie te brengen for his.gen master.gen resolution to bring ‘in order to bring his master’s resolution’ (Hugo de Groot, V [Rogge 1902: 274]) Otherwise, the genitive occurs only with common nouns with human referents (44b), the only exception to this being in a presumably entrenched title (44c). b. nae des Conings doot after the.gen king.gen death ‘after the king’s death’ (Hugo de Groot, VII [Rogge 1902: 283]) c. het commandement van den Prins van Pfaltsburg, prince the commandment of the prince of Pfalzburg prince des Rijcx the.gen empire.gen ‘the commandment of the Prince of Pfalzburg, prince of the empire’ (Hugo de Groot, VIII [Rogge 1902: 286]) The van-construction is less restricted in this respect, occurring with referents both inanimate (44d) and animate (44e). d. De Franchoysen hebben articulen overgelevert op het the French have articles handed-over on the angaen van het huwelijck entering-into of the marriage ‘The French have handed over articles relating to the entering into of the marriage’ (Hugo de Groot, IV [Rogge 1902: 272]) e. […] te procederen in de saek van den mareschal de Marillac […] to proceed in the case of the marshall de Marillac ‘[…] from proceeding in the case of the Marshall de Marillac’ (Hugo de Groot, VIII [Rogge 1902: 286]) The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in de Groot’s letters (Table 5.5) shows the adnominal genitive to be weaker than in the 16th–17th century section of the EMDC (Figure 5.3b). However, the division of labour between the two constructions is closer to that found in the “diaries” sub-corpus of the 16th–17th century EMDC data (Table 5.11). Thus, de Groot’s letters show two contrasting tendencies: on the one hand, his retention

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table 5.5

The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the personal letters of Hugo de Groot

Tokens (and % of total adnominal genitive and van-construction tokens) Tokens per 1,000 words

Adnominal genitive

van-construction

13 13.7%

82 86.3 %

3.7

23.4

of the adnominal genitive shows the influence of formal writing on his informal letters; on the other hand, the influence of the deflection felt most strongly in spoken language is clear through the fact that the van-construction is stronger here than in published writing from the same period. As far as their use of possessive constructions is concerned, the 18th century egodocuments studied here share few characteristics beyond a general weakness (in one case, a complete absence) of the genitive, and the default status of the van-construction as means of connecting two noun phrases in a possessive relationship. In the three sources, the van-construction can be used with any possessor, regardless of semantics or structural complexity (45). (45) a. De naam van het meijse is Antije Kikkert. the name of the girl is Antije Kikkert ‘The girl’s name is Antije Kikkert.’ (Luijtsen, 8.3.1780 [Moree 2003: 165]) b. ons genoode gasten quamen na het waaijen van de passjaer our invited guests came after the waving of the passenger vlagh aan ons boort flag on our board ‘after the waving of the passenger flag, our invited guests came on board our ship’ (Lammens, 26.4.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 70]) c. d’ heer Eijke kwam, met de capteijn van dat schip aan the gentleman Eijke came with the captain of that ship on ons boort our board ‘Mr Eijke came, with the captain of that ship, on board our ship’ (Swellengrebel, 29.5.1751 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 156])

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the dutch genitive table 5.6

The occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the Lammens journal

Tokens Tokens per 1,000 words

Adnominal genitive (all)

Adnominal genitive (novel)

vanconstruction

28 1.11

18 0.72

167 6.65

Only one of the 18th century egodocument sources exhibits truly regular adnominal genitive use, namely the Lammens journal; the genitive is, nonetheless, strongly outnumbered by the van-construction (Table 5.6). Of the 28 genitive tokens contained in the Lammens journal, 18 cannot be classified as titles or set phrases; that is to say, it is possible that these are novel formations by the sisters. As noted in Section 5.4.2, two tokens (of a single type) involve a gender mismatch between the gender of the determiner and the gender of the noun. One shared characteristic of the majority of the novel genitives (n = 12, i.e. two-thirds of the 18 novel examples) is that they denote phenomena of nature (46); four of the nature-based genitives occur in the space of a single sentence (46a). (46) a. maar gans soo vermakelijk niet door dien het ruijsen but quite so amusing not through which the gurgling der golven het lieve geklater der boomen, ons the.gen waves the.gen dear splashing the.gen trees us belet te hooren en het soet gesang der voogeltjes, hinders to hear en the sweet singing the.gen birds.dim evenwel het musijk der kanarien volgt met ons just-like the music the.gen canaries follows with us ‘but it isn’t so amusing because of the gurgling of the waves, the dear splashing of the trees, which hinders us from hearing the sweet singing of the little birds, just as the music of the canaries follows with us’ (Lammens, 1.5.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 72]) b. en hart moest schreeuwen wilde and hard had-to scream wanted het blaasen der wint the blowing the.gen.fem.sg wind

men malkander door one each-other through verstaan understand

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‘and had to scream loudly in order to understand each other through (above) the blowing of the wind’ (Lammens, 28.8.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 107]) The remainder of the novel genitives in the Lammens journal are more diverse, denoting animate (47) and inanimate (48) possessors. (47) a. hadden veel te sien na soo veel schielijke maaksels, soo van had much to see after so many quick creations so from de kleedinge der Oost Indische vrouwen als van de slaven the clothing the.gen east Indian women as from the slaves ‘had much to see after so many quick creations, such as from the clothing of the East Indian women, and from the slaves’ (Lammens, 30.9.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 116]) b. mag niet vergeeten dat kort voor den avond stond een seer may not forget that shortly before the evening stood a very heerlijke lijkstatie sagen, van een onser matroosen maginifcent burial-ceremony saw of one our.gen sailors ‘musn’t forget that, shortly before the evening, we saw a very magnificent burial ceremony of one of our sailors’ (Lammens, 29.3.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 54]) (48) broer ging met de capteijn en de heer Bergman sijn brother went with the captain and the gentleman Bergman his pligt afleggen bij de edele heer gouverneur deeser duty do by the noble gentleman governor this.gen plaats, die hem volgens sijn karacter met het place who him according-to his character with the uijtkomen der wagten en andere seremonien ook seer coming-out the.gen guards and other ceremonies also very beleeft en minnelijk ontfong polite and dear received ‘brother went with the captain and Mr Bergman to do his duty with the governor of this place who, in accordance with his character, also received him very politely and dearly with the coming-out of the guards and other ceremonies’ (Lammens, 16.7.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 95]) In the Luijtsen letters, with only one possibly productively formed exception (49) (repeated from (40c) above), the genitive examples are exclusively set

135

the dutch genitive table 5.7

The occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the Luijtsen letters

Tokens Tokens per 1,000 words

Adnominal genitive (all)

Adnominal genitive (novel)

vanconstruction

34 1.19

1 0.03

71 2.48

phrases (50), mostly of a religious nature (including a number of direct quotations from the Bible). There are 34 genitive tokens in all; about half as many as the van-construction (Table 5.7). (49) ja het stuutsel mijnner geheele lighaam yes the support my.gen.fem.sg whole body ‘yes, the support of my whole body.’ (Luijtsen, 15.11.1777 [Moree 2003: 115]) (50) a. Dat mijns herten wens is, lieven man. that my.gen heart.gen wish is dear man ‘Which is my heart’s wish, dear man.’ (Luijtsen, ?.1.1780 [Moree 2003: 159]) b. en uw in gesontheijt in de haven uwer begeerte mag and you in health in the harbour your.gen desire may brengen. bring ‘And bring you in health to the habour of your desire.’ (Luijtsen, 20.9.1777 [Moree 2003: 92]) c. Ik koos liever dorpelwagter in het huis mijnnes Gods te I choose rather doorkeeper in the house my.gen God.gen to weesen, dan lang te woonen in te tenten der be than long to live in the tents the.gen goddeloosheij. godlessness ‘I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to live long in the tents of godlessness.’ (Luijtsen, 20.9.1777 [Moree 2003: 90])12 12 This example preserves Luijtsen’s orthography uncorrected.

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figure 5.4 The level of occurrence (tokens per 1,000 words) of the adnominal genitive and van-construction in the three corpora of 18th century egodocuments

figure 5.5

The relative use of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the three corpora of 18th century egodocuments

The Swellengrebel journal contains no adnominal genitive examples at all (Table 5.8). This might be evidence of comparatively advanced deflection in the Dutch used in South Africa in the mid-18th century; certainly, the Dutch spoken in South Africa at this time, while not yet a separate language (i.e. Afrikaans), already displayed certain characteristics marking it as distinct from the Dutch spoken in the European Dutch-language area (de Villiers 1960: 11; see also Section 4.3.2 above). It may, however, simply be a consequence of the Swellengrebels’ pithy journal style, in which their short summaries of events constrasts with the more descriptive prose style of the Lammens sisters; notice that the default van-construction is rarer in the Swellengrebel journal (Table 5.8) than in the writings of their (near) contemporaries (Tables 5.6 and 5.7). A relative rarity of possessive constructions as a whole is also characteristic of the more pithily written German sources (Chapter 6). A normalised comparison of the level of occurrence of the two constructions (given as the number of occurrences per 1,000 words) is given in Figure 5.4 and shows that Luijtsen and the Swellen-

137

the dutch genitive table 5.8

The occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the Swellengrebel journal

Tokens Tokens per 1,000 words

table 5.9

Adnominal genitive

van-construction

0 0

44 2.51

The occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the van de Linde letters

Tokens Tokens per 1,000 words

Adnominal genitive

van-construction

157 (31.8%) 3.88

336 (68.2 %) 8.29

grebels use the van-construction to a similar extent, while Aagje Luijtsen and the Lammens sisters use the adnominal genitive to a similar extent (although the latter produced far more novel examples than the former did), and the Swellengrebels did not use it at all. It appears, therefore, that her medial position marks Aagje Luijtsen as a fairly typical 18th century genitive and vanconstruction user, with her usage overlapping with that of the other two sources. There is little similarity between the relative use of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the three egodocument sources beyond a dominance of the van-construction (Figure 5.5); superficially, Aagje Luijtsen is the most prolific genitive user but, when only novel genitives are counted, the Lammens sisters exhibit stronger genitive use. The 19th century van de Linde letters, as might be expected due to the nature of the writer and his addressee, contain stronger genitive use—more reflective of formal written language—than the earlier egodocuments (Table 5.9). The flexibility of the adnominal genitive reflects the situation in the formal 19th century data, with no semantic restrictions on possessors and a wide inventory of genitive determiners being used; 13 of the genitive examples are prenominal. Examples are given in (51). Despite the closeness to formal language, the vanconstruction is stronger against the genitive here than in the formal data of the same period (Table 5.9, Table 5.10 below).

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(51) a. zonder de brieven mijner vrienden in Holland without the letters my.gen friends in Holland ‘without the letters from my friends in Holland’ (van de Linde, 31.7.1834 [Mathijsen 1993: 58–59]) b. al onze jonge duiven sterven in het prilste hunner dagen all our young pigeons die in the earliest their.gen days ‘all our pigeons die in the earliest of their days’ (van de Linde, 10.11.1835 [Mathijsen 1993: 90]) c. voor het ontfangen van des tulpen-handelaar’s brief before the receiving of the.gen tulip-dealer.gen letter ‘before receiving the tulip-dealer’s letter’ (van de Linde, 10.4.1847 [Mathijsen 1993: 123]) 5.4.3.2 Adnominal Genitive vs. van-Construction in Formal Writing In contrast to the situation in the egodocuments, there is no continuity between the Middle Dutch data and the corpus of formal writing studied here; in fact, there is a clear break between the situation in the 15th century data and that in the 16th–17th century data. The van-construction dominates throughout. However, in the 16th century the adnominal genitive is stronger against the van-construction than it had been in the 15th century data presented in Section 5.2 and, by the 19th century, its token frequency (compared across the three equal-sized sub-corpora) was actually greater than it had been in the 16th and 17th centuries (Table 5.10). A further tendency visible in Table 5.10 is that the total number of contexts in which either the adnominal genitive or the van-construction could occur increases steadily in the equal-sized sub-corpora, from 1,395 tokens in the Gouden Eeuw, to 1,499 tokens in the 18th century and 1,712 tokens by the 19th century. The relative use of the two constructions differs by genre. In Table 5.11, in order to illustrate most clearly the division of labour between the two constructions, the figures are given as a percentage of the total occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in each genre sub-corpus. The “overall” figure for each period is calculated from the total tokens of the variants (shown in Table 5.10) for that period; the dominant construction is shown in boldface. In the 16th and 17th centuries the genitive dominated in non-academic texts and, to a much greater extent, in drama. In academic texts, the van-construction is slightly stronger than the genitive, and is by far the stronger variant in diaries and fiction. As a genre which comes close to informal or spontaneous

139

the dutch genitive table 5.10

The relative occurrence (in tokens and, in boldface, as a proportion of the total interchangeable contexts in each sub-corpus) of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in interchangeable contexts in the three time-delimited sub-corpora

Adnominal genitive

van-construction

16th–17th century

613 43.9%

782 56.1 %

18th century

518 34.6%

981 65.4 %

19th century

693 40.5%

1019 59.5 %

language, it is unsurprising that the diaries sub-corpus exhibits the weakest use of the genitive; this reflects the situation in the personal letters data. By the 18th century, as expected, the van-construction dominates in all genres. Notice, though, that the distribution in the academic genre has remained fairly stable, while the van-construction is weaker in fiction than it had been in the 16th and 17th centuries. In diaries, as in the 16th and 17th centuries, the van-construction is strongest, now appearing in almost 90 % of all possible contexts, a figure comparable to the Lammens journal (at least, if only the novel genitive formations in that sample are counted). The 19th century again shows the van-construction to be preponderant in all genres. In most genres, the division is roughly 60/40 in favour of the van-construction. In academic texts, however, the division between the two constructions is again closer to 50/50, as it had been since the 16th and 17th centuries. This consistently strong use of the adnominal genitive in academic texts (even if it never quite outnumbers the van-construction) can be traced through to the use of the adnominal genitive fragment in present-day Dutch. Overall, the main trend in the relative use of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction in the period studied here is a general consolidation of the latter as the dominant variant. 5.4.4 The Rise of Possessive -s The constructionalisation of possessive -s from the masculine and neuter singular genitive suffix -s had taken place in Middle Dutch (van der Horst 2008:

140 table 5.11

chapter 5 The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the van-construction (as a percentage of the total occurrences of both) in interchangeable contexts in the three time-delimited sub-corpora

Genre

16th–17th century genitive van

18th century genitive van

19th century genitive van

Academic Diaries Drama Fiction Non-academic

45.4 27.6 67.8 32.3 52.5

54.6 72.4 32.2 67.7 47.5

48.9 10.3 29.4 39.2 31.2

51.1 89.7 70.6 60.8 68.8

47.9 38.1 40.7 36.1 35.7

52.1 61.9 59.3 63.9 64.3

Overall

43.9

56.1

34.6

65.4

40.5

59.5

798). Over the early modern period, possessive -s underwent constructional change, narrowing its type frequency to become, by the 19th century, the construction familiar from the present-day language. The earliest data studied here, from the 16th and 17th centuries, show Dutch possessive -s to be used similarly to its English and Mainland Scandinavian counterparts, attaching to possessor noun phrases of varying degrees of complexity (including to the right edge of postmodification); the 19th century data show the construction to be restricted mainly to proper name possessors, a situation carried on into the present-day language. This progression is followed in this section. In Chapter 3, it was shown that three discrete stages are discernible in the course of the emergence of the possessive -s construction in English and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, starting with a concordial case marker and ending up with a non-concordial clitic-like possession marker (Norde 2006: 206–208 [on Swedish]). Norde (2001b: 264) has observed for Swedish that, once -s had become associated with once-only possession marking, it could no longer mark concordial genitive case; this is not the situation in all the data studied here, in which possessive -s and a productive concordial genitive co-exist in formal and informal language. Nevertheless, the genitive to possessive -s progression can be observed in the data. Some of the early modern Dutch egodocuments investigated here show the concordial adnominal genitive and possessive -s to exist in complementary distribution in the usage of some writers, i.e. reflecting the English and Swedish pattern: only possessive -s occurs regularly in the 17th century letters of Maria and Nicolaes van Reigersberch and the 18th century Swellengrebel journal; pre-

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cisely the opposite situation is found in the letters from Hugo de Groot to Maria van Reigersberch: he uses the genitive but never possessive -s. The absence of possessive -s and the retention of the concordial genitive in de Groot’s letters might be attributed to his greater familiarity with the written norm; nonetheless, the formal written texts of the time, as will be shown presently, included possessive -s alongside the concordial genitive. In any event, he was writing to—and responding to—someone who used possessive -s to an extent and in a manner that seems to have been typical for the time; thus, he would have been familiar with the innovative construction from informal and formal language. His letters to his wife, however, show no signs of his accommodating to her usage in this respect. In the remaining data the situation is less clear cut. Aagje Luijtsen, the Lammens sisters and Gerrit van de Linde all use the genitive productively (albeit to a very low extent in Luijtsen’s letters) as well as the possessive -s. That is to say, we find the initial and final stages of Norde’s (2006) threestage progression simultaneously. This situation is even more strongly manifested in the formal written data. The two synonymous constructions were in competition with one another, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, and often appear alongside one another in the same text. The co-existence in the formal written data of conservative case morphology and deflectional developments such as the (over)generalisation of certain markers and the use of innovative constructions such as possessive -s and the van-construction allow insights into the progress of deflection in Dutch. The contemporaneous use of the two constructions testifies to the influence of codification and the inclusion of the concordial genitive in the prescribed norm; nonetheless, instances in which the concordial genitive is not used according to the norm, namely examples of overgeneralisation of masculine/neuter singular marking, show that also an intermediate stage in the constructionalisation of possessive -s was manifested for a while in writings which otherwise conformed to the norm. Thus, all the stages in the development of possessive -s can be observed simultaneously. No strong diachronic or register-based trends in the extent of use of possessive -s can be observed in the data (Table 5.12), beyond an observation that the construction is much rarer in the 20th century data than in earlier periods. The development of possessive -s from the genitive -s marker can be followed in the early modern Dutch data. Two relevant tendencies were noted in Section 5.4.2; namely, the avoidance in prenominal order of non-s genitive morphology, and the generalisation of -s-morphology (i.e. masculine and neuter) to feminine singular nouns occurring in the genitive. Thus, alongside correctly inflected examples such as (52a), in which a masculine noun takes masculine inflection, we also find mismatches such as (52b), in which a feminine noun

142 table 5.12

chapter 5 The relative occurrence of possessive -s in the early modern egodocuments, early modern formal texts, and the 20th century Eindhoven corpus

Period

Corpus/Sub-corpus

16th–17th century

Maria van Reigersberch Nicolaes van Reigersberch EMDC (16th–17th century)

Occurrences of Tokens of possessive -s per possessive -s 1000 words 52 10 175

1.14 1.34 1.75

18th century Aagje Luijtsen Lammens Swellengrebel EMDC (18th century)

36 29 2 62

1.26 1.15 0.11 0.62

19th century Gerrit van de Linde EMDC (19th century)

48 105

1.18 1.05

20th century Eindhoven

434

0.06

takes non-feminine inflection. Mismatches such as these, as reported in 5.4.2, were at their most frequent in the 16th–17th century data, and were rare by the 19th century. When the possessor was human the possessive -s construction, with its prenominal order and once-only attachment of the marker -s, was also encountered regardless of the gender of the possessor (52c,d). The chronological order of this development is addressed later in this section. Accordingly, by the start of the 16th century, the nominal -s was sufficient to allow correct parsing of the products of the construction; any inflection on the determiner within the possessor noun phrase was unnecessary (see Norde 2001b: 256). The principle of single encoding exhibited by the possessive -s construction met the requirements of both speaker and hearer (Norde 2001b: 256, 258). Once the pattern was entrenched, feminine possessors were unproblematic as the -s marker was now associated with possession marking rather than with masculine and neuter gender. (52) a. mijns Broeders ziel my.gen.masc/neut.sg brother.gen.masc/neut.sg soul ‘my brother’s soul’ (EMDC: W. Bilderdijk. 1808. Floris de vijfde [drama])

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b. des bruits camerdeur the.gen.masc/neut.sg bride.gen.masc/neut.sg room-door ‘the door of the bride’s room’ (EMDC: P.C. Hooft. 1602. Bruiloft-spel [drama]) c. myn Vaders voorhoofd my father.poss forehead ‘my father’s forehead’ (EMDC: N. Heinsius. 1722. Den vermakelyken avanturier [fiction]) d. de Bruits heusheidt the bride.poss courteousness ‘the bride’s courteousness’ (EMDC: P.C. Hooft. 1602. Bruiloft-spel [drama]) The possessor noun phrase of the possessive -s construction had a fairly high type frequency—i.e. it was flexible with regard to the types of noun phrase that could occur in that position—at least in the 16th–17th century (presumably reflecting a characteristic carried over from Middle Dutch), but this flexibility became restricted over time. Tables 5.13 and 5.14 show the diachronic changes that affected the possessors occurring in possessive -s. In the 16th–17th century data, regardless of register, the most frequent possessor type was a phrase consisting of a determiner and noun, with the -s attached to the noun; this type dominates in the letters of Maria and Nicolaes van Reigersberch, as well as in the formal written data in the corpus. This is also the most frequent possessor type in the 18th century Lammens journal but is outnumbered by proper name possessors in formal writing of the same period (if simple and complex possessors are combined as one category). This possessor type became progressively less frequent over time. In the 18th century Luijtsen letters proper names are the dominant possessors (although determiner + common noun possessors still occur in over one quarter of the possessive -s tokens); by the 19th century, determiner + noun possessors are a clear minority and proper names are the default possessor type. This situation remains stable beyond the 19th century and up to the present day. The increased specialisation of possessive -s to determiner-less proper names is concurrent with the increasing familiarity of the revitalised concordial genitive. The variety of proper name possessors in the early modern period was greater than in the modern language. Besides prototypical names (53a), combinations of a title and surname (53b) and coordinated possessors (53c), all of

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table 5.13

The occurrence in early modern Dutch egodocuments of different possessor types in possessive -s (in tokens and, in boldface, as a percentage of the total possessive -s tokens for the writer). (Each characteristic was counted once; as some possessors exhibit more than one of the characteristics, the totals here are greater than the straight possessive -s token count.)13

Possessor type

MvR

NvR

La.

Lu.

Sw.

vdL

Name

10 19.2%

30 30.0%

8 32%

22 57.9 %

–

37 78.7%

Complex name

5 9.6%

2 20.0%

–

1 2.6 %

–

–

Common noun (alone)

2 3.8%

–

–

2 5.3 %

2 100 %

2 4.3 %

Determiner + noun

30 57.7%

5 50.0%

17 68%

10 26.3 %

–

4 8.5 %

Pronoun

5 9.6%

–

–

3 7.9 %

–

4 8.5 %

which are still possible in the modern language, we also find attachment to the right-edge of postmodification of the head of the possessor noun phrase (53d,e). (53) a. een suster van Annetijes man a sister of Annetije.poss husband ‘a sister of Annetije’s husband’ (Luijtsen, 3.5.1778 [Moree 2003: 128]) b. Ooc wilde ic wel weeten of joffrou Biskops dochter also wanted I emph know whether Mrs. Biskop.poss daughter ghetroudt is married is ‘Also, I did want to know whether Mrs. Biskop’s daughter was married’ (Maria van Reigersberch, LII [Rogge 1902: 184–185]) 13 No figures are given here for Hugo de Groot as he did not produce any possessive -s examples in the sample studied.

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the dutch genitive table 5.14

The occurrence of different possessor types in the EMDC in possessive -s (in tokens and, in boldface, as a percentage of the tokens for the period)

Possessor type

16th–17th century

18th century

19th century

Name

21 20.0%

17 29.3 %

83 81.4 %

Complex name

15 14.3%

9 15.5 %

10 9.8 %

Common noun (incl. personified)

13 12.4%

7 12.1 %

3 2.9 %

Determiner + noun

44 41.9%

17 29.3 %

4 3.9 %

Pronoun

12 11.4%

8 13.8%

2 2.0 %

c. Bruid en Bruîgoms welstand bride and bridegroom.poss wellbeing ‘bride and bridegroom’s wellbeing’ (EMDC: C. Schaaf. 1737. De belachchelyke minnaer; of de devote serenade [drama]) d. Bicker Raye’s vrouw zaligers kant Bicker Raye.poss wife blessed.poss side ‘Bicker Raye’s late wife’s side’ (EMDC: J. Bicker Raye. 29 January 1739 [diary entry]) e. de graef van Stirums brigaede the count of Stirum.poss brigade ‘the Count of Stirum’s brigade’ (EMDC: W. Frederik. July 1643 [diary entry]) Additionally, examples are encountered in which the -s marker is not attached to the postmodification (53f).

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f. Hier werdt ghezeidt dat den Prins van Condee volck here becomes said that the prince.∅ of Condee people light tegen die van de relige. lies against those of the religion ‘It is said here that the Prince of Condee’s people are lying to those of religion.’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXXVII [Rogge 1902: 147]) Certain pronouns also occurred in the possessor noun phrase (54). In the 18th century egodocuments, possessive -s is restricted to proper names and common nouns denoting individual humans. Only in the Lammens journal do we find possessors which are not individual humans; these examples denote either groups of humans, or ships. In the 19th century letters, possessive -s occurs almost exclusively with proper name possessors. (54) a. Sy is niemants vyant, maer allemans moeder she is no-one.poss enemy but everyone.poss mother ‘She is no-one’s enemy, but is everyone’s mother’ (EMDC: D.V. Coorthert. 1582. Comedie vande Rijckeman [drama]) b. igelijks nood en begeerte everyone.poss need and desire ‘everyone’s need and desire’ (Luijtsen, 14.10.1780 [Moree 2003: 191]) c. elcx oogen each.poss eyes ‘each one’s eyes’ (EMDC: J. de Decker. 1651. Goede vrydag ofte Het lijden onses heeren Jesu Christi [diaries]) d. aan welkers einde on which.poss end ‘on the end of which’ (EMDC: N. Heinsius. 1722. Den vermakelyken avanturier [non-academic]) Most of the possessive -s examples in the data involve a possessor noun phrase which denotes a human individual. Some exceptions to this involve a noun which prototypically has an inanimate referent but which seems to be personified in context (55). Elsewhere, as in (56), such an interpretation appears unlikely although, in those two cases, the fact that the noun refers to a collection of human referents (namely, everybody in the country and in the family, respectively) may have licensed their use in possessive -s. An alternative expla-

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nation for such deviant formations might be that these examples are actually compounds, in which the two elements are written separately and the -s on the first element is a binding element (see, e.g., van der Horst 2008: 798). Certainly, the corpus contains many examples which are clearly compounds with elements written separately; however, there are numerous examples such as those in (56), in which the determiner agrees only with the first element in gender and number. (55) a. Gewoonheid is verdienste’s vyandin habit is merit.poss enemy ‘habit is the enemy of merit’ (EMDC: E. van Calcar. 1875. Uit het leven voor het leven [drama]) b. statige Trouws onbrekelijcke banden constant faith.poss unbreakable bonds ‘the unbreakable bonds of constant faith’ (EMDC: P.C. Hooft. 1607. De gewonde Venus [drama]) c. ons Adrighems huijshouden our Adrighem.poss housework ‘the housework in our Adrighem [the ship in which the Lammens sisters travelled]’ (Lammens 1.8.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 103]) (56) a. ’t landts saecken the.neut.sg country.poss matters ‘the country’s matters’ (EMDC: W. Frederik. 1643 [diaries]) b. het Geslachts schult the.neut.sg family.poss fault.fem ‘the family’s fault’ (EMDC: G.A. Bredero. 1612. Klucht vande koe [drama]) The untidy rise of the Dutch possessive -s in formal written Dutch shows the influence of codification on a deflectional development. The use of possessive -s was much broader in the earliest period studied here, and narrowed over time. The occurrence of uninflected determiners in the possessor noun phrase decreases over the 18th and 19th centuries, while the concordial genitive remains strong in the written language. The fact that this development is visible first in the 18th century data, by which time the grammarians’ prescriptions on the use of case morphology would have been well known, suggests that the grammarians had a hand in restricting the development of possessive -s in

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written Dutch, ensuring that its main use would be with proper name possessors. Nonetheless, possessive -s may still be used—to a limited extent—with common noun possessors in modern Dutch. The modern use of possessive -s is the topic of Section 5.6.3. 5.4.5 The Use of the Periphrastic Possessive The ascendence of the periphrastic possessive construction is ascribed by Vezzosi (2000: 134) to its markers being “phonetically more conspicuous” than those of the concordial genitive and thus making the relationship between the two noun phrases clear. However, she exemplifies this by constrasting the periphrastic de coning zijn huis ‘the king his house’ with the once-only marked genitive des coning huis ‘the.gen king.∅ house’, not mentioning the twicemarked genitive variant des conings huis ‘the.gen king.gen house’ or the possessive -s marked de conings huis ‘the king.poss house’ (again once-only, but with the -s between the two noun phrases), both of which would have been available to speakers and would have outnumbered the once-only marked genitive variant, at least according to the data studied here. The double marking of the prototypical genitive example, and the positioning of the possessive -s on the right-edge of the possessor noun phrase (rather than medially, as in Vezzosi’s once-only genitive marked example), would surely have made those variants at least as coherent as the periphrastic possessive construction as an indicator of possession (and therefore acceptable to—and usable by—speakers).14 This is borne out by the wide use of the concordial genitive and possessive -s constructions in the early modern data (the register-based restrictions notwithstanding). The periphrastic possessive construction, in contrast, is rare in the data. Four tokens involving a genitive possessor occur in the 16th–17th century formal written data, as in (57). (57) ende alsoe is die plaets van des hertogen van Alva zijn volck and also is that place of the.gen duke.gen of Alva his people geheel bedorven wholly destroyed ‘and also that place has been wholly destroyed by the Duke of Alva’s people’ (EMDC: Willem Janszoon Verwer. 1572. Memoriaelboek [diaries])

14 It cannot be denied, of course, that the bound markers are phonetically less “conspicuous” than the free phonological words that mark the periphrastic possessive.

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In Middle Dutch, the possessor in the periphrastic possessive construction could be genitive- or dative-marked, or could even be unmarked for case (Vezzosi 2000: 123); this variation is also manifested to some extent in the data. Besides the genitive-marked possessors in the formal written data, the remaining examples bear no case-marking on the possessor other than that relating to the entire noun phrase’s role in the sentence (58). Surprisingly, given his retention of the concordial genitive and avoidance of possessive -s, there is one token of the periphrastic possessive in the writings of Hugo de Groot (58); the Lammens journal also yielded one example (59). (58) Maer wie zal den Keiser beletten geld te geven daer t’ but who shall the.acc emperor hinder money to give there it hem gelieft ende den vorst van Beieren sijn volck him preferred and the.acc monarch of Bavaria his people aen s’ Conings broeder te leenen on the.gen king.gen brother to loan ‘But who shall hinder the emperor to give money where he wishes and to loan the monarch of Bavaria’s people to the king’s brother’ (Hugo de Groot, VIII [Rogge 1902: 284–285]) (59) maar vonden wij occasie genoeg hadden, aen boord, om van die but found we occasion enough had on board for from the goede vrouw haar geselschap te profiteeren good woman her company to profit ‘but we found that we had occasion enough, on board, to profit from the good woman’s company’ (Lammens, 20.7.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 100]) The most prolific user of the construction amongst the writers studied is Aagje Luijtsen (60); even she, however, only produces five tokens (0.17 per 1,000 words; i.e. less frequent than possessive -s in her letters). (60) a. De schout loopt bij haar uijt en in en sijn groote vrinden en the scout walks by her out and in and his great friends and de schout zijn vrouw is moij. the scout his wife is pretty ‘The scout heaves and enters her house, and [the houses of] his great friends, and the scout’s wife is pretty.’ (Luijtsen, 14.10.1780 [Moree 2003: 195])

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b. Diet is je zoon zijn schrift vader. this is your son his writing father ‘This is your son’s writing, father.’ (Luijtsen, mid-1780 [Moree 2003: 199])15 c. Cornels Kikkert zijn vrou is ook zwanger. Cornelis Kikkert his wife is also pregnant ‘Cornelis Kikert’s wife is also preganant.’ (Luijtsen, 3.5.1778 [Moree 2003: 128])16 The construction is completely absent from the letters of Maria and Nicolaes van Reigersberch and Gerrit van de Linde; besides the examples with a genitivemarked possessor in the EMDC (57), the construction is also absent from that corpus. Although the number of examples is small, a trend observable in the data is that the periphrastic possessive tends to occur in more formal language if the possessor is postmodified; this is the case with three of the four EMDC examples (57) and the sole example from Hugo de Groot (58). The distance between the head of the possessor noun phrase and the possession marker may have promoted the selection of a “phonetically more conspicuous” marker in these examples (to repeat Vezzosi’s [2000: 134] terminology). The situation in the data suggests that the periphrastic possessive may be deliberately avoided in writing, even in the most spontaneous, informal egodocuments. Even in the highly deflected sources, such as Maria van Reigersberch’s letters and the Swellengrebel journal, the lack of morphological case marking has not brought about the use of the periphrastic possessive. The rarity of the periphrastic possessive is also a feature of the spoken component of the Eindhoven corpus; this is returned to in Section 5.5.11. 5.4.6 The Rearrangement of the Partitive Genitive A secondary role performed by the genitive throughout its history has been the denoting of partitivity. The nature of its partitive use has changed over time, however. While the partitive genitive originally occurred with a noun in the genitive phrase (61a), the partitive construction still present in modern

15 This example occurs in a letter written by Aagje Luijtsen on behalf of her young son, Lammert (Moree 2003: 69). 16 This example preserves Aagje Luijtsen’s original orthography in the top line but includes the addition zwanger ‘pregnant’ made by the editor.

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Dutch (Section 5.6.4) now features an adjective in the genitive phrase (61b). The transition from a nominal to an adjectival partitive construction was well underway during the Middle Dutch period. Both constructions were still in use but a transition from the nominal to the adjectival partitive was underway. Both partitive constructions occur even in texts, such as Maria van Reigersberch’s letters, which lack an adnominal genitive. (61) a. (Nominal) partitive genitive construction [[NP1] [[NP2]s]] ‘NP1 is part of NP2’ NP2 is headed by a noun of any gender b. (Adjectival) partitive genitive construction [[NP1] [[AP1]s]] ‘NP1 is part of AP1’ NP1 = quantifier (e.g. iets ‘something’, niets ‘nothing’) AP1 = adjective In the nominal partitive construction (61a) the -s suffix was generalised to occur not only on masculine and neuter singular nouns, but also on feminine nouns. This development, which suggests that -s had been reanalysed as a marker of partitivity (rather than a concordial genitive inflection), is shown in the examples in (62), in which (62a) involves a masculine noun, (62b–d) a neuter noun and (62e) a feminine noun. To take its autonomous and invariant nature into account, the marker is glossed not as ‘genitive’, but as part ‘partitive’. (62) a. een roemer wijns a large-glass wine.part ‘a large glass of wine’ (EMDC: P.C. Hooft. 1602. Bruiloft-spel [drama]) b. eene ongeloofelijke hoeveelheid waters an unbelievable quantity water.part ‘an unbelievable quantity of water’ (EMDC: W.A. Holterman. 1859. De lucht: Gewone en zeldzame verschijnselen van den dampkring [academic]) c. maer UE. kan zeggen datter altijdt alles te zien is, but you can say that-there always everything to see is midts ghevende een weinigh geldts provided-that giving a little money.part

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‘but you can say that everything can always be seen, provided that you give a little money’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXIV [Rogge 1902: 104–105]) d. tgeen op sijn best een kwartier uurs kon sijn which on his best a quarter hour.part could be ‘which at best could be a quarter of an hour’ (Lammens, 19.7.1736 [Barend-van Haeften 2002: 99]) e. zoo veel bedremmeldheids en verwarrings so much embarrassment.part and confusion.part ‘so much embarrassment and confusion’ (EMDC: M. Corver. 1786. Tooneel-aantekeningen) In the data studied here, both formal and informal, another, related construction is found; namely, the adjectival partitive construction which is still present in modern Dutch. Here, the adjective, to which an -s is attached, follows a quantifier or noun. The occurrence of adjectives, as shown in (63), indicates that the entire construction had been reanalysed and entrenched as a schema into which either nouns or adjectives could be inserted to denote partitivity. (63) iets ongemeen afmattends en verslappends something unusually exhausting.part and weakening.part ‘something unusually exhausting and weakening’ (EMDC: W.A. Holterman. 1859. De lucht: Gewone en zeldzame verschijnselen van den dampkring [academic]) want ick de menschen niet veel goedts en betrouwe because I the people not much good.part en trust ‘because I don’t have much faith in the people’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXXIII [Rogge 1902: 133]) A transition from the nominal partitive construction (61a) to the adjectival partitive construction (61b) took place over the early modern period; in the formal written data, in which both constructions occur, there is a rise of the adjectival partitive construction and a concurrent fall in the use of the nominal partitive genitive. The situation has stabilised in the data from the 18th century onwards; this is illustrated in Figure 5.6. In present-day Dutch, only the adjectival partitive construction and the s-less nominal partitive construction are found.

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figure 5.6 The occurrence of nouns and adjectives (in tokens) in the partitive genitive

A variant of the nominal partitive in which the -s is omitted, is also found (64). This variant, which is the default construction for marking partitivity on a noun in modern Dutch, is formalised below as (61aʹ). (61aʹ)s-less nominal partitive construction [[NP1] [NP2]] ‘NP1 is part of NP2’ (64) UE. moetter geen vraght van geven maer wel een glas wijn you must-there no freight of give but yet a glass wine alsse den voerman thuys brengt. when-she the ferryman home brings ‘You don’t have to give [away] any freight from it, but do give a glass of wine when she brings the ferryman home.’ (Maria van Reigersberch, XXXII [Rogge 1902: 130]) Despite the entrenchment of the schema for nouns and adjectives, the loss of nominal case marking observed elsewhere in the data also made itself felt in the partitive construction; the occurrence of nouns in the partitive genitive became increasingly rare while the occurrence of adjectives in the construction increased. The nominal partitive construction was superseded by the one in which the noun is left unmarked; the adjectival partitive construction remains in present-day Dutch. The same development has taken place in Standard German, which features an adjectival partitive (e.g. etwas süßes ‘something sweet.part’) but whose nominal partitive now only (rarely) occurs with nouns preceded by an adjective (Bondzio 1967: 64; Duden 2005: 980). This topic is returned to in Chapter 6.

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5.4.7 Non-Adnominal Use of the Genitive Regardless of register or medium, non-adnominal genitive use is vanishingly rare in the data studied here, suggesting that it had been all but lost during the Middle Dutch period and was insufficiently familiar to be resurrected by the early grammarians as part of the prescribed norm for formal written Dutch. Because few trends could be observed in the data, the treatment of the non-adnominal genitive here is restricted to the presentation of some examples and raw figures. In the formal written data, eight prepositions occurred with a genitive complement: (in modern orthography) binnen ‘within’, buiten ‘outside’, om … wille ‘for the sake of’, op grond ‘because of’, tot … toe ‘to the point of’, uithoofde ‘from the head of’, uit ‘out of, from’ and van … wegen/van wegen … ‘because of’. The occurrence of a non-genitive complement with van … wegen is noted, and not proscribed, by van Heule (1953a [1625/1626]: 71); the roughly contemporaneous Maria van Reigersberch’s letters contain only non-genitive complements with these prepositions, e.g. (65). (65) Deskoelges, die hier van weegen den hertogh van Deskoelges who here of ways the.masc/acc.? duke of Savoien is Savoien is ‘Deskoelges, who is here because of the Duke of Savoien’ (Maria van Reigersbergh, XXXVII [Rogge 1902: 147]) Het tgene UE. mij schrijft van weegen de vrou van the that you me write of ways the.∅ woman van Valckenburgh Valckenburgh ‘That which you write to me because of/on behalf of Mrs. van Valckenburgh’ (van Reigersbergh, XL [Rogge 1902: 155]) Weiland (1805: 197) states that genitive complements had been used with various prepositions in earlier periods of Dutch but that, by the start of the 19th century, only accusative complements occurred; this is confirmed by the data. The competition is exemplified in (66); note that an adnominal genitive occurs alongside an absent prepositional genitive in (66d). (66) a. binnen ‘within’ genitive: binnen der stadt van Brussel within the.gen.fem.sg/plu town of Brussels

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‘within the town of Brussels’ (EMDC: W.J. Verwer. 1572–1581. Memoriaelbouck [diaries]) non-genitive: b. binnen die stadt Haerlem within the.nom/acc.fem town Haarlem ‘within the town of Haarlem’ (EMDC: W.J. Verwer. 1572–1581. Memoriaelbouck [diaries]) c. buiten ‘outside’ genitive: buuten der steden outside the.gen.fem.sg/plu towns ‘outside the towns’ (EMDC: A. Zeebout. 1557. Tvoyage van Mher Joos van Ghistele [non-academic]) non-genitive: d. buyten de paelen des waerheyt outside the poles the.gen.masc/neut.sg truth ‘outside the poles of truth’ (EMDC: W. Baudartius. 1610. Morghen-wecker der vrye Nederlantsche Provintien [non-academic]) Eight adjectives, represented by 20 tokens in total, are attested in the formal written data with a genitive complement: (in modern orthography), gedachtig ‘remembering’, gerust ‘easy, safe’, indachtig ‘mindful’, kundig ‘capable’, onkundig ‘ignorant’, schuldig ‘guilty’, vol ‘full’ and waardig ‘worthy’. The rarity of examples in the corpus reflects a similar finding by Allen (2008: 177–178) in her Middle English data in texts which were otherwise rich in inflectional morphology. The majority of the examples occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries; only a single example—with waardig—was found in the 19th century data. Two examples are given in (67). (67) der Latynsche taale onkundig the.gen.fem.sg/plu Latin.gen.fem.sg language.gen.fem.sg ignorant ‘ignorant of the Latin language’ (EMDC: J. le Francq van Berkhey. 1769. Natuurlyke historie van Holland. Eerste deel [academic]) vol godlijcker sinnen full divine.gen.fem.sg/plu senses ‘full of godly senses’ (EMDC: D.V. Coornhert. 1582. Comedie vande Rijckeman [drama])

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During the early modern period, the genitive adjectives can occur instead with non-genitive complements, both in the accusative case (68a) and with the preposition van (68b,c). This occurs in formal and informal texts, and sometimes within the same text by a single writer (68a,c). (68) a. Hij is vol goede affectie he is full good affection ‘He is full of good affection’ (Hugo de Groot, V [Rogge 1902: 276]) b. onkundig van mijn lot ignorant of my fate ‘ignorant of my fate’ (EMDC: E.M. Post. 1791. Reinhart, of natuur en godsdienst. Deel I. [fiction]) c. De Ambassadeur ordinaris van Engelant is van hyer vertrocken the ambassador ordinaris of England is from here departed vol van goede affectie tot mij full of good affection to me ‘The Ambassador Ordinaris of England has departed from here, full of good affection for me’ (Hugo de Groot, V [Rogge 1902: 275]) The use of a prepositional phrase as the complement of certain adjectives also occurred in English (with the preposition of ) and is explicitly linked by Allen (2008: 178) to the increasing use of the of-construction as an alternative to the genitive. Genitive objects of verbs are also rare in the 16th to 19th century data, not occurring at all in the informal personal letters. This was also the situation in Middle English (Allen 2008: 176). Twelve verbs—of which there were fifteen tokens (nine in the Gouden Eeuw and three apiece in the 18th and 19th century sub-corpora)—were attested with a genitive object in the data: (in modern orthography) aanhoren ‘to listen’, beklagen ‘to lament, pity’, bewijzen ‘to prove’, danken ‘to thank’, gedenken ‘to remember’, horen ‘to hear’, ontfermen ‘to take pity on’, schromen ‘to hesitate’, studeren ‘to study’, verzekeren ‘to assure, insure’, verwerven ‘to acquire’ and wijden ‘to devote’. Some examples are given in (69): (69) niet wetende wat dit beduyde beclaechde hy sich vast not knowing what this meant pitied he refl firmly zijns ongelucx his.gen.masc/neut.sg misfortune.gen.masc/neut.sg

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‘not knowing what this meant, he lamented his misfortune’ (EMDC: D.V. Coornhert. 1644. Vijftigh lustighe historien oft nieuwigheden Joannis Boccatij. [fiction]) ik gedenk zyner eere I remember his.gen.fem.sg/plu honour ‘I remember his honour’ (EMDC: J. le Francq van Berkhey. 1769. Natuurlyke historie van Holland. Eerste deel. [academic]) The paucity of non-adnominal genitive use in the early modern Dutch data resembles the Middle English situation, in which the adnominal genitive remained (albeit in decline), while the non-adnominal genitive was weak (Allen 2008: 174–181). The greater resilience of the adnominal use of the genitive is a cross-Germanic characteristic and is still clearly manifested in modern Standard German, in which the adnominal genitive remains generally preponderate against its competitors—regardless of register—while the prepositional genitive faces strong competition and the other non-adnominal uses are all but absent (Chapter 6). 5.4.8 Discussion The gradual reduction of the roles performed by the Dutch genitive case follows broadly the same path as its counterparts in English and Swedish. As in those languages, the non-adnominal roles of the genitive were lost first, with the adnominal use persisting longest. In contrast to English and Swedish, both of which had fully lost their concordial genitive by the start of the early modern period, the Dutch adnominal genitive declined more slowly and was still present in the language—if in some disarray and not used by all speakers—in the 16th century. The influence of standardisation on the use of the concordial genitive and its competitors is clear in the data studied here. In the formal published texts examined, not only is the use of the concordial genitive maintained at an almost equal extent to its eventual successor, the van-construction, for over three centuries (until finally removed by an early-20th century spelling reform), but the use of the concordial genitive also becomes more regular over time; that is to say, in the 16th–17th century data, the deflection-caused generalisation of masculine/neuter inflection to feminine nouns is relatively frequent, but by the 19th century, such generalisation is minimal. These developments attest to increasing familiarity with the prescribed norm. The influence of standardisation is felt also in the egodocuments, with writers who are likely to have been more familiar with the prescribed norm continuing to use the genitive

158 table 5.15

chapter 5 The division of labour between the four possessive constructions in the 18th century egodocument data Genitive

Luijtsen

van-construction

one possibly novel productive, all example, otherwise possessor types set phrases only

Possessive -s

Periphrastic possessive

possessor is human possessor is human (common nouns, (common nouns, proper names) proper names)

Lammens productive use, productive, all mainly relating to possessor types natural phenomena

mainly human possessors, also collective human and ships (common nouns, proper names)

Swellengrebel

possessor is human absent (common noun used as name)

absent

productive, all possessor types

possessor is human (common nouns)

(albeit to a much lesser extent than the van-construction), while other writers less familiar with the norm do not use the genitive (or they use it only rarely). An impression of the writer-specific variation found in the 18th century data is given in Table 5.15, in which the use of the genitive and its competitors in the three egodocument sources is summarised. The van-construction is the most frequently represented construction and the default for every writer. The path taken by the Dutch possessive -s construction also bears signs of having been shaped by standardisation. Whereas possessive -s in English and Swedish is a flexible construction with a high type frequency, the Dutch possessive -s is today a fairly restricted construction in terms of its type frequency. In the 16th and 17th century, possessive -s occurred frequently both with determiner-less proper names and with noun phrases comprising a determiner and a common noun. A reduction in the frequency of this latter use was concurrent with a resurgence in the use of the concordial genitive, which appears to have pushed possessive -s back, from flexible beginnings as a potential competitor of the concordial genitive, to a niche of occurring with proper names.

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The history of the Dutch genitive from medieval times to the present day is clearly a story of decay; it has not, however, fully vanished from the language. Following its steady decline during Middle Dutch, it experienced a sudden upturn in use in formal writing from the start of the early modern period. This upturn was also reflected in informal usage, albeit a little later and to a weaker extent (suggesting the language users’ knowledge of the prestige constructions prescribed in the norm also fed into their colloquial usage). As part of this development, a particular fragment of the adnominal genitive became chunked and reanalysed as an autonomous construction that could be used independently of—and was ultimately able to outlive—the morphological case system. The modern incarnation of this fragment is the topic of the next section.

5.5

The Genitive Case in Modern Dutch: A Synchronic Portrayal17

5.5.1 Introduction In the introduction to this chapter (Section 5.1.1) it was noted that case morphology is not wholly absent from modern Dutch. There remain a great many fixed expressions formed and entrenched while the morphological case system was still active (1), some case markers survive with a new function, while a fragment of the adnominal genitive has become constructionalised and preserves a morphologically marked agreement relationship that is obsolete and otherwise absent from the modern language. Drawing on quantified data from the written and spoken modern Dutch corpora listed in Chapter 4, and providing an epilogue to the story of the downfall of the Dutch genitive told in Section 5.4, this section focuses on surviving remnant of the morphological genitive case in Dutch. The situation portrayed in this section is not identical to that found elsewhere in the literature. While it is indisputable that the van-construction is the default means of joining two noun phrases in a possessive relationship in modern Dutch, the data studied here do not support Vezzosi’s (2000: 142) statement that the van-construction and the periphrastic possessive are “the only acceptable genitival constructions apart from a few fossilized phrases”. Furthermore, in the data studied, the periphrastic possessive is only rarely encountered, and possessive -s is relatively frequent. This section focuses on the construction referred to here as the adnominal genitive construction. This construction involves an agreement relation-

17 This section takes as its starting point material presented previously in Scott (2011a) and (2012).

160 table 5.16

chapter 5 The relative occurrence of fixed and novel genitives in the corpora (number of occurrences per 1,000 words)

Corpus Eindhoven INL 27 Mil. CGN

figure 5.7

Fixed genitive phrases

Novel genitive phrases

0.46 0.09 0.04

0.53 0.07 0.01

The occurrence of adnominal genitive phrases—fixed and novel—in three corpora of modern Dutch (originally presented as Table 2 in scott [2011a: 109])

ship between the determiner and the noun heading the genitive noun phrase which resembles (but is not identical to) the agreement relationship that would have held when the Dutch case system was still intact. 5.5.2 The Adnominal Genitive Construction: A Description Novel genitive phrases are still encountered in modern Dutch (van Haeringen 1956: 30; Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1184; Scott 2011a, 2012). The production of novel genitive phrases is much restricted in comparison to the original genitive case: with few exceptions, all involve the determiner der. The example presented earlier as (11) is repeated here for reference as (70). (70) de kroonprins der keepers the crown-prince the.gen.plu keepers ‘the crown prince of (goal)keepers’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1995) In this sub-section the characteristics of examples such as (70) are described on the basis of quantified corpus data from writing and speech. A diachronic,

161

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The occurrence of genitive markers in non-fixed genitives in the corpora (scott 2011a: 111)

Genitive Role marker der des, ’s dezer aller dier

ener harer

Eindhoven n %

definite: feminine singular, all 354 92.7 genders plural definite: masculine & neuter 15 3.9 singular demonstrative: feminine singular, 8 2.1 all genders plural ‘all’: feminine singular, all genders 2 0.5 plural 3rd person plural possessive: 1 0.3 feminine singular, all genders plural indefinite: feminine singular, all 1 0.3 genders plural 3rd person singular possessive: 1 0.3 feminine singular, all genders plural

INL 27 Mil. n %

CGN n %

1646 91.2

61 55.0

159

8.8

17 15.3

0

0

0

0

31 27.9

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0.9

0

0

0

0

1

figure 5.8 Occurrences (tokens) of fixed and novel genitive phrases in the (equal-sized) sub-corpora of the Eindhoven corpus (scott 2011a: 109)

0.9

162 table 5.18

chapter 5 Constituent order of novel genitives in the three modern Dutch corpora18

Genitive marker

Eindhoven post. pre.

INL 27 Mil. post. pre.

CGN post. pre.

der des

355 10

1645 135

62 9

1 0

1 9

0 0

usage-based explanation for the survival of this fragment of the genitive case is proposed in 5.5.3, and two potential hypotheses regarding the synchronic relationship holding between the determiner and the head noun of the genitive noun phrase (i.e. between der and keepers in (70)) are considered in 5.5.4 and 5.5.5, and the construction is formalised in 5.5.6. Fixed genitive phrases—that is, those occurring in a fossilised, fixed expression—outnumber novel genitive phrases in the INL 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus and the Corpus Gesproken Nederlands; unexpectedly, in the Eindhoven data, novel genitive phrases—that is, those formed productively in the modern language—are slightly more numerous (Figure 5.7, Table 5.16). When the distribution of the adnominal genitive was quantified in the six Eindhoven sub-corpora, clear register- and medium-based patterns can be seen. Productive use of the adnominal genitive construction is especially associated with popular science texts but is very rare in speech; the spoken sub-corpus, in turn, was the one most associated with fixed genitive phrases (Figure 5.8). Only in news magazines and popular science publications do novel genitive phrases outnumber fixed genitive phrases. Only a limited inventory of genitive markers occurs in the novel genitives; one marker dominates, namely der ‘the.gen.plu./fem.sg.’ (Table 5.17) (corroborating van Haeringen [1956: 30] and Weerman & de Wit [1999: 1184]). Six of the seven markers are determiners; one, aller, is the genitive plural form of the adjective alle ‘all’. Novel prenominal adnominal genitives occur very rarely in modern Dutch, with eleven tokens occurring in the corpora (Table 5.18); nine tokens involve des and two involve der. With a single exception containing a noun denoting a personified inanimate referent (72a), all the referents are animate (71): des and its shortened variant ’s are—with the exception of (72)—used almost exclusively with human males; der is used once with a human female and once

18 The INL 27 Mil. data were previously presented in Scott (2011a: 112).

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with a human plural. To emphasise the continued occurrence of these rare formations, additional non-corpus attestations contemporary with this book are added in (71) and (72): (71b) is another example with a human male possessor, while (72b) has a collective human possessor. Further, parallel examples are found among the partially filled formations (Section 5.5.8). (71) a. […] dat de danseres niet eenduidig het voorwerp is that the dancer.female not unequivocally the object is van des dansers of the.gen.masc/neut.sg (male) dancer.gen.masc/neut.sg verlangen desire ‘[…] that the (female) dancer is not unequivocally the object of the (male) dancer’s desire’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1994) b. en des referees zoontje and the.gen.masc/neut.sg referee.gen.masc/neut.sg son.dim spreidde meer etiquette tentoon dan Kurt van Eeghem in zijn spread more etiquette exhibit than Kurt van Eeghem in his hoogdagen heyday ‘and the referee’s little son exhibited more etiquette than Kurt van Eeghem in his heyday’ (De Morgen, 17.4.13) (72) a. En twee die mij wijzen Naar des and two which me show to the.gen.masc/neut.sg koelkasts paradijzen refrigerator.gen.masc/neut.sg paradises ‘and two which show me to the paradises of the refrigerator’ (INL 27. Mil., April 1995)19 b. het vermogen van ’s banks the capital of the.gen.masc/neut.sg bank.gen.masc/neut.sg klanten customers ‘the bank’s customers’ capital’ (NRC Handelsblad, 30.3.11)20 19 The prenominal order in this example, which appears in a poem, may have been forced to provide a rhyme. 20 I am very grateful to Ad Foolen for sending me this example.

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table 5.19

The occurrence of singular and plural nouns in genitives with der (expressed in tokens and as a percentage of the total der genitives in each corpus) (scott 2011a: 113)

Corpus

Singular noun

Plural noun

Eindhoven

152 43.1%

201 56.9%

INL 27 Mil.

450 27.4%

1195 72.6%

CGN

15 25.0%

45 75.0%

As shown in Table 5.18, and continuing the development observed throughout the early modern data, postnominal order is strongly dominant. Thus, combining the findings of Tables 5.17 and 5.18, the predominant genitive structure is x der y. Again, this continues a trend from the early modern period. Within the x der y structure, plural nouns are most frequent (Table 5.19); some examples are shown in (73). The predominance of plural nouns in novel x der y genitives is not an epiphenomenon of a general predominance of plural nouns in modern Dutch. A basic search of the Eindhoven corpus (in which nouns are tagged as singular or plural) showed singular nouns to be more numerous: of the 126,308 nouns in the corpus, 93,620 (74.1%) are singular and 32,688 (25.9%) are plural. (73) a. een groot respect voor de keizer der saxofoonblazers a great respect for the emperor the.gen saxophone-blowers ‘a great respect for the emperor of the saxophonists’ (CGN, fv800778.5) b. Het open- en dichtgaan der winkels is als een the open- and closed-going the.gen shops is as a getijdebeweging […] tide-movement ‘the opening and closing of the shops is like a tidal movement’ (INL 27 Mil., Jul. 1994)

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The occurrence of simplex and derived singular nouns in genitives with der (expressed in tokens and as a percentage of the total singular der genitives in each corpus) (scott 2011a: 114)

Corpus

Simplex noun

Derived “feminine” noun

Eindhoven

45 29.6%

107 70.4%

INL 27 Mil.

120 26.7%

330 73.3%

CGN

5 33.3%

10 66.7%

c. We bevinden ons hier, kortom, in het milieu der we find us here, in-short, in the environment the.gen musical-fanaten. musical-fanatics ‘We find ourselves here, in short, in the environment of the musicalfanatics.’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1995) Most of the singular nouns occurring in the x der y structure are derived nouns ending in a suffix that would originally have been associated with feminine gender, which are often marked as feminine in dictionaries, and which are often referred to by a feminine pronoun (see, e.g., Audring 2006; Kraaikamp 2010; Scott 2010), namely: -age, -de, -heid, -ie, -iek, -ij, -ing, -iteit, -nis, -schap, -st, -te and -uur; this is shown in Table 5.20 and the examples in (74). This does not imply that a distinct feminine lexical gender remains in present-day standard Dutch; rather, it is more likely that the use of such nouns in this structure is a consequence of the way in which the structure was preserved. This matter is returned to in 5.5.3. (74) a. het probleem der overbevolking in de gevangenissen the problem the.gen.fem.sg overpopulation in the prisons moet inventiever worden aangepakt. must more-inventive become tackled ‘the problem of overpopulation in prisons must be tackled more inventively’ (CGN, fv600879.58)

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b. Komend uit de advocatuur, dacht ik van de last der coming out the advocature thought I of the burden the.gen partijdigheid te zijn verlost partisan-ness to be freed ‘Coming from the advocature, I believed myself to be freed from the burden of being partisan’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1995) c. illustreert opnieuw hoezeer de identiteit der Nederlandse illustrates once-more how-much the identity the.gen Dutch sociaal-democratie veranderd is social-democracy changed is ‘illustrates once more how much the identity of Dutch social-democracy has changed’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1995) Simplex singular nouns are rare in the x der y structure; 86 individual types occur in the corpora, of which two examples are given in (75). On the whole, the nouns involved denote the same kinds of referents as denoted by many of the derived “feminine” nouns: abstract concepts and groups of humans. This suggests a possible semantic factor in the selection of nouns (Section 5.5.4). (75) a. die associeert men in de City met het branievolk der that associates one in the City with the daredevil-folk the.gen real estate. real-estate ‘that is associated in the City with the daredevils of real estate’ (INL 27 Mil., March 1995) b. gemeten van het middelpunt der provinciale hoofdstad uit measured from the centre the.gen provincial capital out ‘measured from the centre of the provincial capital’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 31561) As noted in Table 5.6, besides the dominant use of der, other former plural and feminine singular articles also appear in novel genitive formations, but to a very limited extent. Some examples are given in (76). (76) a. de stoere en lenige wonderen ener verbijsterende the sturdy and lithe wonders a.gen.fem.sg bewildering techniek waarvan wij zijn omringd. technology of-which we are surrounded

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‘the sturdy and lithe wonders of a bewildering technology which surrounds us’ (CGN, fv400596.16) b. toch ontkomen wij niet aan de mystieke werking van het yet escape we not on the mysterious effect of the merendeel dezer voorstellingen. majority these.gen.fem.sg depictions ‘yet we do not escape the mysterious effect of the majority of these depictions’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 35301) c. ik drink het zelf niet maar verbruik een fles jenever per jaar I drink it self not but consume a bottle jenever per year om mijn hond en poezen te verlossen van deze for my dog and pussycats to save from this weerzinwekkendste aller schepsels. most-disgusting all.gen.plu creatures ‘I don’t drink it myself, but I consume a bottle of jenever per year to save my dog and pussycats from this most disgusting of creatures.’ (CGN, fn001159.66) Besides prototypical nouns, adjectives and participles used as nouns also appear as the head of the genitive noun phrase, as in (77). Of the 181 such types present in the corpora, 177 are plural. (77) a. kinderen te dwingen volgens de regels van de cultuur children to force according-to the rules of the culture der volwassenen te leven the.gen grown-ups to live ‘to force children to live according to the rules of the grown-ups’ culture’ (CGN: fn001412.23)21 b. Ik ben in de rijken der overbodigen en nodelozen I am in the empires the.gen superfluous and unnecessary opgenomen. taken-up 21 The preposition van (in de regels van de cultuur) is close by the genitive in this example. The avoidance of repetition of van-phrases close to one another is said to promote the use of the modern adnominal genitive construction (Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1184). This matter is taken further in Section 5.5.9.

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‘I was received into the empires of the superfluous and unnecessary’ (INL 27 Mil., June 1994) Structurally, the genitive noun phrase is usually relatively simple, comprising a marker (one of those listed in Table 5.17 above) and a noun. In the corpora, 416 tokens (of 366 unique types) are more complex than this; most feature an adjective modifying the noun (78a). (78) a. De toegang tot het domein der digitale hobbyïsten is nog the access to the domain the.gen digital hobbyists is still niet voldoende aangepast […] not sufficiently adapted ‘The access to the domain of the digital hobbyists is not yet sufficiently adapted […]’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb 1994) A minority of attestations is more complex still (78b,c). b. Buiten de Russische federatie, de grootste der uit de outside the Russian Federation the largest the.gen out the Sovjet-Unie voortgekomen nieuwe staten, leven naar schatting Soviet-Union stemmed new states live after estimation 36 miljoen ‘Russischtaligen’ 36 million ‘Russian-speakers’ ‘Outside the Russian Federation, the largest of the new states stemming from the Soviet Union, there live an estimated 36 million “Russian speakers”’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan 1994) c. Deze had tot taak een nader onderzoek te verrichten these had to duty a more-detailed investigation to conduct naar de huidige omstandigheden der tijdens de Tweede to the current circumstances the.gen during the second Wereldoorlog door de Japanse (militaire) autoriteiten tot world-war through the Japanese (military) authorities to prostitutie gedwongen vrouwen. prostitution forced women ‘They had as their duty to conduct a more detailed investigation into the current circumstances of the women who were forced to prostitution by the Japanese (military) authorities during the Second World War.’ (INL 27 Mil., Sept. 1994)

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In contrast to the x der y construction, the masculine/neuter variant x des y-s—exemplified in (79)—shows no semantic or structural regularity among the nouns that head the genitive noun phrase. For instance, there is no preference for derived, transparent masculine nouns (in contrast to the use of der with derived feminine singulars), such as the numerous derived agent nouns.22 One possible explanation for the avoidance of des-genitives, put forward by van Haeringen (1956: 33), is that the suffix -s attached to the noun in conjunction with des marks the constructions as archaic; another possibility, pointed out by a reviewer of Scott (2011a), is that the addition of the suffix -s creates unwelcome complexity. In both instances, however, we might expect to find at least a handful of des-genitives involving a transparent masculine singular noun in a large data sample (neither explanation wholly prohibits des-genitives), which is not the case in the data. Furthermore, the des y-s construction, although infrequent in the data (Section 5.6.2), is productive (and not archaic) despite the presence of the -s. Another possibility, explored above in Section 5.5.2, is that the genitive occurs principally with nouns denoting abstract concepts and groups of humans: such nouns tend to be feminine. Notice also—contra the prediction of van Haeringen (1956: 33)—that the rarity of des has not led to the use of “desnouns” in the x der y structure. (79) a. hij woonde ook al was het dan ondergronds bij de he lived also all was it then underground by the machtigste man des lands. most-powerful man the.gen.masc/ country.gen.masc/ neut.sg neut.sg ‘he already lived, even if it was underground, with the most powerful man in the country’ (CGN, fn001209.100) b. echtheid in het zich toeleggen op het trillende filmbeeld authenticity in the self add on the vibrating film-picture des levens. the.gen.masc/neut.sg life.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘authenticity in adding oneself to the vibrating film picture of life’ (CGN, fv400596.67)

22 The masculine agent suffixes in Dutch are: -aan, -aard, -ant, -(at)eur, -(at)or, -een, -ees, -ein, -ent, -erd, -er, -erik, -icus, -ier and -iet (Van Dale 2005–2008).

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5.5.2.1 The Semantic Relationship between x and y23 The modern adnominal genitive construction continues to express the same range of semantic relationships between the noun phrases x and y that would have been possible when the case system was intact.24 A subjective possessive relationship dominates to a similar extent in the three corpora, accounting for circa 70% of all novel x der y formations; the second most frequent semantic relationship is partitive, while the other relationships are less numerous (Table 5.21). An example of each—barring subjective possessives, which have been exemplified throughout this section—is given in (80). A comparison with the use of the German adnominal genitive as portrayed in Chapter 6 shows that the two are very similar with regard to the roles they perform, and the extent to which they perform each role. (80) possession (objective): het sluiten der stembussen the closing the.gen voting-urns ‘the closing of the polling stations’ (INL 27 Mil., March 1994) explicative: de kring der historici the circle the.gen historians ‘the circle of historians’ (INL 27 Mil., April 1994) characteristic: dit park der Amerikaanse grandeur this park the.gen American grandeur ‘this park of American grandeur’ (INL 27 Mil., January 1995) partitive: het overgrote deel der Nederlanders the largest part the.gen Dutch ‘the overwhelming majority of the Dutch’ (INL 27 Mil., December 1994)

23 In Scott (2011a: 120), these trends could only be hinted at; subsequent research revealed the situation portrayed in Table 5.21. 24 In the remainder of this section only the regular and productive x der y construction is studied.

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the dutch genitive table 5.21

The relative occurrence of the various semantic relationships between x and y in the three corpora (in tokens and—in boldface—as a proportion of the relevant examples in each corpus)

Semantic relationship

Paraphrase

Eindhoven

INL 27 Mil.

CGN

possessive (subjective)

‘y possesses/affects x’

251 71.3%

1116 69.5 %

41 68.3 %

partitive

‘x is part of y’

43 12.2%

262 16.3 %

13 21.7 %

possessive (objective)

‘x possesses/affects y’

27 7.7%

125 7.8 %

3 5.0 %

temporal

‘x takes place at y’

16 4.5%

0

0

locative

‘x is located at y’

9 2.6%

0

0

characteristic

‘x characterises y’

4 1.1%

11 0.7 %

0

explicative

‘x is y’

2 0.6%

91 5.7 %

3 5.0 %

352

1605

60

Total relevant x der y formations

locative: het midden der kamer the middle the.gen room ‘the middle of the room’ (Eindhoven, family magazines, 16039) temporal: de eerste helft der twaalfde eeuw the first half the.gen twelfth century ‘the first half of the 12th century’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 35129)

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A further sub-group, elective genitives, in which x denotes the prime example of a group y, is dealt with separately in Section 5.5.7 as a semi-autonomous construction. 5.5.3 The Survival of the Adnominal Genitive Fragment Taking a usage-based approach, this section addresses, the matter of how a fragment of genitive morphology was able to survive, and how an agreement relationship between article and noun was preserved, even as the case system faded. In this section, taking as a basis the quantified data presented in Section 5.4, it is posited that x der y survived due to the conserving effect of its high token frequency (see Bybee 2006b: 10 on this effect). More specifically, it is suggested that chunking (e.g. Bybee 2010: 34–37; see also Section 4.2.1 above) led to x der y being identified as a construction (i.e. a pairing of function and form) and, within that construction, to the development of associations between the y slot and morphologically complex nouns ending in particular suffixes. This latter type of chunking is termed here discontinuous chunking as it denotes a chunk whose constituents are not adjacent. This is in accordance with Bybee’s observation (2010: 36) that “chunks do not have to be continuous—they can be interrupted by open classes of items”. While Bybee refers to interruption by whole words or phrases, as in the English drives X mad construction, the discontinuous chunks here are interrupted by the base of a singular derived noun. In 16th–19th century written Dutch, postnominal placement of genitive phrases had a far higher token frequency than prenominal placement (Table 5.2). Accordingly, language users would have been more familiar with the structure x determiner y than the structure determiner y x. Additionally, in early modern Dutch formal writing, the genitive determiner der is by far the most frequent of all genitive markers across all three sub-corpora within postnominal order; this was shown in Table 5.3, which also indicated that the markers used with feminine singular nouns and nouns of all genders generally had a higher token frequency than those occurring with singular masculine and neuter nouns. Across the three periods of the corpus, the masculine/neuter singular markers tended to decrease in frequency while the feminine singular/all genders plural markers tended to increase. The genitive structure that consistently had the highest token frequency, and which therefore would have been the genitive structure with which language users were most familiar, was x der y. Not only did der have the highest token frequency of any genitive determiner, as a determiner used with any plural noun as well as feminine singular nouns it also had an especially high type frequency.

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An additional factor helpful in the preservation of x der y was its unit-like nature. As deflection took effect, the attachment of case endings to individual lexemes within the noun phrase would have become ever less familiar to language users (see, for example, the irregular application of case endings in the 17th century letters of Maria van Reigersberch studied in Section 5.4), and constituent order—rather than morphological case marking—became the principal means of marking syntactic roles. In the face of this, the adnominal genitive structure (whose prime exponent was, by far, x der y) remained a useful and transparent unit in which a noun phrase appeared at either side of the element which bound the two noun phrases together. Furthermore, in constrast to its masculine/neuter counterpart x des y-s, it involved no alteration to the noun in noun phrase y. The similarity to—and, indeed, interchangeability with (at least with feminine singular nouns and plural nouns of any gender)—the competing van-construction (e.g. x van de y), with der analogous to van de, may also have aided the preservation of x der y. Familiarity through high token frequency led to the chunking of the unit x der y. The chunk x der y, self-contained and highly familiar, could then be easily entrenched. Having become entrenched as a means of connecting two noun phrases, it remained in use and outlived the case system of which it had once been a part. Thus, the conserving effect of its high token frequency (and relatively high type frequency), along with its unit-like nature, led to the survival of x der y. One matter that is harder to explain on the basis of the diachronic usage data studied here is the fact that, in modern Dutch, the nouns that predominate in position y are plural nouns and singular nouns ending in a suffix that was previously associated with feminine gender. Accordingly it would be expected that, over time, these nouns became ever more frequent in position y at the expense of other types of noun. This, however, is not the case. Table 5.22 illustrates that the relative proportion of plural nouns in position y actually fell in 16th–19th century Dutch. Table 5.23 shows that, amongst the singular nouns, the relative proportion of derived feminine nouns in position y also decreased over time. These developments going in the “wrong” direction appear to disprove the hypothesis that plural and derived feminine singular nouns, through usage and repetition, became associated with the x der y structure through token frequency. However, the figures presented in Tables 5.22 and 5.23 are more likely to be a reflex of language users’ increasing familiarity with case morphology and the lexical gender of nouns which can be observed particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of increasing awareness of the prescribed norm for written language (on this see Section 5.4; for instance, the accuracy of writers’ use of case morphology actually increased over time, despite the system’s weak-

174 table 5.22

chapter 5 The occurrence of singular and plural nouns in the x der y structure in 16th– 19th century Dutch

Singular

Plural

16th–17th century

90 35.9%

161 64.1%

18th century

122 40.1%

182 59.9%

19th century

213 47.5%

235 52.5%

ening in the spoken language). Certainly, the increased occurrence of simplex nouns from the 18th century to the 19th fits with other evidence of awareness of certain aspects of case and gender morphology increasing from the 18th to the 19th century (Section 5.4). Thus, language users would have been aware of which nouns were to be treated as feminine (and therefore used with the determiner der); not only derived nouns, which were recognisable as feminine on account of their suffix, but also simplex nouns whose feminine gender had been learnt. Following the loss of the masculine/feminine distinction as part of the spelling reforms in the early 20th century, the knowledge of which simplex nouns were feminine and could therefore be combined with der was lost (with the likely exception of certain feminine nouns that had frequently occurred in x der y). Language users’ knowledge of which complex nouns could appear in x der y was preserved through familiarity and, as far as singular nouns are concerned, the process defined above as discontinuous chunking. It seems straightforward to assume that the y slot became associated with plural nouns and that this connection could remain beyond the end of the case system; thus, [der [noun[+PLURAL]]] became a chunk within x der y. As language users became increasingly unfamiliar with which nouns were lexically feminine, they were no longer able to (confidently) use simplex nouns in position y. Formerly feminine derived nouns, in contrast, were still used in position y. The key to this appears to be their suffix. Nouns ending in feminine derivational suffixes would have been familiar in position y, leading via abstraction to discontinuous chunks consisting of the determiner der and a suffix, separated by the base to which

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the dutch genitive table 5.23

The occurrence of simplex and derived feminine singular nouns in the x der y structure in 16th–19th century Dutch (excluding ungrammatical examples)

Simplex

Derived feminine

16th–17th century

45 50.0%

45 50.0%

18th century

58 47.5%

64 52.5%

19th century

129 60.6%

84 39.4%

the suffix was attached. This is illustrated in (81). Once language users had encountered sufficient tokens of der with a noun ending in a particular suffix (such as -heid, as in (81)), the abstract schema illustrated in (81), involving the determiner and the suffix (but not the base of the noun) as fixed elements, became part of their linguistic knowledge and they could produce their own, novel formations on the basis of the schema. In Section 5.5.5 it is proposed that such discontinuous chunking remains the basis of the productivity of x der y in present-day Dutch. (81) [[x] [der ___suffix]] [[x] [der ___heid]] het licht der waarheid the light the.gen.fem.sg/plu truth ‘the light of the truth’ (EMDC: J. le Francq van Berkhey. 1769. Natuurlyke historie van Holland. Eerste deel [academic]) When the case system was still active, nouns could be inserted into y by analogy with already encountered formations, based on the suffix of the noun in y; analogy is conceived of here as in the definition from Bybee (2010: 57), namely “the process by which a speaker comes to use a novel item in a construction”. These “der ___suffix” chunks became self-perpetuating; originally based on examples formed as part of the original case system (or at least the case system of the codified written language), new formations are now possible based on other recent (i.e. postdating the loss of the case system) formations; this self-perpetuation of

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constructions is described by Kemmer & Barlow (2000: ix) as a “feedback loop” in which “[l]anguage productions are not only products of the speaker’s linguistic system, but they also provide input for other speakers’ systems”. More specifically, it is the process of abstraction defined by Langacker (2000: 4) as “the emergence of a structure through reinforcement of the commonality inherent in multiple experiences”. The once feminine suffixes still identified their nouns as “able to occur with der” (even if they were no longer recognisable as “feminine”), just as the plural nouns were still identifiable as “able to occur with der”. In this way, x der y could survive the spelling reforms of the early 20th century; first it had been preserved through the conserving effect, and then, following the spelling reforms which eradicated the last remnants of case morphology, it continued with its type frequency reduced to certain nouns identifiable through their morphological structure. (An alternative analysis that the occurrence of nouns in y is determined by their semantic characteristics is tested in Section 5.5.4.) A matter thrown up by this account concerns the fact that only the x der y structure was preserved and not its masculine and neuter singular equivalent (and, as shown in Table 5.17, the second most frequently occurring genitive structure) x des y-s. (Although a handful of novel formations in the data are based on the x des y-s structure, they all bear a strong resemblance to fixed phrases involving the structure.) Again the answer appears to be frequencybased. Although x des y-s had a relatively high token frequency in the 16th–17th century (albeit far lower than x der y), its token frequency, along with that of most masculine/neuter singular genitive markers, fell steadily from the 16th to the 19th century, while that of x der y, along with most feminine singular and all genders plural genitive markers, rose (Tables 5.2 and 5.3). A number of factors mitigated against the use of the x des y-s construction. Structurally, the addition of the nominal suffix -s, although it emphasises the genitive marking, increases complexity (and possibly emphasises the archaism of the construction) in contrast to x der y, which leaves the noun in y unaltered (van Haeringen 1956: 33; Scott 2011a: 116). Its token frequency was less than half of that of x der y in the 16th–17th century, meaning it was less familiar to language users. Furthermore, compared to x der y, it had a relatively low type frequency: although x des y-s could potentially have become associated—through the discontinuous chunking described above—with derived person-denoting nouns ending in masculine agent suffixes, or with the neuter conversions of verb infinitives, this did not happen. While x der y could involve any plural noun and any noun ending in particular suffixes, as well as any other feminine noun, x des y-s was restricted to a far smaller group of nouns. Although a number of entrenched x des y-s phrases survive into modern Dutch and pos-

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sibly serve as models for the handful of novel x des y-s formations that still appear (Scott 2011a: 105), they tend to be high frequency items and may therefore not be parsed by language users (see Bybee 2006b: 95). The parallelism of x der y has not aided the preservation of x des y-s as a productive construction. Besides the structural, usage-related reasons for the preservation of the adnominal genitive fragment, it is likely that pragmatic factors also played a part. The construction is strongly associated with formal written language. Its preservation may well therefore be linked to the conservative nature of prestige dialects and their tendency to preserve archaising features as status markers (as argued for phonological features by, for instance, Kroch [1978]). 5.5.4 Semantic Agreement in x der y One hypothesis for the placement of nouns in position y is that nouns are selected to appear in y on the basis of their semantic content. In the original Dutch case system, the relationship between der and y was one of gender and number agreement. The determiner der was selected to agree with feminine singular nouns and plural nouns of any gender when occurring in the genitive case. Present-day standard Dutch, however, no longer has a distinct feminine lexical gender, masculine and feminine having fallen together to form the common gender. Thus, the notion that the (ex-)feminine marker der is still involved in gender-based agreement today appears unlikely. In modern standard (Netherlandic) Dutch, in which pronoun assignment is often determined by the semantic characteristics of the noun to which the pronoun refers rather than the lexical gender of the noun (as noted in Section 5.5.2 with reference to Audring [2006] and Kraaikamp [2010]), a matter of particular relevance to the continued use of a former feminine determiner (i.e. der) is that nouns denoting collective human referents, and some nouns denoting an abstract concept, may be referred to with a feminine pronoun. The nouns denoting such entities are often derived nouns with a formerly feminine suffix (82),25 i.e. the kind of singular noun which is favoured in position y of the x der y construction.

25 This is confirmed, for instance, by a wildcard-based search for nouns ending in particular suffixes, in the electronic dictionary Van Dale (2005–2008).

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(82) a. Wat vreemd dat de overheid haar eigen regels niet kent what strange that the government her own rules not knows ‘How strange that the government doesn’t know its (literally: her) own rules.’ (Attested at http://www.nrc.nl/rechtenbestuur/2011/10/08/ strafrecht-is-voor-de-ander-niet-voor-de-overheid-zelf/ [last accessed 28.2.13]) b. en toen de Fransen in 1672 binnenvielen sloot de universiteit and when the French in 1672 invaded closed the university haar poorten her gates ‘and when the French invaded in 1672, the university closed its (literally: her) gates’ (Attested at http://www2.nijmegen.nl/content/84633/1923_de_ katholieke_universiteit_nijmegen_wordt_opgericht [last accessed 28.2.13]) As such, many of the nouns—at least, the singular nouns—which occurred in x der y when the case system was intact, would have denoted these entities. The link between der and such nouns would have been preserved within the x der y construction as that construction became entrenched. Thus, a pertinent hypothesis is that the placement of a noun in y is based on the noun’s semantics; the link to those nouns’ morphological structure may simply be epiphenomenal. In order to test this hypothesis, it is necessary to ignore the derived “feminine” nouns occurring in y and to concentrate instead on two other groups of nouns: simplex nouns that occur in y, and complex nouns in y that do not end in a “feminine” suffix. If the simplex nouns that occur in y also denote abstract concepts and collective human referents, this would suggest that the assignment of nouns to position y is semantics-based. If the complex nouns that occur in y are not only those which end in a “feminine” suffix, but also those which end in a “masculine” or neuter suffix, this too would suggest a semantic agreement relation between der and y. When the semantic nature of the simplex nouns—regardless of their gender —in position y is considered, the data support the hypothesis that nouns appear in y on the basis of their semantics. Like the derived nouns ending in ex-feminine suffixes, the simplex nouns strongly tend to denote abstract entities or collective human referents. This is illustrated in Table 5.24, in which the 170 simplex nouns occurring in position y in novel examples are categorised according to the semantic nature of their referent.

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The semantic nature of the referents of the simplex singular nouns occurring in y. (Examples from the Eindhoven corpus.)

Semantic nature abstract inanimate

Example

de grondleggers der moraal ‘the founders the.gen morality’ place het middelpunt der provinciale hoofdstad ‘the middle-point the.gen provincial capital’ collective human de opkomst der arbeidersklasse ‘the rise the.gen working class’ concrete inanimate de wanden der lichtbeuk ‘the walls the.gen clerestory’ human (individual) de heiligheid der moeder ‘the holiness the.gen mother’ animal de droeve klachten der reine duif ‘the sorrowful laments the.gen pure dove’

Tokens 85 37 32 9 5 2

The second largest group contains referents that denote a place; in many cases, this group may be considered an extension of the “collective human” group as many of the place-name referents denote not only the place, but also the inhabitants (as a group) of that place. Just as with the singular derived nouns that occur in y, the simplex nouns only rarely denote concrete inanimate referents, individual humans, or animals. Thus, position y is associated with abstract and collective human nouns, regardless of whether those nouns are morphologically transparent or not. The semantic agreement hypothesis is supported so far, although it must be borne in mind that simplex nouns in position y account for only 170 tokens (of 86 types), far fewer than the 447 derived tokens occurring in position y (Table 5.20). The semantic agreement hypothesis would be further supported if derived nouns ending in non-“feminine” suffixes, but denoting abstract or collective human referents, appeared in position y. Nouns ending in -dom, which appears in neuter and ex-masculine nouns, and -schap, which appears in neuter and ex-feminine nouns, generally denote abstract and collective human referents and therefore, following the findings of the previous paragraph, would be prime candidates for use in position y. In the data, however, only one -dom-noun occurs in the x der y structure (otherwise, the van-construction is used); the exception is shown in (83).

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(83) de vaagheid der ouderdom the vagueness the.gen.fem.sg parenthood ‘the vagueness of parenthood’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1994) The -schap-nouns are a particularly useful tool in testing whether nouns appear in y on the basis of morphologically based or semantically based principles. All denote collective human or abstract referents; under the “semantic” hypothesis, any -schap-noun should be able to occur in y. However, in the data, only the formerly feminine -schap-nouns occur in y; there are no neuter -schap-nouns in y. To test whether this was simply a quirk of the data or a more general trend, all the neuter -schap-nouns which occurred in the van-construction in the data were searched for on the web in combination with the determiner der. Only isolated occurrences such as those in (84) were found. This suggests that language users are aware of which -schap-nouns may occur in x der y. (84) ?ter bevordering der gezelschap to-the encouragement the.gen party ‘for the encouragement of the party’ (Attested at http://www.waarmaarraar.nl/forum/6/ID/1819044/GO/6175/ Rijmelarij_2_-.html [last accessed 28.2.13]) ?het stokje der leiderschap the stick.dim the.gen leadership ‘the baton of leadership’ (Attested at http://essay.utwente.nl/57910/1/scriptie_Mars.pdf [last accessed 28.2.13]. The example occurs in a quotation from a book written in 1983.) ?de wetenschap der moederschap the science the.gen motherhood ‘the science of motherhood’ (Attested at http://www.bewustouderschap.nl/index.php?topic=3685.0 [last accessed 28.2.13]) Despite the fact that it would tally better with usage elsewhere in Dutch—to wit, gender assignment involving pronouns—the hypothesis that there is a semantically determined relationship between der and the noun in y is not satisfactorily supported by the data; at most, semantics can only be part of the explanation. Therefore, a morphologically based hypothesis is tested in the following section.

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5.5.5 Morphological Agreement in x der y In this section a contrasting position to that of 5.5.4 is taken; here, it is hypothesised that the nouns which occur in y must agree morphologically with der; it is posited that this is a result of discontinuous chunking, through which the genitive marker der became associated with nouns ending in particular suffixes. The accessibility of the internal morphological structure of the nouns involved to the x der y construction, and the absence of this relationship from the rest of modern Dutch, suggests that the agreement between der and the noun in y is an instance of what Booij (2010a: 211) terms construction-dependent morphology, in which a morphological marker, otherwise lost from a language, plays a new role within a particular construction (see also Scott 2012: 99–101). Prototypical examples of construction-dependent morphology dealt with by Booij (2010a) include the possessive -s and partitive constructions, which preserve the genitive -s suffix in new functions. In the original Dutch case system the relation between der and y would have been number-based for plural nouns, and gender-based for singular nouns. That is to say, a noun could appear in y if it was plural or if it was singular and lexically feminine. The occurrence of plural nouns in y appears to be a straightforward continuation of the original adnominal genitive construction; the occurrence of singular nouns in y in present-day Dutch is trickier to explain. Superficially, it appears that nouns are placed in position y on account of their “feminine” suffix. However, given the absence of a masculine-feminine lexical gender distinction in modern northern Dutch (from which most of the data studied here originate), the explanation must lie elsewhere. In the previous section it was concluded that the placement of a noun in y is based on that noun’s morphological structure, not its semantics. Furthermore, the data show the occurrence of morphologically simplex words to be relatively rare in x der y. Therefore, the starting assumption here is that a noun’s morphological structure is the key to its occurrence in x der y. As a continuation of the discontinuous chunking that led to its survival, the adnominal genitive construction continues to be deployed on the basis of discontinuous chunks (sub-schemata), each of which specifies nouns ending in a particular suffix. That is to say, a present-day Dutch speaker, having encountered sufficient tokens of x der y involving nouns ending particular suffixes (the “input”) will generalise those tokens to identify the various sub-schemata of the x der y pattern. This is illustrated in (85) using the example of the -heidsub-schema. These sub-schemata are then used to produce novel formations such as those studied here; at the same time, the speaker notices that there are certain register-based restrictions which characterise the adnominal genitive construction.

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(85) Input: de spiral de engel het imago de grenzen de wet

der der der der der

eenzaamheid gerechtigheid onnozelheid redelijkheid waarschijnlijkheid

‘the spiral the.gen loneliness’ ‘the angel the.gen justice’ ‘the image the.gen silliness’ ‘the borders the.gen rationality’ ‘the law the.gen probability’

de zaak der elektrische veiligheid ‘the matter the.gen electric security’ het sobere deel der kenbare waarheid ‘the sober part the.gen known truth’ (Sources, respectively: INL 27 Mil., April 1995; INL 27 Mil., January 1994; INL 27 Mil., May 1994; Eindhoven, spoken, 40722; INL 27 Mil., March 1994; INL 27 Mil., February 1994; INL 27 Mil., March 1994) Generalisation: [[xNP] [der [z]ADJ __heidNP]] Notes:

(i.e. any noun ending in -heid may follow der)

x is a string, i.e. a whole noun phrase, of any complexity an adjective z may be inserted between der and the noun26

This usage-based identification of structures is also the basis of the sub-schema for plural nouns; namely, once sufficient plural nouns have been encountered following der, the pattern is generalised to apply to any plural noun and used as the basis of future, novel formations. The various sub-schemata of x der y are identified and entrenched through discontinuous chunking. This does not, however, necessarily preclude nondiscontinuous chunking of der along with certain derived nouns which occur frequently in position y. Although such nouns could certainly be identified as suitable for x der y on account of their ending, the frequency of nouns such as bevolking ‘population’, democratie ‘democracy’, natie ‘nation’, techniek ‘technology’ and waarheid ‘truth’ in the adnominal genitive construction suggests that der bevolking, der democratie, etc., may well become chunked in their own right to form sub-schemata such as those listed in (86), in which only position x is free for the insertion of a noun phrase.

26 For now, the adjective z has simply been placed between der and the noun to indicate the possibility of its occurrence; its hierarchical position in the binary structure of the noun phrase is accounted for more precisely in (88).

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183

[[xNP] [der bevolking]] ‘x the.gen population’ [[xNP] [der waarheid]] ‘x the.gen truth’

This fits with the occurrence (and recurrence) of simplex nouns in position y. Clearly, discontinuous chunking is not possible with simplex nouns. A number of (formerly feminine) simplex nouns recur in x der y, such as aarde ‘earth’, eeuw ‘century’, kerk ‘church’, wereld ‘world’ and zee ‘see’. Accordingly, chunks such as der aarde, der kerk, and so on, can become entrenched to form sub-schemata such as those listed in (87), in which only position x is open. Furthermore, the sub-schema for eeuw allows for the placement of an ordinal number before eeuw to specify the century, those for kerk and zee allow for the placement of a lexeme before the noun to specify the particular church or sea, respectively. (87)

[[xNP] [der aarde]] ‘x the.gen earth’ [[xNP] [der ord.num eeuw]] ‘x the.gen __st/rd/th century’ [[xNP] [der adj kerk]] ‘x the.gen ___ church’

I posit that general usage-based principles can account for the productive use of x der y; the morphological structure of morphologically complex nouns serves as the basis for their occurrence in the construction. Given the rarity of simplex nouns in position y, I contend that the continued use of the adnominal genitive is primarily morphologically governed. In the following section I propose, on this basis, a formal account of the x der y construction. 5.5.6 A Formalisation of x der y In the preceding sections it has been argued that the adnominal genitive construction in modern Dutch is a partially filled construction. In its canonical form there are two free positions: one, referred to throughout this paper as x, can be filled by any noun phrase (based on the intentions of the language user); the other free position, referred to as y, can contain a noun phrase headed by a noun which has certain characteristics (it is plural, or it is singular with a particular morphologically suitable ending, or it is one of a—more or less—closed group of simplex nouns which, through usage, have become associated with the x der y pattern). Accordingly, the modern Dutch adnominal genitive construction may be formalised as set out in (88) (which is adapted from earlier attempts in Scott [2011a, 2011c, 2012]). They are presented in a way that emphasises the emergence through discontinuous chunking of the various sub-schemata. The information on the noun phrase y relates to the head noun; the head noun

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may be modified by one or more adjectives or, rarely, a more complex phrase (n = 375 in the data; i.e. 18.2% of the total x der y tokens). (88) adnominal genitive construction (x der y) ‘x is the possession of y (in a broad sense); x is part of y; x is y’ basic schema: [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [ y]NP]NP]NP]NP y is either [+plural] or is [+singular, +common gender] sub-schemata: [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [N[+PLURAL]]NP]NP]NP]NP de leden der volgende verenigingen the members the.gen following societies ‘the members of the following societies’ (CGN: fv800831.4) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___de]NP]NP]NP]NP het pad der liefde the path the.gen love ‘the path of love’ (INL 27 Mil., June 1994) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___heid]NP]NP]NP]NP de grenzen der hoorbaarheid the borders the.gen audibility ‘the borders (i.e. limits) of audibility’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 31987) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___ie]NP]NP]NP]NP het grote genie der corruptie the great genius the.gen corruption ‘the great genius of corruption’ (INL 27 Mil., March 1995) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___iek]NP]NP]NP]NP het terrein der orthopedagogiek the domain the.gen orthopedagogy ‘the domain of otho-pedagogy’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 36654) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___ij]NP]NP]NP]NP de verplichtingen der rederij the obligations the.gen shipping-company ‘the obligations of the shipping company’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 32770)

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[[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___ing]NP]NP]NP]NP 47 procent der bevolking 47 percent the.gen population ‘47% of the population’ (INL 27 Mil., June 1994) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___iteit]NP]NP]NP]NP het bloed der experimentele realiteit the blood the.gen experimental reality ‘the blood of experimental reality’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 33305) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___nis]NP]NP]NP]NP de volle lading der geschiedenis the full load the.gen history ‘the full load of history’ (INL 27 Mil., February 1994) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___schap]NP]NP]NP]NP de ijzeren wet der dronkenschap the iron law the.gen drunkenness ‘the iron law of drunkenness’ (INL 27 Mil., July 1994) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___st]NP]NP]NP]NP de zwanezang der schilderkunst the swansong the.gen painting ‘the swansong of the art of painting’ (INL 27 Mil., October 1994) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___te]NP]NP]NP]NP de modern behandeling der bloederziekte the modern treatment the.gen haemophilia ‘the modern treatment of haemophilia’ (Eindhoven, family magazines, 16093) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [___uur]NP]NP]NP]NP]NP het luilekkerland der pulp-literatuur the land-of-plenty the.gen pulp-literature ‘the land of plenty of pulp literature’ (INL 27 Mil., May 1994) [[x]NP [der [[z]ADJ [ex-feminine simplex]NP]NP]NP]NP de afgronden der menselijke ziel the abysses the.gen human soul ‘the abysses of the human soul’ (INL 27 Mil., April 1995)

186 table 5.25

chapter 5 The occurrence of the various types of noun in y

Nature of head noun of y Plural Singular simplex; ex-feminine ends in -ie ends in -ing ends in -heid simplex; other ends in -iek ends in -uur ends in -nis ends in -de ends in -ij ends in -te ends in -schap ends in -st ends in -iteit Total:

Proportion of Proportion of total x der y singular x der y Total tokens tokens (%) tokens (%) 1441

70.0

134 125 98 78 36 28 26 22 21 12 11 10 9 7

6.5 6.1 4.8 3.8 1.7 1.4 1.3 1.1 1.0 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.3

21.7 20.3 15.9 12.6 5.8 4.5 4.2 3.6 3.4 1.9 1.8 1.6 1.5 1.1

2058 (singulars only: 617)

The level of occurrence in the three corpora of each of these sub-schemata— as well as the number of tokens that fell outside the sub-schemata (isolated anomalous examples involving a neuter noun, a formerly masculine noun, or a recent borrowing)—is shown in Table 5.25. As already shown in Table 5.19, plural nouns are by far the most frequent type of noun in position y. Based on the preceding analysis, it is perhaps surprising to see that roughly a quarter of the singular nouns in y are simplex; in fact, this figure actually accounts for many tokens of a limited number of types. In contrast, many of the morphologically complex nouns only occur once in the data. The dominant complex noun types are those ending in -ie, -ing and -heid.

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5.5.7 Elective Genitives The elective construction, in which x denotes the prime example of its kind, denoted by the plural noun in y, is a productive and seemingly categorical role of the genitive; no examples with the van-construction occurred in the data. The relationship between the two noun phrases is similar to that in the partitive genitives described above. Here, however, it is not the partitivity that is central, but rather the emphasising of a particular referent belonging to a particular group (Schäfer 1974: 11; see also Trost 1935: 326–327); another term encountered for this construction is the superlative genitive (Rijpma & Schuringa 1972: 196). This use of the genitive does not appear to face the same pragmatic restrictions as the prototypical adnominal genitive described above. Thus, the elective genitive (89) is treated here as a (semi-)autonomous construction, albeit one that follows the same agreement principle of the adnominal genitive: the determiner is der and the noun in y is plural. A variant with the adjective aller ‘all.gen’ in place of der (89ʹ) occurred in the historical data. (89) Elective genitive construction ‘yʹ is the prime example of its kind’ [[ y.sg]NP [der [ y.plu]NP ]NP]NP (89ʹ) [[ y.sg]NP

[aller

[ y.plu]NP

]NP]NP

Prototypical elective gentives—formed with der—are attested in Middle Dutch in both the postnominal order found today (90a), but also in prenominal order (90b) (Stoett 1977: 103; van Kerckvoorde 1993: 80); postnominal examples occur in the early modern data (90c). (90) a. coninc der coningen king the.gen kings ‘king of kings’ (Middle Dutch; van Kerckvoorde 1993: 80) b. der heren heer the.gen lords lord ‘lord of lords’ (Middle Dutch; van Kerckvoorde 1993: 80) c. het beeld der beelden the picture the.gen pictures ‘the picture of pictures’ (Luijtsen, 30.11.1780 [Moree 2003: 201])

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The aller-variant, attested throughout the early modern period, is exemplified in (91a,b); while still possible in modern Dutch, it did not occur in the modern corpora although speculative web searches produced hits such as the examples in (91c,d). (91) a. O gruwel aller gruwelen! oh horror all.gen horrors! ‘Oh horror of all horrors!’ (EMDC: J. Pietersz. Meerhuysen. 1659. De geest van Jan Tamboer of Uytgeleeze stoffe voor de klucht-lievende ionckheydt [fiction]) b. de ridderlijkste aller ridders the chivalrous.super all.gen knights ‘the most chivalrous of all knights’ (EMDC: P.J. Andriessen. 1862. De schildknaap van Gijsbrecht van Aemstel [fiction]) c. het feest aller feesten the party all.gen parties ‘the party of all parties’ (Attested at http://www.ondergrond.tv/de_ ondergrond/2007/06/column_een_fees.html [last accessed 28.2.13]) d. schoonheid aller schoonheden beauty all.gen beauties ‘beauty of all beauties’ (Attested at http://examedia.nl/columnx/ modules/news/article.php?storyid=7236 [last accessed 28.2.13]) The prototypical variant involves the determiner der. The INL 27 Mil. corpus contains 55 tokens of 35 types. The origin of the elective genitive as a productive construction can be traced back to a number of formations which appeared in Bible translations—hence the terms Hebrew superlative, Hebrew genitive or biblical genitive, by which the construction is sometimes known (Rijpma & Schuringa 1972: 196; Schäfer 1974: 13, 90)—and which remain in wide use today, e.g. (92) and (94a). (92) a. het boek der boeken the book the.gen books ‘the book of books, i.e. the Bible’ (INL 27 Mil., Dec. 1994) (n = 7 in INL 27 Mil.)

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b. de god der goden the god the.gen gods ‘the god of gods’ (INL 27 Mil., Sept. 1994) (n = 3 in INL 27 Mil.) c. de koning der koningen the king the.gen kings ‘the king of kings’ (INL 27 Mil., April 1995) (n = 1 in INL 27 Mil.) By analogy with these entrenched but transparent examples, speakers were able to produce novel formations and the elective genitive became entrenched as a construction in its own right, giving rise to examples such as those in (93). (93) a. in zekere zin is ze hier de bloem der bloemen, zoals in in certain sense is she here the flower the.gen flowers as in Frankrijk de roos of de lelie France the rose or the lily ‘in a certain sense it is the flower of flowers (i.e. the prime flower) here, just as in France the rose or the lily is’ (INL 27 Mil., Oct. 1994) b. Het beeld van Woodstock als het festival der festivals the picture of Woodstock as the festival the.gen festivals bleef intact. remained intact ‘The picture of Woodstock as the festival of festivals remained intact.’ (INL 27 Mil., Aug. 1994) c. Maar Koning Lear, de rol der rollen voor een oude acteur but King Lear the role the.gen roles for an old actor als Boris Spielman. as Boris Spielman ‘But King Lear, the role of roles for an old actor like Boris Spielman’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1994) The position x can be occupied by an adjective (94a), which may occur in its superlative form (94b,c). (94) a. het heilige der heiligen the hallowed the.gen hallowed ‘the hallowed one of the hallowed ones, i.e. the Holy of Holies’ (INL 27 Mil., April 1994) (n = 4 in INL 27 Mil.)

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b. het heiligste der heiligen the hallowed.super the.gen hallowed ‘the most hallowed of the hallowed’ (INL 27 Mil., Aug. 1994) c. de grootsten der grooten the great.super the.gen great ‘the greatest of the great’ (INL 27 Mil., April 1995) The continued productivity of the elective genitive, and its lack of register restriction, is indicated by attestations such as those in (95), which were found by speculative web searches; all occurred in informal online sources. (95) a. het halve-pagina interview met de Blogger der Bloggers, the half-page interview with the blogger the.gen bloggers, Bruno Segers Bruno Segers ‘the half-page interview with the blogger of bloggers (i.e. the prime blogger), Bruno Segers’ (Attested at http://geertmareels.wordpress .com/2006/12/21/brunos-blog/ [last accessed 28.2.13]) b. Klopt naast de Oude ICR was de koploper de trein that’s-right beside the old ICR was the front-runner the train der treinen. the.gen trains ‘That’s right; beside the old ICR [= Intercityrijtuig ‘intercity carriage’], the Koploper [‘front runner’] was the train of trains.’ (Attested at http:// forum.opeenshadikhet.nl/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4262&start=864 [last accessed 28.2.13]) c. Wil je ook een exemplaar van deze ‘iPod der iPods’ in want you also an example of these iPod the.gen iPods in de wacht slepen? the watch drag ‘Do you also want to pocket one of these “iPod of iPods”?’ (Attested at http://www.macfan.nl/nieuws.lasso?id=Mzc0OTI= [last accessed 28.2.13]) 5.5.8 Partially Filled Structures Besides the adnominal genitive construction with its two open slots, and the slightly more constrained elective genitive construction, modern Dutch con-

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tains a number of partially filled constructions consisting of a genitive noun phrase (the filled slot) and an open, non-genitive slot. The matter of what constitutes a true partially filled construction, and what is simply a recurring product of the adnominal genitive construction, is debatable, particularly when the genitive noun phrase consists of the determiner der and a plural noun or derived singular noun. Accordingly, the analysis of the most plausible candidates for partially filled construction status presented here is based on the present author’s evaluation; it is recognised that the inventory of partially fixed structures varies from speaker to speaker and that any speaker, on encountering the same genitive noun phrase in several different examples, will—potentially—have the ability to start treating that genitive noun phrase as a fixed element in a partially filled construction and to start filling the nongenitive slot at will. Some of the constructions have clearly developed through analogy with one or two already existing “prime examples”; see, for instance, the ___ des onheils construction which is represented in the corpora by two frequently occurring stored phrases and several productively formed hapaxes (see also Scott [2011a: 121–122]). Some prenominal examples, i.e. constructions in which the fixed genitive phrase precedes the open non-genitive slot, are shown in (96). (96) ’s werelds ___ ’s werelds grootste containerrederij the.gen world.gen largest container-shipping-company ‘the world’s largest container shipping company’ (Eindhoven, daily newspapers, 3371) ’s werelds eerste geïnstitutionaliseerde the.gen world.gen first institutionalised undergroundbewegingen underground-movements ‘the world’s first institutionalised underground movements’ (Eindhoven, news magazines, 6873) ’s mans ___ ’s Mans beste vriend the.gen man.gen best friend ‘man’s best friend’ (Attested at http://www.vkmag.com/magazine/s_mans_beste_vriend_ weigert_baas_te_verlaten/ [last accessed 28.2.13])

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’s mans populariteit the.gen man.gen popularity ‘the man’s popularity’ (Attested at http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4512/Cultuur/archief/article/ detail/1695362/2006/06/09/Weduwe-Sjostakovitsj-merkt-weinig-vanrsquo-s-mans-populariteit.dhtml [last accessed 28.2.13]) Postnominal examples, in which the fixed genitive phrase follows the open slot, are shown in (97). (97) ___ des doods de Muur des Doods the wall the.gen.masc/neut.sg death.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the wall of death’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1995) de uren des doods the hours the.gen.masc/neut.sg death.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the hours of death’ (CGN, fv801345.19) ___ des lands de hoofdstad des lands the capital the.gen.masc/neut.sg country.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the country’s capital’ (INL 27 Mil., March 1994) de andere kant des lands the other side the.gen.masc/neut.sg country.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the other side of the country’ (CGN, fv801106.4) ___ des onheils de plek des onheils the place the.gen.masc/neut.sg disaster.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the place of the disaster’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1994) (n = 18 in corpora) de met te kleine schroefjes gemonteerde zware lichtbak the with too small screws.dim mounted heavy illuminated-sign des onheils the.gen.masc/neut.sg disaster.gen.masc/neut.sg ‘the heavy illuminated sign of disaster, mounted with screws that were too small’ (INL 27 Mil., April 1995)

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___ der bevolking de meerderheid der Nederlandse bevolking the majority the.gen Dutch population ‘the majority of the Dutch population’ (INL 27 Mil., Oct. 1994) ongeveer 97 procent der bevolking approximately 97 percent the.gen population ‘approximately 97 percent of the population’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1994) ___ der techniek een triomf der techniek a triumph the.gen technology ‘a triumph of technology’ (INL 27 Mil., May 1994) de magische natuur der techniek the magical nature the.gen technology ‘the magical nature of technology’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1994) ___ der omstandigheden de druk der omstandigheden the pressure the.gen circumstances ‘the pressure of the circumstances’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1995) het tweede slachtoffer der omstandigheden the second victim the.gen circumstances ‘the second victim of the circumstances’ (Eindhoven, daily newspapers, 4520) There exist also a number of partially filled constructions which are more complex than those illustrated in (96) and (97). Some, as in (98a–c), have a restricted free slot within the genitive noun phrase (in addition to the unfilled non-genitive noun phrase); others, as in (98d), have a strongly restricted unfilled slot. (98) ___ der [ordinal number] eeuw a. de democratische revoluties der achttiende eeuw the democratic revolutions the.gen eighteenth century ‘the democratic revolutions of the 18th century’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1994)

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___ der [20e, 30e, 40e, 50e, 60e, 70e, 80e, 90e] jaren b. het begin der vijftiger jaren the beginning the.gen fifty.ord years ‘the beginning of the fifties’ (Eindhoven, news magazines, 12888) ___ der jaren [20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90] c. de links-libertaire tegenstroming der jaren zestig the left-libertarian countercurrent the.gen years sixty ‘the left-libertarian countercurrent of the sixties’ (INL 27 Mil., May 1994) ___ aller tijden d. [[de/het [adj.super noun]] [aller tijden]] de irritantste puzzel aller tijden the most-irritating puzzle all.gen times ‘the most irritating puzzle of all time’ (CGN, fn007251.112) The een der ___ construction (99) involves a reanalysis of the original structure, with the genitive determiner der having become chunked together with the non-genitive noun phrase een as one unit, with the remainder of the original genitive noun phrase (minus its determiner) open for filling by a plural noun; note that the occurrence of plural nouns in this structure is another example of the agreement found in the adnominal genitive construction. (99) een der ___ (n = 158 in database) [[een der] [noun.plu]] een der IJsselmeerpolders one the.gen IJsselmeer-polders ‘one of the polders of the IJsselmeer’ (INL 27 Mil., Mar. 1995) één der in de rotsen uitgehouwen grafkamers one the.gen in the cliffs out-hewn burial-chambers ‘one of the burial chambers hewn out of the cliffs’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1995) 5.5.9 The Relationship Between the Genitive and the van-construction The historical competition between the adnominal genitive and the van-construction, which the latter construction ultimately won despite a centurieslong revitalisation of the genitive in certain registers, was described in Section 5.4. In the modern language, the adnominal genitive construction can still be

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figure 5.9 The relative occurrence of interchangeable genitive and van in the Eindhoven sub-corpora (scott 2011a: 123)

regarded as a competitor, albeit a weak one, of the van-construction, usable as long as the noun is either plural or a derived “feminine” singular. The relative use of the two is illustrated according to genre in Figure 5.9, with data from the Eindhoven sub-corpora, expressed as percentages of the total interchangeable situations in which potentially either the genitive or the van-construction could have occurred. A niche occupied by the adnominal genitive construction is its deployment to avoid the horror aequi of a string of van-constructions in a sentence (EANS §4.1, Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1184): one or more of the potential vanconstructions is replaced by a genitive. The corpora contain many such examples, such as those in (100), in which the van-phrases are in boldface, and the genitives underlined. 223 such examples were found in the modern Dutch corpora. However, in view of the subjectivity involved in deciding whether a genitive phrase was used in order to avoid repeating van, no more detailed numerical details are given here. The avoidance of repetition of van does seem to promote the productive use of the genitive although it is secondary to the morphological requirements of the genitive structures (van Haeringen 1956: 32–33). (100) aangaande de wensen van de regarding the wishes of the bevolking met betrekking population with relation

meerderheid der Nederlandse majority the.gen Dutch tot de vorm van de omroep to the form of the broadcastingcompany ‘regarding the wishes of the majority of the Dutch population in relation to the form of the broadcasting company’ (INL 27 Mil., Oct. 1994)

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daarom zullen wij naast het stimuleren van de bouw therefore should we beside the stimulating of the building der bejaardenwoningen ook zoeken naar een verantwoorde the.gen elderly-flats also search after a responsible oplossing voor voldoende hulpverlening solution for sufficient assistance ‘we should therefore, besides the stimulating of the building of flats for the elderly, also look for a responsible solution for sufficient assistance’ (Eindhoven, family magazines, 18947) en hij kon zich verzekerd houden van de toestemming van het and he could self assured hold of the agreement of he hoofd der protestantse partij head the.gen Protestant party ‘and he could be assured of the agreement of the head of the Protestant party’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 36250) 5.5.10 The Remains of the Prepositional Genitive The assignment of genitive case by prepositions was barely present in the formal written data from the early modern period. Surprisingly, one small reflex of the prepositional genitive—brought about through the productivity of the adnominal genitive construction—was found in the modern data. This relates to the preposition te midden (sometimes writtem temidden) ‘in the midst (lit. ‘to middle’)’, which has grammaticalised from a phrase whose etymology is still transparent in the modern language; that is to say, te midden is a secondary preposition (following the definition in Helbig & Buscha [2001: 353– 355]). Accordingly, when te midden occurs with a genitive object (101), this does not represent a reactivation of the prepositional genitive in Dutch; it is related to the adnominal genitive construction in the modern language and is a product of the transitional status of the element te midden on the grammaticalisation cline. It occurs because the noun midden remains recognisable in the preposition. (101) zijn natuurlijke plaats is aan het bord, bij de machines, tussen its natural place is on the table by the machines between de tekenplanken, achter de experimenteertafel, te midden the drawing-boards behind the experiment-board in-the-midst der leerlingen op de speelplaats the.gen pupils on the playground

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‘its natural place is on the table, beside the machines, between the drawing boards, behind the experiment board, in the midst of the pupils in the playground’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 36372) rustig te midden der woelige baren peaceful in-the-midst the.gen turbulent waves ‘peaceful in the midst of the turbulent waves’ (INL 27 Mil., March 1994) Three tokens of te midden + genitive occurred in the data (two in Eindhoven and one in INL 27 Mil.). In the Eindhoven corpus are a further two examples of te midden with a van-construction complement, e.g. (102); this is the expected form and is the one given in the dictionary Van Dale (2005–2008). (102) vervreemding en eenzaamheid zijn onder meer het resultaat van alienation and loneliness are under more the result of het leven te midden van een culturele environment the life in-the-midst of a cultural environment waarmee men geen contact kan hebben en waarin men where-with one no contact can have and where-in one niet kan participeren not can participate ‘Alienation and loneliness are, among other things, the result of life in the midst of a cultural environment with which you cannot have any contact and in which you cannot participate’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 35542) 5.5.11

The Periphrastic Possessive and Its Relation to the Other Possessive Constructions The rarity of the periphrastic possessive construction in the historical data continues in the modern data. Five tokens occurred in the spoken sub-corpus of Eindhoven, an equivalent of 0.04 occurrences per 1,000 words; the same sub-corpus contains twelve possessive -s tokens (i.e. 0.10 occurrences per 1,000 words). The periphrastic possessive occurs with human possessors denoted by common nouns (103a) and proper names (103b). (103) a. je had nog nooit anders gezien als van ’n vrouw d’r gezicht you had still never other seen than of a woman her face en d’r handen and her hands ‘you hadn’t yet seen anything other than a woman’s face and hands’ (Eindhoven, speech, 45650)

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table 5.26

The occurrence of the des y-s construction in the corpora

Corpus Eindhoven INL 27 Mil. CGN

Tokens

Occurrences per 1,000 words

0 11 1

0 0.0004 0.0001

b. hij leg z’n hand op arie z’n schouwer he lays his hand on Arie his shoulder ‘he lays his hand on Arie’s shoulder’ (Eindhoven, speech, 45596)

5.6

Other Surviving Remnants of Genitive Morphology

5.6.1 Introduction To a greater extent than the other strongly deflected Germanic languages, Dutch contains a number of constructions which make novel use of a formerly genitive marker. In these constructions, the old genitive suffix -s is used in a new syntactic and semantic context, no longer attaching only to masculine and neuter singular nouns, and now with a specific semantic function in each construction. This exaptation or recycling of morphological elements was defined in Section 4.2.3; its products based on former genitive markers are described here. 5.6.2 The des y-s Construction This construction comprises only a genitive noun phrase (i.e. there is no complement) and involves the masculine and neuter singular definite article des and the accompanying nominal -s suffix. There is no agreement between the article and the noun, with feminine nouns also permitted in this construction. Semantically, the des y-s construction no longer denotes a typical genitive meaning (see Chapter 3); rather, it denotes “characteristic of y” (but see (107)). As such, it resembles fossilised genitive phrases such as des duivels ‘furious, lit. of the devil’ (105a) or the adverbially used temporal phrases (105b). Typical examples from the corpora and elsewhere are given in (106). Despite its superficial similarity to the adnominal genitive fragment, des y-s is best considered a separate construction on account of its lack of gender agreement and

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of its semantic specialisation. The construction, while productive and flexible (Hoeksema 1998), was infrequent in the corpora (Table 5.26). (104) The des y-s construction [des [[ y]NP s]NP]NP unless y ends in a sibilant, then: [des [[ y]NP ∅]NP]NP (106c) if y is stored with another genitive ending, then that ending is used (heren ‘lord.gen’, mensen ‘human.gen’, etc.) (106d) (105) a. dan waren die Duitsers des then were the Germans the.gen.masc/neut.sg duivels natuurlijk. devil.gen.masc/neut.sg naturally ‘then the Germans were furious, of course.’ (CGN, fn008968.13) b. de warmte leek ’s the warmth seemed the.gen.masc/neut.sg avonds nog drukkender dan evening.gen.masc/neut.sg still oppressive.comp than overdag during-the-day ‘in the evening the warmth seemed even more oppressive than during the day’ (Eindhoven, novels and short stories, 22886) (106) a. Het is des trainers om it is the.gen.masc/neut.sg trainer.gen.masc/neut.sg about voor eigen parochie te preken. for own parish to preach ‘It is characteristic of the trainer to preach to the converted.’ (INL 27 Mil., Nov. 1994) b. Want dat wil zij, zeggen de meeste datingboeken, because that wants she, say the most dating-books, zoiets is typisch des vrouws. such-a-thing is typical the.gen.masc/ woman.gen.masc/ neut.sg neut.sg ‘Because that is what she wants, say most dating books; such a thing is typical of women.’ (Attested at https://www.relatieplanet.be/cms/boekverslagen/1338/__ __Verander_je_man._Met_praktische_tips_en_een_stappenplan_.html [last accessed 28.2.13])

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c. Tenminste als ik de saaiheid wil bestrijden, die at-least if I the dullness want combat which des vleermuis’ is. the.gen.masc/neut.sg bat.gen.masc/neut.sg is ‘At least if I want to combat the dullness that characterises the bat.’ (INL 27 Mil., Feb. 1995) d. als men niet voldoende oog blijft hebben voor wat if one not sufficient eye keeps have for what des mensen is. the.gen.masc/neut.sg human.gen.masc/neut.sg is ‘if one pays insufficient attention to what characterises the human’ (CGN, fv400597.31) Some examples—which can be interpreted as denoting either a characteristic or possession—stand in a grey area between this construction and its exaptatum, the concordial adnominal genitive (107). (107) a. Nee, Balladurs geweten was schoon, hij had zich geen no Balladur.poss conscience was clean he had self no buitenlands politieke bevoegdheden toegeeigend die overseas political powers appropriated which des presidents waren. the.gen.masc/neut.sg president.gen.masc/neut.sg were ‘No, Balladur’s conscience was clear; he hadn’t appropriated for himself any overseas political powers which are associated with/belong to the president.’ (INL 27 Mil., Sept. 1994) b. Het wordt geen private, naar winst strevende onderneming, it becomes no private, after profit striving undertaking, maar blijft des overheids but remains the.gen.masc/ government.gen.masc/ neut.sg neut.sg ‘It will not become a private, profit-making undertaking, but remains the government’s.’ (INL 27 Mil., Jan. 1994) 5.6.3 Possessive -s Constructionalised during Middle Dutch (Section 5.2), possessive -s underwent constructional change during the early modern period, which narrowed its type frequency to become the relatively restricted construction it is today (see

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The nature of the possessors in the Dutch possessive corpus ( figures from Eindhoven corpus)27

Nature of possessor Proper name Determiner + common noun Common noun (alone) Pronoun

Tokens in Eindhoven corpus 440 (98.2 %) 5 (1.1%) 2 (0.4%) 1 (0.2%)

Section 5.4.4). The modern Dutch possessive -s construction (108), in which the possessor noun phrase (NPpossessor) follows the possessum noun phrase (NPpossessum), features an invariant marker -s, which is insensitive to the gender or number of the noun to which it attaches. (108) The possessive -s construction [[[NPpossessor] s] [NPpossessum]] NPpossessor = name, kinship term, determiner + kinship term, determiner + noun which is [+human] NPpossessor denotes an animate—usually human—referent. Proper name possessors of any gender (109a,b) are most frequent, accounting for circa 96 % of the construction’s tokens in the Eindhoven corpus (Table 5.27), and represent the prototypical use of the construction; kinship terms used as names also occur (109c,d). This seems to be the endpoint of the constructional change that affected possessive -s in the early modern period. (109) a. zonder anja’s tranen zou de vleermuis in elk geval levend without Anja.poss tears shall the bat in every case living zijn geweest. be been ‘without Anja’s tears, the bat would certainly have been alive.’ (Eindhoven, novels and short stories, 26215)

27 Only the tagged Eindhoven corpus was consulted here; the necessary searches in INL 27 Mil. and the CGN could not have used tags and would have involved searching for all words ending in ⟨s⟩, which would have produced prohibitively large quantities of results (and may have been impossible using the INL 27 Mil.’s online interface).

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b. dat betekent dus een vrolijk begin van het tweede leven van that means thus a happy start of the second life of amsterdams city, dat inderdaad mooi geworden is. Amsterdam.poss city-centre that indeed pretty become is ‘so that means a happy start to the second life of Amsterdam’s city centre, which has indeed become pretty.’ (Eindhoven, daily newspapers, 1801) c. ze heeft hem op een bruiloft leren kennen en vaders she has him on a wedding learn know and father.poss vergenoegde blik gezien satisfied look seen ‘She met him at a wedding and saw father’s satisfied look’ (Eindhoven, novels and short stories, 23811) d. heel smakelijk is “kip in grootmoeders pannetje” really tasty is chicken in grandmother.poss pan.dim ‘the “chicken in grandmother’s pan” is really tasty’ (Eindhoven, family magazines, 18619) Rarely, NPpossessor consists of a determiner and a common noun; this is usually a possessive determiner and a kinship noun (110a–b). The only Eindhoven example to contain a non-possessive determiner is reproduced in (110c). The phrase in this example, de manager’s ziekte ‘the manager.poss illness’, however, is most plausibly interpreted as a possessive compound with the sense ‘the illness associated with managers’ rather than a straightforward possessive sense of ‘the illness of the [specific] manager’; the compound de managersziekte is expected. A clear possessive example from outside the corpus is given in (110d). The use of possessive -s with [determiner + noun] possessors is not part of the standard (Booij 2010a: 218); van der Horst (2008: 1622) considers the possibilities for the use of this construction to have been on the rise in the course of the 20th century. (110) a. zijn uw vaders handen gebonden? are your father.poss hands tied ‘Are your father’s hands tied?’ (Eindhoven, news magazines, 7846) b. zij ging weer op haar dochters kamer kijken. she went again on her daughter.poss room look ‘She went looking again in her daughter’s room.’ (Eindhoven, novels and short stories, 27307)

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c. de manager’s ziekte, die mij nu al enige maanden the manager.poss illness which me now already several months teistert ravaged ‘the manager’s illness, which has now ravaged me for several months’ (Eindhoven, novels and short stories, 25677) d. de auteurs grootvader the author.poss grandfather ‘the author’s grandfather’ (EMDC: Gautier. 1998. De gouden kooi; quoted in van der Horst 2008: 1622) Certain pronouns—such as iemand ‘somebody’, niemand ‘nobody’, iedereen ‘everybody’ and elkeen ‘everybody’—may also occur in the possessive -s construction (Rijpma & Schuringa 1972: 166). The only Eindhoven example involves the marginal anderman ‘each other’ (111a); non-corpus examples are given in (111b,c). (111) a. het kwetsen van andermans diepste gevoelens. the hurting of each-other.poss deepest feelings ‘the hurting of each other’s deepest feelings’ (Eindhoven, novels and short stories, 26047) b. Tot niemands verbazing staat er wederom geen maat to nobody.poss amazement stands there yet-again no measure op Raleigh on Raleigh ‘To nobody’s surprise, there is yet again no match for Raleigh’ (Attested at http://nos.nl/archief/2003/tour/paginas/100_jaar/1947/ memorabel_zoetemelk.html [last accessed 28.2.13]) c. We hebben iedereens hulp nodig! we have everybody.poss help necessary ‘We need everybody’s help!’ (Attested at http://www.bokt.nl/forums/viewtopic.php?f=192&t= 1568403 [last accessed 28.2.13])

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5.6.4 The Partitive Construction28 Following the constructional change that affected the partitive use of the genitive during the early modern period (Section 5.4.7), the modern Dutch partitive construction involves attachment of the marker -s not to a noun, but to an adjective which is preceded by an indefinite nominal element drawn from a closed set of pronouns and noun phrases; the nominal element refers to a subdomain of the referent of the adjectival element (Broekhuis & Strang 1996: 221–222). This is shown in (112) and exemplified in (113). The final -s is often omitted in Belgian Dutch speech (van der Horst & van der Horst 1999: 313); this reflects the modern incarnation of the adnominal partitive, in which the noun now appears without the -s ending it used to take. The nominal partitive construction which declined during the early modern period is still represented to a limited extent in modern Dutch, with twelve tokens occurring in the Eindhoven corpus, including those shown in (114). Five of those tokens involve the noun tijds ‘time.part’ (114a), suggesting the storage and use as a unit of the partitive-marked form tijds. Nonetheless, there is evidence of productive and creative use (114b,c). (112) The partitive construction [[x]NP [[ y]A s]NP]NP [[x]NP [[ y]A ∅]NP]NP (possible in spoken Belgian Dutch) x = quantifying pronoun or noun phrase (iets ‘something’, niets ‘nothing’, wat ‘something’, veel ‘a lot of’ …) ‘x is characterised by the property of y’ (see also Booij 2010a: 227) (113) a. ik wil iets lekkers eten vanavond. I want to something tasty.part eat this-evening ‘I want to eat something tasty this evening.’ (CGN, fn000406.112) b. ’k heb niet veel boeiends te vertellen. I have not much interesting.part to tell ‘I don’t have much interesting to tell.’ (CGN, fv701063.102)

28 In Scott (2011a: 125), this construction was termed the partitive genitive. On account of its non-concordiality, and following the principle adopted for referring to the possessive -s construction, the term partitive construction is now preferred. For a number of reservations regarding the term partitive genitive (i.e. including the term genitive), see Broekhuis & Strang (1996: 221–222).

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(114) a. in enkele minuten tijds gonst het bericht van straat in a-few minutes time.part buzzes the report from street tot straat, van huis tot huis to street from house to house ‘in the space of a few minutes [lit. a few minutes’ time], the report buzzes from street to street, from house to house’ (Eindhoven, daily newspapers, 2376) b. hij belooft verder bergen gouds he promises further mountains gold.part ‘he promises, furthermore, mountains of gold’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 32782) c. zulke grote sommen gelds such large sums money.part ‘such large sums of money’ (Eindhoven, popular science, 32761) 5.6.5 The Linking -s A very prominent construction which has arisen through exaptation from the genitive -s suffix is the semantically empty element -s used to link two elements in a compound (115a); the -s is no longer perceived as a genitive ending in such examples (de Vooys 1967: 162). The linking -s is often optional (115b), with its use (or omission) governed by the preference of the individual language user or by geographical variation (E-ANS §12.3.2.2.i; also Krott et al. 2001: 80). A detailed study of the lining -s is beyond the scope of the present investigation; the reader is referred instead to Krott et al. (2001). (115) a. koekjesdeeg ‘cookie-s-dough’ leraarskamer ‘teacher-s-room, i.e. staffroom in a school’ verzekeringsmaatschappij ‘insurance-s-company’ vrijheidsgraad ‘freedom-s-degree, i.e. degree of freedom’ b. drugsverslaving ‘drug-s-addiction’ vs. drugverslaving ‘drug-addiction’ spellingsverandering ‘spelling-s-change’ vs. spellingverandering ‘spelling-change’ tijdsverschil ‘time-s-difference’ vs. tijdverschil ‘time-difference’ (E-ANS §12.3.2.2.i; Krott et al. 2001: 56)

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Conclusion

A comparison of the fate of the Dutch genitive with its English and Swedish counterparts—and between genitive use in published written language and informal egodocuments in 16th–19th century Dutch—shows clearly how standardisation can shape the development of a morphosyntactic construction, and how standardisation led to the postponement of the apparently imminent demise of the genitive case. The relative use of the genitive and its competitors in informal letters, for some language users at least, mirrors very closely the developments in use attested in English and Swedish, with the adnominal genitive absent, its roles assumed by the van-construction and the possessive -s construction. In contrast to English and Swedish, however, standardisation intervened in the fate of the genitive case. Whereas the English and Swedish genitive had been lost before the advent of standardisation, the Dutch genitive remained—albeit in disarray and facing strong competition from alternative constructions—when morphological case marking was adopted as part of the precept for the standard language. The place of the genitive case, alongside case morphology in general, already seems to have been part of the accepted norm for written language even before the effects of standardisation were fully felt, such as by children learning the norm at school and continuing to use it as adults. Thus, only a few decades after the publication of the first Dutch grammar, Twe-spraack (1584), the early 16th century letters of Hugo de Groot contain a concordial genitive alongside the van-construction. In published writings of the 16th and 17th century, evidence both of deflection and of the acceptance of the standardised norm are visible; thus, while we find generalisation of masculine/neuter inflection to feminine nouns and a generally dominant vanconstruction, we also find a concordial genitive whose frequency of use almost equals that of the van-construction and which is far more frequent (relative to the van-construction) than it is in the 15th century data presented by Weerman & de Wit (1999) and Vezzosi (2000). The stabilisation of the adnominal genitive against the van-construction, and the reduction in determiner-noun mismatches suggests the influence of standardisation and an ever increasing familiarity of the norm. Nevertheless, the status of the morphological genitive as a stylistic tool associated with formal written language, and not as part of the core language, is clear from the fact that, following its abolition as part of the 1947 spelling reform, it disappeared—with the exception of a handful of fragments—from the language. The development of the Dutch possessive -s, as compared to its English and Swedish counterparts, also bears the hallmarks of the influence of standardisation. By the 16th century the construction had emerged with a broad type fre-

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quency: alongside the determiner-less, non-postmodified proper names which are now the default possessor type in modern Dutch, the dominant possessor type was originally noun phrases consisting of a determiner and a common noun; postmodified proper names, with the -s attached to the right-edge of the postmodification, were also possible. By the 19th century, however, noun phrases with the structure determiner + common noun were rare as possessors in possessive -s (and remain so in the present-day language), and determinerless proper names had become established as the dominant possessor type. This narrowing of the type frequency of possessive -s is concurrent with the manifestation of the increasing effect of standardisation felt in the data. It appears that, as the concordial genitive started to regain ground, the possessive -s construction which, in taking noun phrases with the structure [determiner + common noun], was directly competing with the concordial genitive, was pushed back into a niche of attaching to proper names. Possessive -s was particularly suited to this niche because of its coherent, invariant -s marker; the concordial genitive, in contrast, could not be used in this way. Possessive -s was further restricted by the van-construction, which could also be used with determiner-less proper name possessors. One further factor which marks Dutch possessive -s as different to its English and Swedish counterparts is that, when used with determiner + common noun possessors, it is restricted to nouns denoting humans. Again, the influence of standardisation may be at work here. The possessive -s construction could develop through the association of prenominal genitive order with human referents; in Dutch, however, postnominal genitive order also remained in use and could be used with nonhuman possessors. Thus, possessive -s was never able to expand its type frequency in the way that its English and Swedish counterparts could. Among the Germanic languages which lack morphological case marking, the preservation of a fragment of the concordial genitive, which still works according to agreement principles, is unique to Dutch. Alongside the usage factors which led to the chunking of the x der y fragment of the adnominal genitive and its reanalysis as an autonomous construction, standardisation again played a role. Without the extension of the genitive’s life through to the early 20th century, this construction could not have emerged. The continued productivity of a small fragment of the Dutch adnominal genitive testifies to the usefulness to speakers of the adnominal genitive and reflects the continued strength of the adnominal genitive in German. The German genitive—whose modern incarnation resembles its early modern Dutch counterpart in several respects—is the topic of the next chapter.

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Summary of Chapter 5

Among the now caseless Germanic languages, Dutch is unusual in that it still retains a great deal of evidence of the now-defunct case morphology. In this chapter, the diachronic transition from case constructions to non-case constructions in Dutch was set out, and an overview was given of the precept(s) advocated in prescriptive grammars throughout the early modern period which promoted the case-constructions, at least in careful language use; in the grammars which took pragmatic variation into account, the non-case constructions were generally deemed acceptable only in informal registers. On the basis of existing research it was noted that the genitive case underwent a sharp decline (having been suppressed by the van-construction) during the Middle Dutch period. The original research carried out for this investigation showed that this decline was arrested at the start of the early modern period, with the genitive undergoing a strong resurgence in formal writing from the 16th century and, about a century later, a weaker resurgence in informal writing. This arrested decline was concurrent with the appearance of the first prescriptive grammars; the increase in accuracy of use of genitive morphology across the early modern period suggests that the explicit moves towards standardisation were influential in preserving the genitive case and promoting its use. Attention was also paid in this chapter to the possessive -s construction, which emerged from the concordial genitive marker -s; it was argued that the type frequency of this construction—originally broad, but becoming narrower over the early modern period—was constrained by the resurgence of the semantically equivalent concordial genitive case. The survival of a fragment of the adnominal genitive, the x der y construction, which maintains an agreement relationship (in contrast to, for instance, possessive -s or the des y-s construction), was ascribed to frequency factors, which led to the association of feminine and plural nouns with postnominal constituent order and, eventually, the survival of this fragment as an autonomous construction while other concordial case marking was lost from Dutch.

chapter 6

The German Genitive 6.1

Introduction

As in Dutch, the interaction between deflection and standardisation has also been central to the development of the German genitive case: this is the topic of the present chapter. Like other Germanic languages, German has become increasingly more analytic (and, thus, increasingly less synthetic) but while English, Dutch and the mainland Scandinavian languages are now clearly synthetic, German is neither truly synthetic nor truly analytic (Härd 2003: 2569). While Standard German features a morphological case system containing four recognisable cases, the system contains a great deal of syncretism (Marschall 1998: 32–35) (e.g. der Frau ‘the.gen.fem.sg woman’ and der Frau ‘the.dat.fem.sg woman’), gaps which cannot be filled by a case construction (e.g. *ein Antrag Berliner ‘a request Berliner.gen.plu’ [Eisenberg 2008: 53]), and many morphological case constructions exist alongside synonymous non-case equivalents; thus, despite its relative syntheticity (compared to English, for instance), it has many analytic characteristics. For instance, constituent order, although not as rigid as in English or the modern Romance languages, is not entirely free (Marschall 1998: 29, 35, 37), and case marking alone is insufficient to indicate syntactic roles: it is used together with constituent order. Indeed, Marschall (1998: 37) suggests that German should no longer be regarded as exclusively a case language. Even the German dialects, which have been much more affected by deflection than the standard language, retain a morphological case system of sorts which, while much reduced in comparison to that found in Standard German, is still more elaborate and regular than the decaying remnants of case morphology found, for instance, in some of the 16th century Dutch informal personal letters analysed in Chapter 5; certainly, no German dialect is comparable to English, Swedish or modern Dutch in terms of analyticity. Härd (2003: 2569) sums up the situation thus: Will man sich bei ihrer Beschreibung trotzdem dieser Einteilungsbegriffe bedienen, könnte man vielleicht umschreibend sagen, daß das Dt. bei einer eindeutigen Entwicklung in analytischer Richtung trotzdem eine generelle, grundlegende Disposition für den synthetischen Sprachbau bewahrt hat, daß es mit analytischen Mitteln synthetische Strukturen bildet […].

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_007

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Should one, when describing them, nevertheless want to make use of these classificatory concepts, one could perhaps say by way of paraphrase that German, within a clear development in an analytic direction, nevertheless has kept a general, fundamental disposition to synthetic linguistic structure, that it forms synthetic structures with analytic means […]. (my translation) Gallmann (1990: 287–288) sees Standard German as moving towards a threecase system (consisting of nominative, dative and accusative) while Jordens (1983), in a study of the acquisition of German case morphology by L2 learners, does not mention the genitive at all. Leys (1992: 1), although he notes the existence of the genitive as an adnominal case, only deals with the three adverbal cases—nominative, accusative and dative—in his Reflections on the German Case System. Certainly, the genitive is now only barely used adverbally (Duden 2005: 828) and, even though it is hardly infrequent in everyday use—as this chapter shows—it is acquired fairly late, not being attested in children younger than six years (Mills 1985: 185; Clahsen et al. 1994: 114; see also Appel 1941: 70). In contrast, the invariant and once-only (and therefore more straightforward to use) possessive -s construction is acquired around the age of two and a half years (Mills 1985: 185); up to the age of three years, the -s marker may be omitted (Clahsen et al. 1994: 96–97). At three and four years, by which time the von-construction has been acquired, possessive -s may be overgeneralised to common nouns, e.g. das ist *Männers Wagen ‘that is men.poss car’ (Mills 1985: 185–186). The competition from other, non-genitive constructions which characterised the use of the genitive in historical periods of other Germanic languages, and which has featured in German since the Middle High German period (Sections 6.2 and 6.3), also characterises the use of the genitive in present-day standard German (Section 6.4). This chapter also deals with those constructions which were originally part of the genitive case but which emerged through exaptation to become constructions in their own right (Section 6.5). The competition between the genitive and other constructions has been detected by lay linguists whose concern for the state of the genitive has led to its becoming famous as an example of (perceived) language decline; this, and the relationship between the lay linguistic perceptions and the situation found in the data, is dealt with in Section 6.6. The conclusions of this chapter are drawn in Section 6.7.

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The Genitive until the 17th Century

Although archaic and anomalous when compared to English, Dutch and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, the German morphological case system has nonetheless changed a great deal since the emergence of German as a distinct language. Old High and Old Low German were strongly synthetic in character, with a variety of case marking suffixes; over time, German became more analytic in nature and the number of case marking suffixes was reduced. By the 16th century, the case system in German—and the division of labour between semantically equivalent case and non-case constructions—bore a strong resemblance to that familiar from the present-day standard language. In this section, the main developments affecting the genitive case up to the start of the period focused on in this investigation are sketched out on the basis of secondary sources and a small-scale primary study of genitive use in a sample of 16th century writings. 6.2.1 Old High German & Old Low German The terms Old High German and Old Low German (the latter is also known as Old Saxon; see, e.g., Dal [1983: 78–79]) denote the earliest stage in which German is recognisable as a distinct language; the High variety, which had been affected by the phonological changes associated with the 2nd Sound Shift (Stedje 2007: 81) was used in the south of the German-speaking area while the Low variety, unaffected by the 2nd Sound Shift, was used in the north. Old High German is generally said to span from c. 750 to c. 1050 (e.g. Stedje 2007: 81), although Penzl (1986: 18) gives the dates as 600–1100. Old Low German was used between the 9th and 12th centuries (Dal 1983: 78; Stellmacher 1990: 19; Stedje 2007: 100). There was no standard variety of Old High German; it was a collection of related dialects (Penzl 1986: 18; Axel 2007: 2). During this period, the morphology and syntax—which exhibited strong geographical variation (Sonderegger 2000: 1171)—started to move towards the more analytic system found in the modern languages. The determinatives der, diu, daz became grammaticalised as definite articles (Greule 2000: 1208) (although this process was still not complete by Middle High German [Wolf 2000: 1353]) and the use of separate articles—as opposed to synthetic marking—increased (Sonderegger 2000: 1194). There arose nominative/accusative and genitive/dative syncretism among feminine nouns, and the case system became organised according to a singular-plural dichotomy (Sonderegger 2000: 1185, 1193). It was also during this period, from the 9th–10th centuries, that the instrumental case was lost (Behaghel 1928: 22; Keller & Mulagk 1995: 204; Sonderegger 2000: 1183, 1193).

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Even at this early stage, German was relatively archaic among the Germanic languages on account of its morphosyntax, with its class- and stem-based case system marking it as different (Sonderegger 2000: 1194) and, despite the incipient beginnings of deflection, it retained many of its archaic characteristics. Although the weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables—which would characterise Middle High German—had already begun, Old High German possessed a rich inventory of nominal genitive endings (as it did for all cases); most masculine and neuter classes took -es, while -a, -i or ô attached to some feminine noun classes, -en, -in, -ûn occurred with certain classes in all three genders, and some feminine classes took no ending—this was also an option (alongside -es) for some masculine nouns; certain classes also took an ending in the plural (various allomorphs, all ending in -o) (Sonderegger 2000: 1171, 1176–1177). Oubouzar (1997: 224, 232) reports an overall dominance of prenominal order (1a–c) in Old High German, particularly with personal nouns, with impersonal nouns tending to take postnominal order (1d–e) (Oubouzar 1997: 224, 232); she links the move towards postnominal order to increased definite article use (Oubouzar 1997: 237, 241). (1)

a. Kristes áltano Christ.gen ancestor ‘Christ’s ancestor’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 52)1 b. thes héresten dóhter the.gen synagogue-head.gen daughter ‘the daughter of the head of the synagogue’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 98) c. thes giwates trádon the.gen dress.gen hem ‘the hem of the dress’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 100) d. angil gotes angel God.gen ‘angel of God’ (Isidor; quoted in Oubouzar [1997: 225])

1 Notice the German genitive ending -es in this example. Later the borrowed Latin genitive form Christi ‘Christ.gen’ would become established, dominating, for example, in the sample of Martin Luther’s writings studied in this investigation.

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e. giburt súnes thines, drúhtines mines birth son.gen your.gen lord.gen my.gen ‘the birth of Your—My Lord’s—son’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 46) A postmodified possessor noun phrase could be split around its possessum, with the head noun preceding and the postmodification following the possessum (1f). f. Davídes sun thes kúninges David.gen son the.gen king.gen ‘son of King David; lit. son of David the king’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 120) Adnominally, the genitive also expressed partitivity (1g–h). g. liutes filu people.gen many ‘many people’ (Otfrid c. 870; quoted in Oubouzar [1997: 226]) h. kelih caltes uuazares glass cold.gen water.gen ‘a glass of cold water’ (Tatian; quoted in Oubouzar [1997: 226]) The genitive was the case of the objects of certain verbs (1i), and of the complements of certain adjectives (1j). i. wir muazin fréwen unsih thés we must take-pleasure-in us this.gen ‘we must take pleasure in this’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 200) j. sichor múgun sin wir thés certain may be we this.gen ‘we may be certain of this’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 14) The von-construction is also attested in Old High German; the example in (1k) is ambiguous between a “genitive” reading and an ablative reading but is rendered with a genitive in a modern German translation of Otfrid (1987 [c. 870]: 57). k. bóto fona góte messenger of/from God.dat ‘messenger of God, messenger from God’ (Otfrid 1987 [c. 870]: 56)

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Deflection took place earlier and to a stronger extent in Old Low German than in Old High German (Behaghel 1928: 15). Nonetheless, in the nominal inflection paradigms for nouns and possessive pronouns given by Stellmacher (1990: 27–29) there remains an instrumental case for certain classes of masculine and singular nouns. Among the feminine and plural nouns of the four cases present in all paradigms (i.e. nominative, genitive, dative and accusative) there is a great deal of syncretism (see also Tiefenbach [2000: 1252–1253]). As far as constituent order in the adnominal genitive is concerned, prenominal order (2a) was unmarked and postnominal (2b) was marked (Rauch 2000: 1268); partitive use also occurred (2c). (2) a. scolda that sehsta cumin thuru craft godes should the sixth come through power god.poss ‘the sixth age should come through the power of God’ (quoted in Rauch [2000: 1268]) postnominal order: b. tho sprak imu angegin the godo godes sunu darauf spoke him against the good god.gen son ‘then the good son of God spoke against him’ (quoted in Rauch [2000: 1268]) c. tehan embar honiges ten buckets honey.gen ‘ten buckets of honey’ (quoted in Stellmacher [1990: 33]) 6.2.2 Middle High German & Middle Low German By Middle High German (1050–1350) and Middle Low German (1150–1650) (Stedje 2007: 105, 133; Wolff 2009: 75), the number of lay—as opposed to clerical—writers was ever increasing, and the influence of Latin was decreasing (Wolf 2000: 1352). Through the weakening (to schwa)—or loss through apocope or syncope—of distinct vowels in unstressed syllables, including those in inflectional suffixes, several distinct genitive suffixes (among many other lost distinctions) had been lost by Middle High German (Behaghel 1923: 479; Wolf 2000: 1353; Paul 2007: 19–20); this simplification of nominal case inflection also occurred in Middle Low German (Härd 2000a: 1431). In Middle High German, the genitive was characterised by its polyfunctionality, occurring with verbs (3a), nouns (3b), pronouns and numerals, adjectives (3c), interjections and, incipiently, with certain recently grammaticalised prepositions (3d) (Paul 2007: 340).

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(3) a. daz er der chunigin gedahte that he the.gen queen remembered ‘that he remembered the queen’ (Kaiserchronik 1849 [c. 1150]: 387) b. und da des küneges wille an mînem lîbé geschach and there the.gen king.gen will on my.dat body.dat happened ‘and there the king’s will happened to my body’ (Nibelungenlied, XIV Aventiure, 820: 4 [Nibelungenlied 1970: 182]) ain wahtær der cristenhait a guardian the.gen Christianity ‘a guardian of Christianity’ (Kaiserchronik 1849 [c. 1150]: 451) c. daz mir mîn klagendez herze ist jâmers vol that me.dat my moaning heart is heartbreak.gen full ‘(so) that my moaning heart is full of heartbreak’ (Reinmar 1986: 198)2 d. uzerhalp der mænige outside the.gen crowd ‘outside the crowd’ (Kaiserchronik 1849 [c. 1150]: 81) The adnominal genitive is encountered in Old and Middle High German with an ablative sense (3e) which, in the thesis proposed by Nishiwaki (2010: 176 and passim) was the starting point for the partitive use of the genitive as well as its possessive use. e. ich wil im mînes brôtes geben I want-to him my.gen bread.gen give ‘I want to give him some of my bread’ (Hartmann von Aue, Iwein, 3295–3302; quoted in Nishiwaki 2010: 37) The genitive performed similar roles in Middle Low German, occurring adverbally (4a), adnominally (4b–d), and prepositionally (4e). Omission of the nominal -s is encountered, apparently systematically with vader ‘father’, in the Sachsenspiegel (4d).3 2 The modern German translation in the cited edition translates the genitive jâmers vol with the uninflected voll Jammer ‘full heartbreak.∅’ (Reinmar 1986: 199). 3 The date of c. 1224 given here for the appearance of the Sachsenspiegel is that given by Stedje (2007: 133).

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(4) a. unde underwint sek des gudes to siner nut and seizes refl the.gen property.gen to his.dat benefit ‘and seizes the property for his benefit’ (Sachsenspiegel 25 § 4, 1956 [c. 1224]: 46) b. iewelkes mannes jartale every.gen man.gen year ‘every man’s year’ (Sachsenspiegel 25 § 4, 1956 [c. 1224]: 46) c. de tit der lehnunge the time the.gen enfeoffment ‘the time of the enfeoffment’ (Sachsenspiegel 7 § 4, 1956 [c. 1224]: 27) d. na des vader dode after the.gen father.∅ death.dat ‘after the father’s death’ (Sachsenspiegel 22 § 1, 1956 [c. 1224]: 39)4 e. van uses hêren wegen from our.gen lord.gen way ‘because of our Lord’ (quoted in Stellmacher [1990: 63]) During Middle High German, the tendency towards an analytic sentence structure, begun in Old High German, increased and affected the syntax and inflectional morphology (Wolf 2000: 1323). It was during this period—Kiefer (1910: 57) names the 12th century as the time—that the analytic von-construction emerged as an alternative to the adnominal genitive (Kiefer 1910: 21, 30, 57; Behaghel 1924: 62). The effects of deflection on the genitive were already clear in Middle High German. Although this period is considered the heyday of the adverbal genitive by Ágel (2000: 1870) on account of the large number of verbs taking a genitive object (Ágel puts the total at circa 260), the adverbal genitive already faced competition from the accusative case and prepositional phrases; the prepositional constructions as an alternative to the genitive gained in frequency throughout the Middle High German period (Paul 2007: 340–341). During the period, genitive complements of some adjectives also received competition from prepositional complements (Paul 2007: 346). The governing of the gen-

4 The dative inflection on dode in this example is due to the preceding dative preposition na.

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itive case by prepositions was still a relative rarity in Middle High German; at this stage, the genitive was a minor competitor which appeared occasionally with certain prepositions which otherwise governed the dative or accusative (Paul 2007: 347). Adnominally, the genitive performed functions which it still performs today, denoting possession (in a broad sense), quality and partitivity (Paul 2007: 345); one adnominal use not encountered today is the genitive of identity, whereby a superordinate noun is explained via a roughly synonymous noun occurring in the genitive (Paul 2007: 346). Although strictly beyond the remit of the present investigation, but relevant given the attention received by its cognates elsewhere in the Germanic languages and the apparent absence of available research on the topic in German, the matter of when the possessive -s construction emerged from the concordial genitive morphology and became constructionalised in its own right is considered briefly here. Middle High German still possessed an inventory of genitive markers (albeit much reduced in comparison to Old High German), and some of these markers were attached to proper names—just as they were to common nouns—to denote possession: only masculine personal names ending in a consonant received a genitive -(e)s, e.g. Sîfrid—Sîfrides; other masculine names took a final -n, e.g. Hagene—Hagenen, while feminine nouns took a final -e, e.g. Criemhilde (Penzl 1989: 71). Thus an example like (5a)—formally identical to a possessive -s formation—must still be regarded as a genitive inflection at this stage. Example (5b), however, can be regarded as a step on the way to possessive -s; despite the still relatively elaborate inflectional system of Middle High German, the determiner ir is uninflected (even though it is attested elsewhere carrying inflection during the period [Paul 2007: 216]), while the noun carries the ending -es. In contrast to Dutch, such inclusion of a determiner in the possessor noun phrase of possessive -s would not become entrenched in German; its eventual, seemingly recent appearance in the present-day language is investigated in Section 6.5.2. (5) a. er ist wol Gunthers genôz he is probably Gunther.gen comrade ‘he is probably Gunther’s comrade’ (Nibelungenlied, XIV Aventiure, 819: 4 [Nibelungenlied 1970: 182]) b. sô gedâhte ie die schœne Îsôt an ir so remembered always the beautiful Isolde on her œheimes tôt uncle.gen/poss death ‘Thus the beautiful Isolde remembered always her uncle’s death’ (Tristan [Walshe 1974: 124])

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The move towards the emergence of possessive -s fits with the developments in constituent order affecting the adnominal genitive. Already at the start of the Middle High German period, postnominal genitive order was dominant in prose with, in one sample, over two-thirds of adnominal genitive examples having this order; prenominal order tended to occur with personal nouns and, more rarely, nouns denoting animals, concrete objects and abstract concepts (Paul 2007: 328). Postnominal order also dominated in Middle Low German (Härd 2000b: 1457). Prenominal order, already obsolescent by Middle High German (Prell 2000: 30; Demske 2001: 231), was nevertheless strongly dominant in contemporary verse, accounting for circa 90 % of adnominal genitive use in that register (Paul 2007: 328). The 16th–18th century data presented in Sections 6.2.3 and 6.3.1 show a continuation of the entrenchment of postnominal order as the unmarked variant; the trend can be followed through to the present day, where prenominal order does occur but is both rare and stylistically marked. The association of prenominal order with poetic language continued beyond Middle High German. 6.2.3 Early New High German (1350–1650) As the period immediately preceding the one focused on in this chapter—and the period given by Behaghel (1928: 491) as the start of the “Untergang des Genitivs” [‘decline of the genitive’]—the Early New High German status of the genitive and its relationship with its competitors is examined in this sub-section on the basis of a small amount of primary research in addition to information obtained from secondary literature. This was the period of the Reformation, the rise of printing with movable type and the striving by printers to produce region-neutral texts (thus increasing their potential readership), and the period in which—around the start of the 16th century—several regional written languages emerged (Stedje 2007: 141–150). Thus, even though the first explicitly normative works would not appear until the mid-17th century, Early New High German is the starting point of the first moves towards a standardised German language. Early New High German was characterised by variation in orthography, inflection and syntax (Stedje 2007: 141); the inflectional morphology of the time was characterised by a great deal of geographical and register-related variability (Wegera & Solms 2000: 1542). The inventory of genitive markers—in common with inflectional markers in general—was reduced; the genitive and dative -e which appeared on some feminine nouns was lost through apocope, occurring only in rural language by the 14th century and, beyond this, appeared only exceptionally (Wegera & Solms 2000: 1542). Among masculine nouns, a number of the weak nouns which took -(e)n in the genitive shifted to take the more frequent strong -(e)s ending (Wegera & Solms 2000: 1543).

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The relative use of the genitive’s four roles in the Luther corpus

The sample of Luther’s writings studied here (see Section 4.3.3) shows the genitive to have been a primarily adnominal case in Early New High German, but that adverbal use was noticeably stronger than in the modern language (Figure 6.1); adverbal genitive use is never higher than 1.5 % of the total genitive tokens in any of the modern corpora. The ongoing decline of the adverbal genitive is illustrated by Fischer (1987) in her study of the adverbal genitive and its competitors (accusative and prepositional objects) in 16th century printed texts from Leipzig, who shows that in the first half of the 16th century, genitive objects slightly dominated their competitors and that a single author would vary between the genitive and a competitor; associations of the genitive and its competitors with different registers is also noted (Fischer 1987: 286, 293, 310, 322). The adnominal genitive could be used both pre- and postnominally (6a–b) (this matter is returned to below), while prepositional use was mainly restricted to the secondary preposition um … willen ‘for … sake’ (6e). A single example of the use of -en as a once-only possession marker (6f) was also attested; this usage was encountered again in E.D. Schiller’s letters (17). (6) adnominal (prenominal): a. meyner kleger urteyll my.gen prosecutors judgement ‘my prosecutors’ judgement’ (Luther, 1520, Eyn Sendbrieff an den Bapst Leo den czehenden [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 53]) adnominal (postnominal): b. ym dienst der liebe in-the.dat service the.gen love

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‘in the service of love’ (Luther, 1525, Auch wider die reubischen und mördisschen rotten der andern bawren [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 134]) adverbal: c. die seele kan allis dings emperen the soul can all.gen thing.gen do-without ‘the soul can do without anything’ (Luther, 1520, Von der Freyheyt eyniß Christen menschen [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 65]) adjectival: d. und ward des gewahr and became the.gen aware ‘and became aware of this/it’ (Luther, 1520, Eyn Sendbrieff an den Bapst Leo den czehenden [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 57]) prepositional: e. umb dißes unterschiediß willen for this.gen difference.gen sake ‘for the sake of this difference’ (Luther, 1520, Von der Freyheyt eyniß Christen menschen [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 64]) adnominal; once-only -en: f. Denn Hertzog Georgen fürstenthum, wie wol es ynn der nehe for Duke George.poss principality how well it in the near ligt, lies ‘For Duke George’s prinicipality, although it is nearby, […]’ (Luther, 1524, Eyn Brieff an die Fürsten zu Sachsen von dem auffrurischen Geyst [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 119]) A number of deflectional developments that characterise modern genitive use were already present in Early New High German. During the period, competition increased between the adnominal genitive and the von-construction, and the partitive genitive weakened in favour of an -s-less variant (Erben 2000: 1587); these developments are returned to later in this section. The occasional omission of the genitive nominal -(e)s ending from strongly inflecting nouns— referred to throughout this investigation by the name s-omission and regarded variously as an indicator of the decline of the genitive (Behaghel 1928: 491; Wegener 1995: 144) or as a consequence of letterpress printing (Tschirch 1969: 182)—already occurred in Early New High German. Articles in German had

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assumed the function of denoting the case, number and gender of the noun in their noun phrase, meaning that they could be used in lieu of case marking on the noun itself;5 a reflex of this involving the genitive is s-omission (Härd 2003: 2571), which occurs particularly (but not only) after dental consonants and on multisyllabic lexemes ending in -er, -el and -en, e.g. des Elendt ‘the.gen misery.∅’, des Ritter ‘the.gen knight.∅’, des gelid ‘the.gen member.∅’ and des leben ‘the.gen life.∅’, and was widespread even beyond these environments in east Swabian and Bavarian (Behaghel 1928: 491; Shapiro 1941, passim; Wegera & Solms 2000: 1543; Hartweg & Wegera 2005: 154). These environments still characterise s-omission today (Section 6.4.3), as does the non-categorical application of s-omission; Luther, for example used both genitive singular forms Gewissens ‘conscience.gen’ (n = 5) and Gewissen ‘conscience.∅’ (n = 2) within a single sermon (Shapiro 1941: 54). The level of occurrence of s-omission in particular environments in the 63 examples examined by Shapiro (1941), and in the 15 s-omitted tokens in the sample of Luther’s writings compiled for this study (and described in Chapter 4), based on Shapiro’s classification, is shown in Table 6.1.6 Nouns ending in -t (7a) and -en (7b) were particularly susceptible to s-omission in both samples; note that Name ‘name’ (7b) has been classed here as an -en noun because, in the s-omitted examples, the accusative/dative -n, to which the genitive -s usually attaches, does appear. (7) a. des Bapst Endchristisch regiment the.gen Pope.∅ anti-Christ-ish regiment ‘the Pope’s anti-Christ regiment’ (Luther, 1522, Eyn trew Vormanung Martini Luther tzu allen Christen, sich tzu vorhuten fur Auffruhr unnd Emporung [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 107]) b. man wolt meynes namen geschweygen one wanted my.gen name.acc/dat.∅ not-mention ‘one didn’t want to mention my name’ (Luther, 1522, Eyn trew Vormanung Martini Luther tzu allen Christen, sich tzu vorhuten fur Auffruhr unnd Emporung [Jillings & Murdoch 1977: 114]) 5 On the debate as to whether the assumption of case-, number- and gender-denotation by the article was the cause or the consequence of the loss of inflection on the noun, see Härd (2003: 2571). 6 The category of nouns ending in -s was not part of Shapiro’s classification, but is included here to account for the situation in the Luther data. A further 15 s-omitted tokens occurred in the Luther sample, featuring the proper name Christus ‘Christ’ uninflected for the genitive (or possessive -s); these have been omitted from Table 6.1 to avoid skewing the results.

222 table 6.1

chapter 6 The extent of occurrence of s-omission in different phonological environments (based on shapiro [1941: 56])

Noun ending -t -en -er -n -el -ch, -g, -ck -m -f -s vowel

Shapiro (1941: 56) Number Proportion of of types sample (%) 16 13 11 7 6 6 2 1 – 1

25.4 20.6 17.5 11.1 9.5 9.5 3.2 1.6 – 1.6

Luther Number Proportion of of types sample (%) 4 4 – 1 1 – 1 – 3 1

26.7 26.7 – 6.7 6.7 – 6.7 – 20.0 6.7

In a sample of early 16th century texts from Nuremberg, Ebert (1988) finds that names and titles are strongly associated with prenominal order (Ebert 1988: 35, 37; also Lanouette 1996: 89, 101), whereas inanimate concrete possessors tend to occur in postnominal order, as do partitive genitives (Ebert 1988: 34, 38). Noun phrases denoting an inanimate abstract referent occur increasingly postnominally, although a number of prenominal examples—found within lexicalised expressions—also turn up in Ebert’s data (Ebert 1988: 38, 44). The transition from pre- to postnominal order is viewed by Ronneberger-Sibold (2010: 99–100) in the context of processing considerations: on account of the genitive noun phrase following the noun phrase which it modifies, postnominal order is more easily processed than prenominal order, in which the modification appears first. The now dominant and unmarked postnominal order in the adnominal genitive, having begun its rise in prose during the Middle High German period, was consolidated in Early New High German (Hartweg & Wegera 2005: 173). The text type was influential in the choice of pre- or postnominal order; around 1500, postnominal genitives accounted for over threequarters of adnominal genitive use in specialist literature and pamphlets, but less than a quarter in chronicles (Hartweg & Wegera 2005: 174). Prenominal order is always dominant—despite rises of postnominal order circa 1400 and 1550—in the Urkunden studied by Tükör (2008: 88). This is shown in Figure 6.2, into which the corresponding data from the Luther sample (from 1520–1530)

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figure 6.2 The relative occurrence of pre- and postnominal genitive order in Lower Austrian Urkunden of the Early New High German period and in a sample of Luther’s writings (Urkunden data from tükör [2008: 16, 26, 36, 46, 57, 67, 78])

have been inserted at the appropriate point on the x axis (namely between Tükör’s “c. 1500” and “c. 1550” data). The dominance of prenominal order in her data is ascribed by Tükör (2008: 88–89) to the nature of the text type Urkunde, which is associated with personal and generic names, institutional names, and so on; that is to say, possessor types that were associated with prenominal order. The anomalous nature of the Urkunde data becomes clear, not only in comparison with the roughly contemporary data from Luther’s writings (his use of prenominal genitives in 1520–1530 is noticeably lower than in the Urkunden of c. 1500 and c. 1550), but also with the GerManC data presented in Section 6.3.1, in which the division during the 1650–1701 period—i.e. directly after the Urkunde data—is 82% postnominal against 18% prenominal (Figure 6.4). The postnominal partitive genitive decreased strongly across the Early New High German period. In c. 1350 it had accounted for 17% of all postnominal genitives; this had fallen to below 2% by 1650 (Tükör 2008: 19, 80; see also Erben 2000: 1587); from c. 1450 onwards, the primary use of the partitive genitive appears to have been in the collocation (um) eine Summe Gelds ‘(for) a sum money.gen’ (Tükör 2008: 40, 50, 60, 70, 71, 81) which testifies to the falling productivity of the construction and to the apparent chunking and entrenchment of the phrase eine Summe Gelds as a fixed expression. The (sub-) chunk Summe Gelds appears six times between 1650 and 1800 in the GerManC corpus, more than any other type in the partitive construction. The Early New High German period is characterised by a consolidation in the use of the genitive case. Tükör observes a strong increase in the token frequency of the genitive case as a whole, from 213 examples in 1350 to 483 in 1650; this increase mostly predates the earliest prescriptive works (see Section 6.6), and therefore must be due to other factors. Competing constructions are

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table 6.2

The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and von-construction in the Luther data (in tokens and, in parentheses, as a percentage of the total)

Adnominal genitive

von-construction

500 (96.9%)

16 (3.1%)

not dealt with by Tükör (2008), thus we cannot establish whether the rise in the number of adnominal genitive tokens, for instance, was accompanied by a fall in tokens of the von-construction. An explanation might be that, even before standardisation was fully underway, the genitive was already part of the convention for formal written language (such as that used in Urkunden). Certainly, in Luther’s likewise pre-codification writings, the adnominal genitive strongly outnumbers the von-construction (Table 6.2); even the most formal modern data—in which von-avoidance appears to be a convention (see Section 6.4.5)—the von-construction appears in about 10 % of possible contexts, i.e. it is stronger against the genitive than it was in the Luther sample (Figure 6.19). Meanwhile, in 17th century Swiss revisions of the Bible translation, the von-construction was routinely replaced by the adnominal genitive (Socin 1888: 229). At the same time, the relative distribution of the adnominal and nonadnominal genitive uses remained roughly stable, at c. 80 % adnominal and c. 20% non-adnominal (Tükör 2008: 87; Figure 6.1). Within the non-adnominal use, however, changes were in progress which show the development of the genitive towards the case familiar from the present-day standard language; adverbal use falls, adjectival use remains minimal, while prepositional use rises sharply to account for over half the non-adnominal use of the genitive by 1650 (Tükör 2008: 91, 94) (Figure 6.3).7 Thus, from its greater similarity to the Middle High German situation at the start of Early New High German, by the end of the latter period the genitive looks much like its incarnation in the modern standard language, being primarily used adnominally, with prepositional use its second role.

7 Tükör (2008) deals with other non-adnominal uses beyond the three focused on here; these other ues are conflated to the type “other” in Figure 6.3.

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figure 6.3 The occurrence of adverbal, adjectival and prepositional genitive use in Early New High German (as a percentage of total non-adnominal genitive use) (tükör 2008: 20, 30, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81)

6.3

The Genitive Case in 17th–19th Century German: A Diachronic Portrayal

Elspaß (2005a: 29) has noted that the view of German grammar as having been stable since the 18th century is the result of considering only the “smoothed out” versions of the works of the great German writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. When everyday informal writing is introduced into the picture, the situation is quite different. This is shown to good effect when studying genitive use in the early modern period and comparing it to the present day situation. In formal registers, the division of labour between the adnominal genitive and the von-construction, and the use of the prepositional genitive, has remained stable from the 17th century through to the 21st century. In informal language use, not only are there no clear diachronic trends, but there is a great deal of variation. The present section, tracing the use of the genitive in the early modern period on the basis of contemporary usage data (newspaper texts from the GerManC corpus and letters from Elisabetha Dorothea Schiller to her son), serves as a foundation for diachronic comparisons with the modern data. 6.3.1 General Characteristics of the Genitive Case By the 17th century, adnominal genitive use (8a,b) dominated, with prepositional use (8c) in a distant second place. This is shown in Table 6.3, which quantifies data from GerManC and the letters of E.D. Schiller. The adnominal genitive increases strongly in frequency between the first and final periods of GerManC; over the same period, the already rare adverbal genitive becomes even rarer. The adnominal and prepositional uses are much less frequent in

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E.D. Schiller’s letters than in GerManC; the competition faced by both is greater in informal writing (Sections 6.3.2 and 6.3.5). (8) a. darauf oben zum Anfang des Türckischen Kaysers on-that above to-the beginning the.gen Turkish.gen emperor.gen Nahmen mit güldenen gar zierlich gemachten Buchstaben name.obl with golden even delicate made letters stunden stood ‘stood on that, above, at the beginning of the Turkish emperor’s name with golden, even delicately made letters’ (GerManC [Altonaischer MERCURIUS No 94. Und desselben RELATION aus dem PARNASSO, 15 November 1698]) b. ich habe ihm bis jezt keine bestemte Nachricht ihrer I have you until now no definite news her.gen Krankheit geben ken illness given can ‘Until now I have not been able to give you any definite news of her illness’ (E.D. Schiller, 28–30.4.1796 [Schiller 1972: 194]) c. so wegen deß newen Cardinals Borremeo thus for-the-sake-of the.gen new.gen cardinal.gen Borrmeo gehalten worden held became ‘was thus held for the sake of the new cardinal Borremeo’ (GerManC [Ordentliche Wochentliche Post-Zeitungen, January 1671]) Adverbal (8d) and adjectival (8e) genitive use are rare in the data from this period. d. Wir erwähnten neulich des Böhmischen Mannes, der we mentioned recently the.gen Bohemian.gen man.gen who seine mitschuldigen Verfälscher der Bankzettel angegeben his accomplice counterfeiters the.gen banknotes reported ‘We recently mentioned the Bohemian man who reported his fellow counterfeiters’ (GerManC [Mannheimer Zeitung, January 1784])

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The occurrence in tokens—and, in boldface, tokens per 1,000 words— of the various roles of the genitive in GerManC and the E.D. Schiller letters

Adnominal genitive

Prepositional genitive

Adjectival genitive

Adverbal genitive

GerManC: 1650–1700

466 13.9

55 1.6

6 0.2

26 0.8

GerManC: 1701–1750

607 18.2

46 1.4

1 0.02

11 0.3

GerManC: 1751–1800

822 24.9

40 1.2

1 0.03

9 0.3

E.D. Schiller

137 4.1

8 0.2

2 0.06

2 0.06

Corpus

e. ich ben viel zu gereng aller dieser Gnaden die er I am much too humble all.gen these.gen favours which you an mir und meinen lieben Kindern erwießen. on me and my dear children did ‘I am much too humble for all these favours which you have done for me and my children.’ (E.D. Schiller, 16.5.1797 [Schiller 1981: 24]) The pragmatic markedness of the prenominal genitive which characterises its present-day use can be dated to the 18th century (Ágel 2000: 1858); prenominal order is termed the “dichterischer Genitiv” (‘poetic genitive’) by Kaempfert (2004: 3048, 3058; Behaghel [1928: 57] also states this), who notes that it was characteristic of the works of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), who used it as one of a number of formal means to achieve an emotive effect. At the start of the 18th century, postnominal order was especially associated with educational writing and specialist literature, and prenominal order with letters and travel writing (i.e. registers in which proper names are especially frequent) (Ágel 2000: 1858). In formal writing, the prenominal genitive declined further across the early modern period to be very rare by the second half of the 18th century (Figure 6.4). Nevertheless, prenominal order is proportionally much more frequent in the correspondence of E.D. Schiller than in the corresponding GerManC period (1750–1800); given the predominance of postnominal order with

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figure 6.4 The relative occurrence of pre- and postnominal genitive order in the journalistic texts of GerManC and the E.D. Schiller letters

human referents in her letters (Figure 6.5 [in Appendix 2]), E.D. Schiller’s relatively high prenominal genitive use cannot simply be explained as an epiphenomenon of there being more human referents in her letters. Examples are encountered in which pre- and postnominal genitive phrases are combined, such as (9a), in which a prenominal phrase (der liebsten Lotte Besserung ‘the.gen dearest Lotte improvement’) is simultaneously the genitive noun phrase in a postnominal construction (die letzte Nachricht der liebsten Lotte Besserung ‘the latest news the.gen dearest Lotte improvement’); the determiner der relates both to Lotte and the Besserung. (9) a. Die lezte Nachricht der liebsten Lotte Besserung, hat mich the latest news the.gen dearest Lotte improvement has me unaussprechlig getröstet unspeakably comforted ‘The latest news of dearest Lotte’s improvement comforted me unspeakably’ (E.D. Schiller, 3.12.1799 [Schiller 1975: 188]) A parallel example from GerManC is given in (9b); a similar dual deployment of the determiner occurs when a prenominal adnominal genitive phrase stands as the complement of the preposition wegen in (9c) (and see also example (26c)). b. in Erwegung der Frantzen starcken Armirung in consideration the.gen French strong armouring ‘in consideration of the strong armouring of the French’ (GerManC [Sonntagischer MERCURIUS, August 1666])

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The occurrence of s-omission in the early modern data in tokens and, in parentheses, as a ratio of s-present : s-omitted in each corpus

Corpus

-s present

-s omitted

GerManC: 1650–1700

230 (8.5)

27 (1)

GerManC: 1701–1750

303 (15.2)

20 (1)

GerManC: 1751–1800

306 (23.5)

13 (1)

E.D. Schiller

78 (9.8)

8 (1)

c. der Schwedische Gesandter hat allhier wegen seiner Frau the Swedish envoy has here because-of his.gen lady Gemahlin prætension so viel erhalten consort claim so much received ‘the Swedish envoy has received so much because of his wife’s claim’ (GerManC [Sonntagischer MERCURIUS, August 1666]) The relationship between constituent order and the animacy of the referent of the head noun in the genitive noun phrase is shown in Figure 6.5 (in Appendix 2). The only possessor type to occur with any notable frequency in prenominal order in the early modern German data is animate (human); this fits with observations made elsewhere in the literature and referred to passim in this chapter. Nevertheless, in each sub-corpus of GerManC, postnominal genitives are always more numerous than prenominal genitives with human possessors. The most frequent possessor type is animate (human) for the first century of GerManC; in the final half-century, the most frequent type is inanimate (abstract). This transition—a matter of the content of the newspaper articles in the corpus—does not seem to have any relevance to the decline of the prenominal genitive: the total tokens of human possessors increases across the three periods, concurrently with the decline of prenominal order. The competing von-construction, which is dealt with in more detail in Section 6.3.2,

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remains relatively infrequent across the three sub-corpora and shows no clear preferences as to possessor animacy. In the sparser dataset provided by the E.D. Schiller letters, the association of prenominal order with human possessors is also clear although here, too, postnominal order is far more frequent with human possessors. E.D. Schiller’s use of the von-construction simply mirrors— albeit with a lower token frequency—her use of the postnominal genitive. A decrease in s-omission can be observed across the three GerManC subcorpora: in 1650–1700, s-present tokens outnumbered s-omitted tokens by a ratio of 8.5 to one; by 1751–1800, there were 23.5 s-present tokens for every one s-omitted token (Table 6.4). This suggests an increasing awareness among the writers of the written norm. In E.D. Schiller’s letters there are almost ten spresent tokens for every s-omitted token; that is to say, her usage reflects the usage in newspapers from a century prior to her correspondence. The patterns in s-omission behaviour, both by the newspaper writers and by E.D. Schiller, reflect the Early New High German and present-day patterns. When the s-omitted examples are classified according to the nature of the referent of the head noun of the genitive noun phrase, there is a clear association of s-omission with proper names (10a,b). (10) a. aber die umstende des guten Papa kenen noch vieleicht but the conditions the.gen good.gen dad.∅ can still perhaps ein Viertel und Halbes jahr thauren, a quarter and half year last ‘but your good father’s condition can still perhaps last for threequarters of a year’ (E.D. Schiller, 6.8.1796 [Schiller 1972: 296]) b. die auf den äusersten Gräntzen des wüsten Arabien the on the outermost borders the.gen desolate.gen Arabia.∅ liegende Städte lying towns ‘the towns lying on the outermost borders of desolate Arabia’ (GerManC [Altonaischer MERCURIUS No 94. Und desselben RELATION aus dem PARNASSO, November 1698]) The occurrence of s-omission is less frequent with common nouns denoting humans (10c) and non-human referents (10d); in the 1701–1750 period of GerManC, common nouns do account for slightly less than half of all s-omitted tokens (Figure 6.6).

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figure 6.6 The types of nouns involved in s-omission

c. Auff starckes Anhalten deß Frantzösis. Ambassadeur on strong encourage.nr the.gen French ambassador.∅ is ist von hiesigem Hoff zugestanden from here court confessed ‘Following strong encouragement from the French ambassador, a confession has come from the court here’ (GerManC [Mercurii Relation, Oder Wochentliche Ordinari Zeitungen/ von underschidlichen Orthen, November 1702]) d. Schon lange wahren wir in Sorgen mein lieber Sohn, was already long were we in worries my dear son what wohl die ursache Seines langen stillschweigen sein kente probably the cause your.gen long silence.∅ be could ‘We had been worrying for a long time, my dear son, about what the cause of your long silence might be’ (E.D. Schiller, 30.3.1795 [Schiller 1964: 180]) A sizeable proportion of s-omitted common nouns is made up of borrowed words (Figure 6.7); this finding fits with Barðdal’s (2009: 125, 142, 155) observation that the loss of case morphology is connected to the entry of borrowed words into a language. One aspect of adnominal genitive use in which the presence or absence of the nominal -s is relevant is the nominal partitive genitive construction (11a–c). The GerManC corpus contains only 17 tokens of the construction (0.2 occurrences per 1,000 words), almost half of which are tokens of the recurring (and seemingly entrenched) Summe Gelds ‘sum money.gen [i.e. ‘sum of money’]’ (n = 6) and Pfund Sterlings ‘pound sterling.gen’ (n = 2).

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figure 6.7 The occurrence of native and borrowed common nouns in s-omission

(11) a. wenn ihm ein Freund eine Summe Geldes anvertrauen würde if him a friend a sum money.gen entrust would ‘if a friend were to entrust him with a sum of money’ (GerManC [Freyburgerzeitung, January 1784]) b. diese großen Strecken Landes eben so unbekannt zu lassen these large stretches land.gen just so unknown to leave ‘to just leave these large stretches of land unknown’ (GerManC [Deutsche Zeitung für die Jugend und ihre Freunde. 1stes Stück, 1784]) When the noun ends in a sibilant, unlike the main use of the adnominal genitive in which a schwa is inserted between the noun and the -s suffix, the partitive -s is simply omitted (11c). c. von welchem man aus 4. Maaß Wassers ein Maaß from which one from 4 measure water.gen a measure Saltz haben kan salt.∅ have can ‘from which one can have one measure of salt from a measure of water’ (GerManC [Wochentliche Donnerstags Zeitung, April 1666]) Partitive examples in which the -s suffix is omitted are encountered in GerManC (11d); this variant survives in the modern language. d. und konte während 24 Stunden keinen Tropfen Wasser erhalten and could during 24 hours no drop water.∅ obtain ‘and could not obtain a drop of water for 24 hours’ (GerManC [Danziger Zeitung. No. 8. Jm Verlage der Müllerschen Buchdruckerei, January 1798])

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figure 6.8 The occurrence (in types and tokens) of the nominal partitive genitive in the three periods of the GerManC corpus

The GerManC data hint at a further decrease in the use of the nominal partitive genitive—continuing the trend found in Early New High German—after the 17th century (Figure 6.8). The attachment of a partitive -s to an adjective—the only regular and unmarked use of the partitive -s suffix in modern German—occurs in the early modern data (12). (12) a. wo sie unser Gutes lernen können where they our good.part learn could ‘where they could learn about our good aspects’ (GerManC [Deutsche Zeitung für die Jugend und ihre Freunde. 1stes Stück, 1784]) b. und wer vernünftig und mäßig ist, begehrt nichts and who sensible and moderate is desires nothing überflüßiges superfluous.part ‘and whoever is sensible and moderate desires nothing superfluous’ (GerManC [Zeitung für Städte, Flecken und Dörfer, insonderheit für die lieben Landleute alt und jung, December 1786]) 6.3.2 The Adnominal Genitive vs. the von-Construction The division of labour between the adnominal genitive and the von-construction (13) remains broadly stable across the three periods of GerManC, with the genitive clearly dominant; in E.D. Schiller’s letters, the von-construction is over twice as frequent as in GerManC although it is outnumbered by the genitive (Table 6.5).

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table 6.5

The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the von-construction in interchangeable contexts in the three sub-corpora of the GerManC corpus and the E.D. Schiller letters (in tokens and, in boldface, as a proportion of the total potential occurrences in the respective sub-corpus)

Period

Genitive

von-construction

1650–1700

466 87.8%

65 12.2 %

1701–1750

607 87.5%

87 12.5 %

1751–1800

822 89.2%

100 10.8 %

E.D. Schiller

137 74.9%

46 25.1 %

(13) a. das Hauptquartier von der Artillerie vnnd Infanterie ist zu the headquarters of the artillery and infantry is to Heymersleben Heymersleben ‘the headquarters of the artillery and infantry is in Heymersleben [Hamersleben?]’ (GerManC [Wochentliche Donnerstags Zeitung, June 1666]) b. die jungfer und die wittib von verstorbn Leiuteneant Stoll seind the maid and the widow of deceased lieutenant Stoll are beisahmn together ‘the maid and the widow of the late Lieutenant Stoll are together’ (E.D. Schiller, 20.12.1801 [Schiller 1988: 147]) 6.3.3 The Adnominal Genitive vs. the Periphrastic Possessive The periphrastic possessive construction is rare in the data consulted; its use and the frequency of its occurrence reflect the modern situation (Section

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6.4.6). There is one token in GerManC (= 0.01 occurrences per 1,000 words) and seven tokens in E.D. Schiller’s letters (= 0.21 occurrences per 1,000 words). All possessors are human. The sole GerManC example (14a) is a common noun; the Schiller examples, including (14b,c), have proper name possessors. (14) a. an seiner Stelle soll der Königin ihr Herr Vatter seyn on his place shall the.dat queen her gentleman father be ‘in his place will be the queen’s father’ (GerManC [Wochentliche Ordinari Post-Zeitung Von den vornehmsten Europæischen Orten, December 1679]) b. Der Louiss ihr mann hat seine Besoltung mesten an the.dat Louise her husband has his pay mostly on Früchten Heu fruits hay ‘Louise’s husband makes his money mostly from fruits and hay’ (E.D. Schiller, 18.7.1800 [Schiller 1975: 296]) In (14c) the periphrastic possessive is preceded by—and is the possessor noun phrase of—a von-construction (in the same manner as the prenominal genitive examples in (9) above); the determiner der (preceding Fene) is therefore dative in relation both to von and to the periphrastic possessive, while the dative ihrem in the possessum of the periphrastic possessive phrase occurs because of the dative preposition von. c. wo ich beu künfftiger aussicht von der lieben Fene ihrem where I by future prospect of the.dat dear Fene her.dat Beistand unendlich mehr zu gewarden hette support infinitely more to expect had ‘where I, because of the future prospect of dear Fene’s support, had considerably more to expect’ (E.D. Schiller, 30(?).8.1796 [Schiller 1972: 316]) Example (14d) contains an ellipted possessum, in which the determiner appears but the head noun is omitted.

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table 6.6

The occurrence of possessive -s in the GerManC corpus

Period 1650–1700 1701–1750 1750–1800

Tokens of possessive -s 3 9 19

d. Den brief von jhm bester Sohn erhalte ich richtig nebst the.acc letter from you best son receive I correct beside der lieben Lotte jhrn. the.dat dear.dat Lotte hers.acc ‘I receive(d) the letter from you, my best son, correctly beside dear Lotte’s’ (E.D. Schiller, 15.12.1800 [Schiller 1975: 390]) Example (14e) is a borderline example for which an analysis as a periphrastic possessive is not the only possibility. e. sie fürt dem Papa seinn Brifwechsel an die Dokter she leads the.dat dad his correspondence on the doctors Periphrastic possessive interpretation: ‘she writes Dad’s correspondence to the doctors’ Non-periphrastic possessive interpretation: ‘for Dad, she writes his correspondence to the doctors’ (E.D. Schiller, 28.6.1796 [Schiller 1972: 248]) 6.3.4 The Rise of Possessive -s Only if an example bears clear possessive -s characteristics such as once-only right-edge marking (where other words in NPpossessor are left uninflected), or the occurrence of the once-only right-edge marker with a feminine possessor, can it be classified as possessive -s. To trace the emergence of possessive -s in the GerManC corpus of early modern German, an anachronistic approach was taken, searching for examples which would be possessive -s examples under the definition formulated for the modern language. This showed the possessive -s construction to occur with increasing frequency across the three equal-sized sub-corpora (Table 6.6). All but one of the GerManC examples involved a masculine possessor; a masculine example and the sole feminine example are shown in (15). The feminine example (15b) is evidence that possessive -s had

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emerged in German at least by the mid-17th century. As in present-day use, all possessors were proper names and the possessor noun phrase never contained a determiner (but see also Section 6.5.2 on a modern development). (15) a. weil er für Ludwig Capets Tod gestimmt because he for Ludwig Capet.poss death voted habe have.subjuctive ‘because he voted for the death of Ludwig Capet’ (GerManC [Die neue Mainzer Zeitung oder der Volksfreund, 29 January 1793]) b. nach seligen Fraw Christinen Nunckes todt after late.dat Mrs Christine.dat Nuncke.poss death ‘after the late Mrs Christine Nuncke’s death’8 (GerManC [Zeitung auß Hamburg, 15 January 1662]) The three possessive -s examples in E.D. Schiller’s letters diverge from the GerManC examples; besides one straightforward proper name example (16a), there is an example (16b) which may either be read as a straightforward possessive -s formation (if the postmodification von Dizingen relates to Sohn) or a “split possessive” (if von Dizingen relates to Amtman), and there is an example with a non-genitive determiner (actually accusative, relating to the referent of the possessor noun phrase) in the possessor noun phrase (16c). (16) a. da dem Maior Böhmen der an Papas statt because the.dat Major Böhmen who on dad.poss place daher gekomn there-from came ‘because (to the) Major Böhmen, who is here in Dad’s place’ (E.D. Schiller, 15.10.1796 [Schiller 1972: 350]) b. sie ist mir bei diesen Verkauf sehr nüzlich beim aufschreiben she is me.dat by this sale very useful by-the writing-up nebst Herrn Amtmans Sohn von Dizingen. beside Mr senior-civil-servant.poss son from Ditzingen

8 The dative inflection on seligen and Christinen relates to the preceding preposition nach.

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Interpretation 1: ‘she is very useful to me while making this sale by doing the writing up alongside the senior civil servant’s son (who is) from Ditzingen.’ Interpretation 2: ‘she is very useful to me while making this sale by doing the writing up alongside the senior civil servant from Ditzingen’s son.’ (E.D. Schiller, 15.10.1796 [Schiller 1972: 351]) c. Herr General Stein soll nach Ludwigsburg den Herrn Mr General Stein shall to Ludwigsburg the.acc Mr von Moglers Hauss ziehen von-Mogler.poss house move-in ‘General Stein shall move to Ludwigsburg into Mr von Mogler’s house’ (E.D. Schiller, 14.11.1796 [Schiller 1972: 382]) Additionally, E.D. Schiller uses a further, unusual possessive marker in her letters; there are two tokens (both with the possessor Papa) of the ending -en used to mark possession (17); the same ending was used as a once-only possession marker by Luther (6f). The preceding preposition may have influenced her use of -en, leading her to treat Papa as a weak masculine noun; note, however, that (17b) forms a minimal pair with (16a), which she had produced about a fortnight previously. (17) a. aber der gute Mensch der die Baumschul jezt versehen but the good person who the tree-nursery now take-care-of mus, wird sich schwerlich so nach Papen Plan must will refl with-difficulty thus after dad.poss plan verhalten kenen act can ‘but the good person who now has to take care of the tree nursery will thus with difficulty be able to act according to Dad’s plan’ (E.D. Schiller, 28.10.1796 [Schiller 1972: 359]) b. Herr Major Böhm der an Papen statt hier Mr Major Böhm who on dad.poss place here ‘Major Böhm, who [is] here in place of Dad’ (E.D. Schiller, 28.10.1796 [Schiller 1972: 359]) The 18th and 19th centuries saw a spread of the possessive -s construction. This is best illustrated by focusing on the attachment of the -s ending to

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feminine names; such formations are clear evidence that the -s is no longer the concordial genitive -s (as might be supposed, should it be encountered on masculine names), but that it is the invariant possessive -s ending. The form -ens is also encountered (see Sütterlin & Waag 1910: 83); on the origin of this ending, comprising a genitive -s attached to an accusative/dative -n, during the Middle High German period, see Lindgren (1954: 670–671). In Goethe’s 1774 novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, the possessive marking on the name of the main female character Lotte is the ending -ns (18a); in the accusative and dative cases, the name receives an -n ending (18b,c). (18) a. und nur Lottens Stimme, die mir rief and only Lotte.poss voice which me called ‘and only Lotte’s voice, which called to me’ (Goethe 1999 [1774]: 68) b. ich will nur Lotten wieder näher I want only Lotte.acc again closer ‘I only want Lotte closer again’ (Goethe 1999 [1774]: 158) c. Wer ist Albert, sagte ich zu Lotten who is Albert said I to Lotte.dat ‘“Who is Albert?”, I said to Lotte’ (Goethe 1999 [1774]: 48) The accusative/dative -en ending is also encountered with masculine names (18d,e); nonetheless, possession on masculine names is marked with a simple -s (18f). d. Oft beneid ich Alberten often envy I Albert.acc ‘I often envy Albert’ (Goethe 1999 [1774]: 110) e. Der Knabe kam mit der Pistole zu Werthern the boy came with the pistol to Werther.dat ‘The boy came with the pistol to Werther’ (Goethe 1999 [1774]: 266) f. Die Erscheinung von Werthers Knaben versetzte sie in die the appearance of Werther.poss boy moved her in the gröste Verlegenheit greatest embarrassment ‘The appearance of Werther’s boy put her in the greatest embarrassment’ (Goethe 1999 [1774]: 264)

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As shown by a letter written by Wilhelm von Humboldt, the -ns ending—rather than -s—was also possible on masculine names (19). (19) Für Göthens Brief meinen herzlichsten Dank. for Goethe.poss letter my warmest thanks ‘For Goethe’s letter, my warmest thanks’ (letter from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Friedrich Schiller, 2.8.1796 [Schiller 1972: 291]) Over a century later, in Fontane’s 1888 novel Irrungen, Wirrungen, the -ns ending is encountered on the forename of the female main character Lene when it occurs postnominally (20a), prenominally (20b) or is the complement of a genitive preposition (20c) (20) a. Sind Sie ein Anverwandter Lenens? are you a relative Lene.poss ‘Are you a relative of Lene’s?’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 143) b. und beschworen in Bothos Seele mit den alten Zeiten auch and invoked in Botho.poss soul with the old times also Lenens Bild herauf Lene.poss picture up ‘and invoked with the old times, also Lene’s picture, in Botho’s soul’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 119) c. als er Lenens ansichtig wurde when he Lene.gen catch-sight became ‘when he caught sight of Lene’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 107) Prenominally, the modern -s ending is also used (20d) d. und noch mehr, als Lenes Zeigefinger blutete and still more when Lene.poss index-finger bled ‘and even more as Lene’s index finger started to bleed’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 22) The accusative and dative -n is also used (20e,f), albeit not consistently throughout the novel (20g). e. So hab ich Lenen auch immer gefunden thus have I Lene.acc also always found ‘I too have always found Lene to be like that’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 146)

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f. Und dabei gab er Lenen eine Tüte and at-the-same-time gave he Lene.dat a bag ‘And at the same time he gave Lene a bag’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 22) g. Fragen Sie nur Lene, die wird es bestätigen. ask you just Lene.∅ she will it confirm ‘Just ask Lene, she’ll confirm it.’ (Fontane 1994 [1888]: 55) In other works by Fontane, such as Stine (1889–1890) and Effi Briest (1894–1895), only the modern -s appears (21). Only this ending remains in modern German (Section 6.5.2). (21) a. Endlich aber nahm er sich Stines Hand finally however took he refl Stine.poss hand ‘Finally, however, he took Stine’s hand’ (Fontane 1965 [1889–1890]: 146) b. und das wird Effis Ehrgeiz befriedigen and that will Effi.poss ambition satisfy ‘and that will satisfy Effi’s ambition’ (Fontane 1969 [1894–1895]: 40) 6.3.5 The Prepositional Genitive and Its Competitor(s) Twenty-nine prepositions are used with a genitive complement in GerManC, including some not associated with the genitive (marked in bold) (22). (22) anstatt, außer, außerhalb, diesseits, halben, halber, innerhalb, jenseits, kraft, laut, mit, mithilfe, mittels, nächst, ohne, samt, statt, trotz, um … willen, ungeachtet, unter, vermög, voll, voller, während, wegen, zeit, zufolge, zugunsten Prototypical examples are shown in (23). (23) a. Zerschiedene Güterbesizer inn- und ausserhalb Landes haben various estate-owners in- and outside land.gen have uns derohalben aufgemuntert, us on-their-behalf encouraged ‘Various estate owners inside and outside the country have encouraged us on their behalf’ (GerManC [Mannheimer Zeitung, January 1784]) b. Alle diese Unordnungen gehen hier vor, trotz der all these disorders go here before despite the.gen

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strengen Ordres und Kriegszucht, strict orders and war-discipline ‘All these disorders take place here despite the strict orders and military discipline’ (GerManC [Bayreuther Zeitungen, January 1791]) c. wegen des Verlusts/ die sie durch diese neue because-of the.gen loss.gen which they through this new Opera leiden können opera-house suffer could ‘because of the loss which they could suffer through this new opera house’ (GerManC [Augspurgische Ordinari-Post-Zeitung. Druckens und verlegens Sturm und Mettische Wittib und Erben/ den Laden auf der Baarfüsser-Brugg. Welche Montags/ Dienstags/ Mittwochs/ Freytags und Samstags/ zu haben seyn, April 1723]) Examples in which a non-genitive preposition was used with a genitive complement are shown in (24). (24) a. daß die Belägerten ausser der Granaten wenig Schaden that the besieged apart-from the.gen grenades little damage thun können. do could ‘that, apart from the grenades, could do little damage to the besieged’ (GerManC [Außführliche RELATION und Nachricht/ Von glücklichem Entsatz Der Kaiserlichen Residentz-Stadt Wien/ Und wie solche von der Türckischen Belägerung liberiret/ und die Türcken davor weggeschlagen worden. Breßlau/ Bey Gottfried Jonischen/ Buch-Händlern und ZeitungSchreibern zu bekommen, September 1683]) b. mit Gewehr/ Bagage/ schlagender Trommel/ fliegender with guns baggage beating.gen/dat drum flying.gen Fahnen/ vnd brennenden Lunten flags and burning.dat fuses ‘with guns, baggage, beating drums, flying flags, and burning fuses’ (GerManC [Mercurii Relation, Oder Wochentliche Ordinari Zeitungen/ von underschidlichen Orthen, November 1702])

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figure 6.9 The relative occurrence of genitive, dative and accusative complements with genitive prepositions in GerManC

c. auf dem Bollwerck/ nechst der Pforten St. Martin on the bulwark beside the.gen gates St.-Martin ‘on the bulwark, beside the gates of St. Martin’ (GerManC [Augspurgische Ordinari-Post-Zeitung. Druckens und verlegens Sturm- und Mettische Wittib und Erben/ den Laden auf der Baarfüsser-Brugg. Welche Montags/ Dienstags/ Mittwochs/ Freytags und Samstags/ zu haben seyn, May 1723]) Some of the genitive prepositions also occur with dative and accusative complements; there is no evidence of von-construction complements. The extent of occurrence of each is illustrated in Figure 6.9. Only wegen occurs with any great frequency, and the genitive is the dominant case; this contrasts with the situation in E.D. Schiller’s letters (Figure 6.10).

figure 6.10 The relative use of genitive, dative and accusative complements with the preposition wegen in the letters of E.D. Schiller (excluding tokens in which the case was ambiguous)

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figure 6.11 The relative use of genitive, dative and accusative complements—divided according to whether the noun phrase is singular or plural—with the preposition wegen in the letters of E.D. Schiller

E.D. Schiller uses only two genitive prepositions in her letters, namely unerachtet and wegen (as well as one token of auf with a genitive complement). The only one of these to be used to a wide extent is wegen, of which there are 77 tokens in the data (2.30 occurrences per 1,000 words). In the letters, the dative is the main case used with the preposition wegen; the genitive and accusative occur to a lesser extent (Figure 6.10). The genitive is in fact even more marginalised than Figure 6.10 suggests. When the examples are broken down into those featuring a singular noun phrase and those featuring a plural noun phrase, and when the three tokens of wegen meiner (n = 2) and wegen seiner (n = 1) are excluded,9 we see that, with wegen, E.D. Schiller never used the genitive with a singular noun phrase, and only rarely with a plural noun phrase (Figure 6.11). Examples of the use of wegen with each of the three cases, as well as one unclear example, are given in (25). (25) wegen + genitive: da Er nicht viel Bewögung machen kan, wegen seiner for he not much movement make can because-of his.gen.plu Schmerzen. pains ‘for he can’t make much movement because of his pains’ (E.D. Schiller, late 9.1793 [Schiller 1991: 389])

9 This is the reason for the different genitive totals in Figures 6.10 and 6.11.

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wegen + dative: Nun erwarde ich antword wegen dem Wein now await I answer because-of the.dat.masc.sg wine ‘Now I await an answer because of the wine’ (E.D. Schiller, 15.12.1800 [Schiller 1975: 391]) wegen + accusative: auch hauptsechlich wegen unseren Keller und Vieh stall also mainly because-of our.acc.masc.sg cellar and cow stall wo wir keinen Denst botten zumuthen kenen where we no servants demand can ‘also mainly because of our cellar and cattle stall, where we cannot demand any servants’ (E.D. Schiller, 15.11.1794 [Schiller 1964: 91]) wegen + unclear: und entschuldigte sich sehr wegen seinen and excused refl much because-of his.acc.masc.sg?dat.plu? langen ausbleibn long be-absent ‘and apologised much because of his long absence’ (E.D. Schiller 30.1.1797 [Schiller 1972: 432]) The distinctness of the prepositional genitive and the adnominal genitive and the fact that the fate of one does not affect the fate of the other (see, e.g., the concluding chapter of Gallmann [1990]) is clear from examples such as those in (26), in which wegen + dative (underlined) appears in close proximity to an adnominal genitive formation (bold) (n = 11); (26c) involves a feminine singular possessor, making it unclear whether or not wegen has assigned the dative or genitive. (26) a. wegen den Rechnungen des Seelichen Vatters because-of the.dat.plu calculations the.gen late.gen father.gen ‘because of your late father’s calculations’ (E.D. Schiller, 28.10.1796 [Schiller 1972: 358]) b. wegen den vielen uhnruhen und ängsten der because-of the.dat.plu many anxieties and fears the.gen Franzhoßen French ‘because of the many anxieties and fears caused by the French’ (E.D. Schiller, 18.7.1800 [Schiller 1975: 295])

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figure 6.12 The relative use of genitive, dative and accusative complements with the preposition wegen in a sample of 19th century personal letters excluding tokens in which the assigned case was ambiguous (data from elspaß [2002: 60])

c. und auch dem Schmerze den Er gefühlt wegn der and also the.dat pain.dat that you felt because-of the.gen lieben Seelichen Nahne Verlust dear.gen late Nahne loss ‘and also to the pain you felt because of the loss of dear, late Nahne’ (E.D. Schiller, 22(12?).4.1796 [Schiller 1972: 181]) Examples of the use of genitive complements with non-genitive prepositions also occur occasionally in the data; one such example is (27), involving auf, which may govern either the accusative or the dative (in the context in this example, it would have been dative to indicate stativity). (27) menschen und Pferds seind Tag und Nacht auf der straßen, people and horses are day and night on the.gen.plu streets und dieses übel vertheuret alles and this evil makes-more-expensive everything ‘people and horses are on the streets day and night, and this evil makes everything more expensive’ (E.D. Schiller, 16.5.1797 [Schiller 1981: 23]) The situation in E.D. Schiller’s letters of is echoed to some extent in the corpus of 19th century personal letters examined by Elspaß (2002: 60) (Figure 6.12). In that sample, the dative is clearly dominant as the case assigned by wegen; even the accusative (which is stronger than in E.D. Schiller’s letters) outnumbered the genitive; in 19th century everyday writing, a dative (or even accusative) complement was more likely among less educated writers (Elspaß 2005b: 86).

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6.3.6 Other Non-Adnominal Genitive Use The adverbal and adjectival uses of the genitive were rare by the early modern period. While adjectival use remained at a consistently low level from the 17th to the 19th century, the GerManC data show the adverbal genitive to have been in steady decline across that period (Table 6.3). The situation in the GerManC and E.D. Schiller data reflects the present-day situation, with the adverbal and adjectival genitives certainly still present in the language, but used only infrequently and with a small, closed group of verbs or adjectives, respectively. Thirty-nine verbs occur with a genitive complement in the data (28);10 each verb occurred once unless stated otherwise in parentheses. Two verbs—benötigen and sterben—occurred in both corpora. Even allowing for the difference in size between the two corpora, there is a great deal less adverbal genitive use in the egodocuments than in the journalistic texts. (28) GerManC: abscheiden ‘to separate’, anklagen ‘to accuse’, auflegen ‘to put on’, aussetzen ‘to expose to’, befreien ‘to set free’, begehren ‘to desire’, benötigen (2) ‘to need’, beobachten ‘to observe’, berauben ‘to rob’, beschuldigen ‘to accuse’, einrichten ‘to furnish’, einstellen ‘to call off’, entlassen ‘to release’, entsetzen ‘to relieve’, erwähnen (5) ‘to mention’, erwehren ‘to fend off’, geschweigen ‘to keep quiet’, gönnen ‘to allow’, hören ‘to hear’, konsolieren ‘to console’, resolvieren ‘to resolve’, schönen ‘to idealise’, sich bedienen (3) ‘to serve oneself’, sich befürchten ‘to fear’, sich begeben ‘to proceed’, sich bemächtigen (3) ‘to seize’, sich besorgen ‘to get’, sich beurlauben ‘to take leave (of absence)’, sich erinnern ‘to remember’, sich gebrauchen ‘to use’, sterben ‘to die’, traktieren ‘to ply’, verbleichen ‘to fade’, vergessen ‘to forget’, vermögen ‘to be able’, vermuten ‘to suppose’, vernehmen ‘to question’, versichern ‘to assure’, vertragen ‘to bear’ E.D. Schiller: sterben ‘to die’ Examples of the adverbal genitive in use are given in (29), in which the genitive noun phrase is in boldface and the verb in boldface and underlined.

10 The verbs in (28), and the adjectives in (30), are spelled following the modern orthography.

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(29) a. und dahero mehrerer Exemplare benöthigt seyn and therefore several.gen.plu examples required are ‘and therefore several examples are required’ (GerManC [ JntelligenzBlatt zur Deutschen Zeitung, 1789]) b. widrigenfalls sie ihrer Aempter entsetzet otherwise they their.gen.plu posts relieved ‘otherwise they [will be] relieved of their posts’ (GerManC [CONTINUATIO XXVI. Der Zehen-Jährigen Historischen RELATION, 1687]) c. daß Wir in demselben Augenblick des Königlichen Abdrucks that we in the-same moment the.gen royal.gen imprint.gen aufs kräftigste hinwieder consoliret worden. on-the strongest on-the-other-hand consoled became ‘that we at the same time were, on the other hand, consoled most strongly of the royal imprint’ (GerManC [Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen, August 1740]) d. daß er und sein Vieh bei nahe hungers sterben mußte that he and his cattle almost hunger.gen die had-to ‘that he and his cattle almost had to die of hunger’ (E.D. Schiller, 3.12.1799 [Schiller 1975: 188]) The occurrence of genitive complements of adjectives is rarer still. Only nine types—each occurring once—were encountered in the data; these are listed in (30). Examples are given in (31). (30) GerManC: bewusst ‘aware’, erwartend ‘expectant’, gewärtig ‘expectant’, schuldig ‘guilty’, ungehindert ‘unhindered’, untergestoßen ‘suppressed’, verlustig ‘losing’ E.D. Schiller: gering ‘humble, lowly’, voller ‘full’ (31) a. der sich […] der Fähigkeiten seiner Zuhörer who refl […] the.gen.plu capabilities his.gen.plu listeners immer lebhaft bewußt bleibt always vividly aware remains ‘who always remains vividly aware of […] the capabilities of his listeners’ (GerManC [Erlangische gelehrte Zeitung, January 1790])

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b. auch war man aldahr deß nach der Türckischen Pforten also was one there the.gen to the Turkish gates gesandten Pohlnischen Envoyé wieder gewärtig sent Polish envoy again expectant ‘also, the people there were expecting [the arrival of] the Polish envoy who had been sent to the Turksih gates’ (GerManC [Ordentliche Wochentliche Post-Zeitungen, January 1671]) c. und verfolgte den Feind/ ungehindert deß mit Stücken/ and pursued the enemy unhindered the.gen with items Musqueten und Röhren auß der Stadt herauß gebenden muskets and tubes from the town outwards giving Feuers/ biß in die Contrescarpe an das Stadt-Thor fire.gen until in the.acc counter-scarp on the.acc town-gate ‘and pursued the enemy, unhindered by the fire eminating from the town with items, muskets and tubes, as far as the counter-scarp (that leads) onto the town-gate’ (GerManC [Wochentliche Newe Zeitung, October 1689]) d. wirklich ist alles hir voller Käusserlicher really is everything here full imperial.gen.plu ‘really, everything here is full of imperial (troops, people)’ (E.D. Schiller, 16.5.1797 [Schiller 1981: 23])

6.4

The Genitive Case in Modern German11

6.4.1 Introduction The distribution of the genitive case in modern German shows a clear split between the dialects and the standard language. Within standard German, its use—relative to that of synonymous alternative constructions—is strongly dependent on register and medium and, while statements claiming it to be barely used in—or absent from—colloquial German (Wolff 1954: 185–186; Hentschel & Weydt 2003: 171) or that it is frequent only in formal language (Ebner 1980: 220; Barbour & Stevenson 1990: 161) do hint at the trends visible in the use of the genitive, they are too strong.12 The data studied here show the

11 This section builds upon Scott (2011b) and draws from a broader selection of data. 12 Ebner (1980) refers only to Austrian German.

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genitive to be used productively and regularly, and often more frequently than its synonymous competitors, even in informal language. The aim of this section is to portray, on the basis of quantified contemporary usage data from a variety of registers and media, the characteristics of the modern German genitive and the division of labour between the genitive and its competitors. Register- and medium-based variation is taken into account. By way of comparison with the standard German data studied here, and to provide a control against which the influence of standardisation on the survival of the genitive can be measured, the genitive’s situation in the dialects is described in 6.4.2. In 6.4.3 the structural characteristics of the modern standard German genitive are set out; in 6.4.4 to 6.4.10 its distribution relative to its competitors is investigated. The focus throughout is on the adnominal and prepositional use of the genitive; remnants of its other roles in the modern language are considered in 6.4.11, and conclusions are drawn in 6.4.12. 6.4.2 The Genitive in the German Dialects The effects of deflection have been much more wide-reaching in the dialects than in the standard language, and are manifested differently in the various dialects. In many dialects, two cases—e.g. the nominative and accusative, or the accusative and the dative—have merged, while some have wholly lost their dative (Koß 1983: 1245; Schönfeld 1990: 110; Schirmunski 2010: 495). A nearuniversal characteristic of the dialects is the lack of a genitive case (Behaghel 1928: 47), it having been supeseded by the von-construction, which had emerged by the 16th century (Schirmunski 2010: 497), the periphrastic possessive construction (Schirmunski 2010: 496–498); possessive -s is attested in some Low and Swiss German dialects (Keller 1961: 317; Durrell 1990: 75; Burri & Imstepf 2002: 25; Schirmunski 2010: 500). In Pfälzisch, several fixed expressions involving the otherwise absent concordial genitive remain (Post 1990: 117). In productive use (i.e. away from fossilised expressions), the genitive remains in some southern dialects and linguistic islands, where it occurs with human possessors (32a) (e.g. Brandstetter 1904, passim; Koß 1983: 1243; Russ 1990a: 385, 2002: 88; Schirmunski 2010: 500). Until the 20th century, the genitive marked possession in the dialect of the now extinct linguistic island Gottschee (Kǒcevska) in Slovenia (Behaghel 1923: 479) which existed from the 13th century until the dispersal of its speakers in the early- to mid-1940s (Lipold 1984: 26, 30);13 it also

13 The speakers were mostly dispersed in 1942 as a consequence of National Socialist Umsiedlungspolitik and the handing-over of Gottschee from Germany to Italy; the few remaining German-speaking inhabitants fled in 1945.

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The relative proportions of the individual genitive roles arranged by medium and register in the modern German data

Medium & register Adnominal Prepositional Adverbal Adjectival written formal informal

spoken formal informal

Total genitive tokens

13,566 94.7 % 2,608 90.6 %

710 5.0 % 252 8.8 %

30 0.2 % 13 1.5 %

14 0.1 % 5 0.2 %

14,320

1,050 94.3 % 596 88.3 %

60 5.4 % 77 11.4 %

0 – 1 0.1 %

3 0.3 % 1 0.1 %

1,113

2,878

675

occurred in some Silesian dialects (Behaghel 1923: 479) and in Rima, North Italy (Koß 1983: 1243). The genitives of some Swiss dialects now feature the use of masculine/neuter determiners with feminine nouns (32b) (Brandstetter 1904: 56; Schirmunski 2010: 500), resembling a development also found in early modern Dutch (particularly during the 16th/17th century) and reported in Chapter 5; in Westfalian dialects the variants der stades ‘the.gen.fem.sg town.gen.masc/neut.sg’ and des stads ‘the.gen.masc/neut.sg town.gen.masc/neut.sg’ are both attested genitive forms of the feminine noun stad ‘town’ (Peters 2003: 2643).14 (32) a. ds Chenns Chappi the.gen child.gen little cap ‘the child’s little cap’ (Bosco Gurin, Russ 2002: 88) b. ’s Mueters Händsche the.gen.masc/neut.sg mother.gen.masc/neut.sg glove ‘mother’s glove’ (Luzern, Brandstetter 1904: 56)

14 Uncertainty regarding gender was already present in Middle High German texts as a reflex of spoken language (Grosse 2000: 1395).

252 table 6.8

chapter 6 The occurrence in tokens—and, in boldface, tokens per 1,000 words—of the various roles of the genitive in the three corpora

Adnominal genitive

Prepositional genitive

Adjectival genitive

Adverbal genitive

Spiegel

13672 18.2

705 0.9

14 0.01

16 0.02

Dortmund

2686 4.9

250 0.5

5 0.009

13 0.02

Berlin

334 1.2

50 0.2

1 0.004

0 0

Corpus

6.4.3 The Genitive in Non-Dialectal German: General Characteristics The genitive continues to perform four broadly distinguishable roles in modern non-dialectal German; its status as an adnominal—and, to a lesser extent, prepositional—case is clear in the corpora, in which adverbal and adjectival use is vanishingly rare (Tables 6.7 and 6.8). The relative proportions of total genitive use accounted for by the individual roles is broadly similar regardless of medium or register (Table 6.7), although, at least as far as the adnominal and prepositional roles are concerned, the two formal media pattern together, as do the two informal media. The adnominal genitive is strongly dominant, with prepositional use a distant second; adverbal and adjectival use make up negligible proportions. One apparent anomaly in Table 6.7, the larger proportion of prepositional genitive tokens in informal language (i.e. the register in which the prepositional genitive would be expected to be at its scarcest), is the result of the relative weakness of the adnominal genitives (as part of an overall relative rarity of adnominal possessive constructions) in that register. Register-based characteristics from the early modern period continue in the present-day language; for instance, the adnominal genitive occurs 18.2 times per 1,000 words in the Spiegel corpus, which is exactly the same as in the first half of the 18th century (but down on the second half of the 18th century), while in the informal written Dortmund corpus, it occurs 4.9 times per 1,000 words, which is only slightly more frequent than in the similarly informal letters of E.D. Schiller (Table 6.8; compare Table 6.3). While the relative proportions accounted for by the four roles of the genitive are much the same regardless of register or medium, the adnominal genitive, at

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table 6.9a The occurrence of the adnominal genitive and its competitors—in tokens and, in bold type, as occurrences per 1,000 words in the corpus—in three corpora of modern German

Corpus

vonPeriphrastic Genitive construction Possessive -s possessive

Total

Spiegel

13,566 19.4

2,901 4.1

1,851 2.6

0

18,318 26.2

Dortmund

2,608 4.7

605 1.1

117 0.2

4 0.01

3,334 6.0

334 1.2

188 0.7

27 0.1

0

549 1.9

Berlin

least, is far rarer in informal language—particularly informal speech—than in formal language. While this is in accordance with statements found throughout the literature (see, e.g., Section 6.4.1) and, as such, is not a particularly novel finding, the figures presented in Table 6.8 cannot be taken at face value when considering the register-based distribution of the genitive case. Taking into account the total occurrences of the adnominal and prepositional genitives and their competing constructions—i.e. every situation in which the genitive could potentially have occurred—we find that the genitive and its competitors are all much rarer in informal language (Tables 6.9a and 6.9b). That is to say, the rarity of the genitive in informal language is not simply due to genitiveavoidance in informal language, but is due to an overall rarity of contexts in which it could have been used; we do not, for instance, find inflated figures for the von-construction or for dative complements with genitive prepositions in informal language. This is an important point to bear in mind when assessing the relative strength of the genitive in different registers. The final matter considered in this sub-section is s-omission, found in the language at least since Early New High German (Sections 6.2.3 and 6.3.1). In the modern standard norm, s-omission is only permitted (often as an option alongside the use of -(e)s) with certain nouns, such as proper names, certain nominalisations (conversions) of phrases and non-inflecting words, some abbreviations and some established “pair forms” (e.g. die Dichter des Sturm und Drangs ‘the poets the.gen storm.∅ and stress.gen’) (Duden 2005: 205–210; Eisenberg 2008: 53). With some proper names, such as months and planets, s-omission

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table 6.9b The occurrence of the prepositional genitive and its competitors—in tokens and, in bold type, as occurrences per 1,000 words in the corpus—in three corpora of modern German

Corpus

Genitive

Dative

Ambiguous gen./dat.

vonconstruction

Total

Spiegel

710 1.0

320 0.5

1037 1.5

70 0.1

2,137 3.1

Dortmund

252 0.5

70 0.1

319 0.6

37 0.1

678 1.2

Berlin

50 0.2

22 0.1

91 0.3

14 0.1

177 0.6

is optional regardless of register; for example, des Januar ‘the.gen January.∅’ or des Januars ‘the.gen January.gen’ (Duden 1997: 211), and des Saturn ‘the.gen Saturn.∅’ or des Saturns ‘the.gen Saturn.gen’ (Duden 2011a: 1495). (For März ‘March’, the s-present variant is stated to be the less frequent variant, while for the months ending in -er, e.g. September ‘September’, the s-present variant is said to be the more frequent one [Duden 1997: 109, 252, 273, 279, 323]). Otherwise, s-omission is not part of the norm (Duden 2005: 203; Duden 2011b: 1006–1007). Nonetheless, it turns up throughout the modern data, not only in the more informal sources, but even in the norm-accordant Spiegel Online. A possible direction for further research into s-omission concerns geographical variation: in Austrian Standard German, for example, s-omission appears to be more widespread, being the only option with the names of the months, planets, some languages and colours (Zeman 2009: 130); contra Zeman, however, Ebner (1980: 69, 99) lists only the s-present variant as the genitive form of the Austrian names Jänner ‘January’ and Feber ‘February’. A corpus-based investigation could show whether the possibly greater use of s-omission is also found among common nouns, and whether the patterns reflect those found in the data from Germany studied here. The s-omission accounts for a minority of situations in which the -(e)s suffix would have been possible (Figure 6.13) (reflecting Duden [2011b: 1000]); for comparison, the 17th–19th century data are also included. The data show s-omission to be primarily a phenomenon of written language, regardless of formality; the strongest occurrence of s-omission is in informal writing (notice

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figure 6.13 The relative occurrence of s-omission and tokens in which the nominal -(e)s was present

also the relatively high figure for E.D. Schiller’s letters). Although the chat data (which account for the entire corpus of informal writing) might be expected to reflect spoken language (see Section 4.3.5), in this respect chat language diverges from prototypical spoken language, with s-omission far more frequent in the chat data than in the transcribed spoken data. Despite the decline in s-omission in the journalistic GerManC texts from 1650 to 1800, the comparable modern formal written data shows a level of s-omission somewhere between 1650–1700 and 1701–1750 levels. The prevalence of s-omission in writing, and its frequency in the otherwise norm-accordant Spiegel data, fits with the finding of Appel (1941: 34) that s-omission is particularly associated with the careful speech and writing of hightly cultivated (and therefore norm-aware) language users. Norm-accordant s-omission from proper names (33a,b) is most frequent (Figure 6.14). Appel (1941: 20, 60) notes that common nouns used in a way resembling a proper name—e.g. if they have a very specific referent—may be prone to s-omission; one example of this might be the recurring s-less use of Semester (n = 4)—beside five tokens of Semesters—in the university-based chats in the Dortmund corpus. (33) proper name (human): a. die Aufstellung des jungen Robert Huth vom FC the selection the.gen young.gen Robert-Huth.∅ from-the F.C. Chelsea Chelsea ‘the selection of young Robert Huth of Chelsea F.C.’ (Spiegel Online)

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proper name (non-human): b. Derzeit steht eine Zinssenkung angesichts at-the-moment stands a interest-rate-lowering in-view-of des Höhenflugs des Euro nicht zur Debatte. the.gen high-flight the.gen Euro.∅ not to-the debate ‘At the moment, a lowering of interest rates is, in view of the high flying Euro, not up for debate.’ (Spiegel Online) Norm-divergent s-omission from common nouns (33c–f) is less frequent, accounting for a little over a quarter of s-omission (Figure 6.14). common noun (borrowed, Latinate): c. Ob ich wegen des 2. Studium evtl. den whether I because-of the.gen 2nd study.∅ possibly the Antrag nicht genehmigt bekomme? application not approved get ‘Might my application not be approved because it’s my second course of study?’ (Dortmund) common noun (borrowed, English): d. das Nachrichtenmagazin “Time” sah “das goldene Zeitalter des the news-magazine Time saw the golden age the.gen Blog” heraufziehen blog.∅ draw-near ‘the news magazine Time saw “the golden age of the blog” drawing near’ (Spiegel Online) common noun (deverbal stem conversion): e. die Vorgeschichte des Anschlag der al-Qaida in Dschidda the pre-history the.gen attack.∅ the.gen al-Qaeda in Jeddah ‘the pre-history of al-Qaeda’s attack in Jeddah’ (Spiegel Online) common noun (deverbal infinitival conversion): f. Nach Auswertungen des Abstimmungsverhalten bei den according-to evaluations the.gen voting-behaviour.∅ at the vergangenen Abstimmungen previous votes ‘According to evaluations of voting behaviour at previous votes’ (Dortmund)

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figure 6.14 The relative occurrence of s-omission with proper names and common nouns (tokens)

Numerals and abbreviations functioning in context as common nouns also occur (11g,h). numeral: g. Trotz des 25:26 (13:10) gegen Ungarn despite the.gen 25:26 (13:10).∅ against Hungary ‘Despite the (score of) 25:26 (13:10) against Hungary’ (Spiegel Online) abbreviation: h. Ich glaube ide autoren des gg meinten dabei eher einen I believe the authors the.gen gg.∅ meant at-that rather a volksentscheid referendum ‘I think that the authors of the GG [Grundgesetz ‘constitution’] actually meant a referendum’ (Dortmund) A structural variant occurs in the Spiegel data in the form of two tokens in which the expected -es following a final sibilant is replaced by an apostrophe, as in (34). (34) Nach Auffassung des DFB-Kontrollausschuss’ according-to opinion the.gen DFB-controlling-committee.∅ könnte es sein, dass […] could it be that […] ‘In the opinion of the controlling committee of the DFB [Deutscher Fußball-Bund ‘German Football Association’], it could be that […]’ (Spiegel Online)

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figure 6.15 The nature of the s-omitted common nouns (tokens)

figure 6.16 The phonological nature of the right-edge of the native nouns involved in s-omission (tokens) (Categorisation based on shapiro [1941])

figure 6.17 The morphological nature of the native nouns involved in s-omission (tokens)

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A rough breakdown of the s-omitted common nouns into native and borrowed lexemes, as well as acronyms and abbreviations, and numerals, shows that s-omission is most frequent among borrowed nouns (Figure 6.15). The classifications in Figures 6.14 and 6.15 draw to an extent on those made by Appel (1941: 3–4). When categorised phonologically (broadly following Shapiro [1941: 56]), among the native nouns, those ending in -en and -s are most prone to s-omission; a word-final fricative is especially common among the -s-omitted nouns (Figure 6.16). The relative occurrence of each noun type on this categorisation is broadly similar to the findings of Shapiro (1941: 56), suggesting a constancy in s-omission since Early New High German. An alternative classification, on a morphological basis, shows that conversions—primarily from verb stems, but also from verb infinitives and non-inflecting lexemes—dominate in s-omission. 6.4.4 General Characteristics of the Adnominal Genitive The adnominal genitive connects two noun phrases with some relationship to one another (Flämig 1991: 129; Pérennec 1998: 177). Its main role is to denote possessive relationships between two noun phrases (35a); less frequently, it denotes a partitive (35b), qualitative (35c) or explicative (35d) relationship. A minor (but productive) role is the formation of elective genitives (35e), a borrowed Latin structure (Behaghel 1928: 78–79; see also Section 5.5.7) which is a rare categorical use of the genitive in modern German (i.e. the von-construction appears not to be a possible alternative in the data).15 The exact categorisation varies from scholar to scholar; compare, for instance, Ballweg (1998: 154–158), Bondzio (1967, passim) and Helbig (1973: 210–211, 218–219). The proportion of total adnominal genitive use represented by each role is shown in Figure 6.18. (35) a. Das ist nämlich das problem der gesellschaft! that is namely the problem the.gen society ‘That is, you see, society’s problem!’ (Dortmund) b. daß viele meiner verwandten dort gelebt haben that many my.gen relatives there lived have ‘that many of my relatives lived there’ (Berlin)

15 The categorical nature of the German elective genitive mirrors that in Dutch, in which the preserved concordial genitive structure excludes the potential van-construction (Section 5.5.7).

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figure 6.18 The occurrence of each role of the adnominal genitive in the modern German data (tokens)

c. Menschen allen Alters people all.gen age.gen ‘people of every age’ (Spiegel Online) d. es ist für mich keine frage des prestischs it is for me no question the.gen prestige.gen ‘it isn’t a question of prestige for me’ (Berlin) e. NHL ist halt schon “DIE” Liga der Ligen. NHL ist just already the league the.gen leagues ‘NHL just is the league of leagues.’ (Dortmund) Although prenominal constituent order, in which the genitive noun phrase precedes its complement, and postnominal order, in which the genitive noun phrase follows its complement, both occur, postnominal order is now the norm and is strongly dominant (Table 6.10). The slightly higher proportion of prenominal examples in the informal written data results from the deployment of the archaic prenominal order as a humourous device in one of the chats in the Dortmund corpus. Prenominal order is exemplified in (36). (36) a. des moderators stirn hüllt sich in falten the.gen moderator.gen forehead wraps itself in folds ‘the moderator’s forehead is wrapping itself in creases’ (Dortmund) b. der jury wort an der kandidatInnen ohr? the.gen jury word on the.gen candidates ear ‘the word of the jury in the ear of the candidates?’ (Dortmund)

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formal

The occurrence—in tokens and, in boldface, as a proportion of the total adnominal genitives in the respective register—of prenominal and postnominal genitives16

written spoken

informal

written spoken

Prenominal + postnominal

Prenominal

Postnominal

14 0.1% 1 0.1%

13537 99.9 % 1032 99.9 %

13551

18 0.7% 2 0.4%

2502 99.3 % 565 99.6 %

2520

1033

567

c. die Opposition verblasste gegen des Kanzlers Tatkraft the opposition faded against the.gen chancellor.gen energy ‘the opposition faded away in the face of the chancellor’s energy’ (Spiegel Online) Postnominal order is exemplified in (37). (37) a. Würde dich der Job des Nati-Coaches nicht reizen? would you the job the.gen Nati-coach.gen not tempt ‘Would the job of Nati coach not tempt you?’ (Nati = ‘Nationalmannschaft’, i.e. the Swiss national team) (Dortmund) b. Und wie sieht es für die Zukunft Deiner schow aus DANI? and how sees it for the future you.gen show out Dani ‘And how is it looking for the future of your show, Dani?’ (Dortmund) c. also es gab auch sone glorifizierung dieses einen jahres so it gave also so-a glorification this.gen one.gen year.gen ‘so there was also, like, a glorification of this one year’ (Berlin)

16 Tokens only involving a genitive noun phrase (and which are therefore neither prenominal nor postnominal) are not counted here.

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figure 6.19 The relative occurrence of the adnominal genitive and the von-construction in interchangeable contexts in modern German (tokens)17

The data show that the diachronic changes affecting adnominal genitive constituent order appear to have reached completion in modern German (see Section 6.3.1). Although postnominal order outnumbers prenominal order in the 17th–18th century GerManC data and E.D. Schiller’s 18th–19th century letters (Figure 6.4), prenominal order is significantly more frequent in those sources than in the contemporary data.18 In present-day German, prenominal genitives are stylistically marked and associated with literary or poetic language (Behaghel 1928: 57; Schneider 1959: 376–378; Bhatt 1990: 115; Ballweg 1998: 162; Demske 2001: 210; Kaempfert 2004: 3048, 3058; Duden 2005: 834; Zifonun 2008: 8). Demske (2001: 210) notes that, while animate possessors are marked in prenominal order, inanimate possessors are ungrammatical; this is reflected in the data. The occurrence of prenominal genitives in the data represents code switching with the aim of achieving a particular pragmatic effect: the examples in the formal written Spiegel data have an ironic character, while those in the Dortmund corpus are all either lexicalised expressions formed during earlier periods or are used to achieve a humorous effect which could not have been achieved with a postnominal genitive.19

17 The preposition von is polysemous and may also denote direction and agency; thus, while von can virtually always replace the adnominal genitive, the reverse is not the case (see, e.g., Rausch 1897: 22). Only tokens of von which could have been rendered by a genitive are counted here. 18 A chi-squared test with Yates’ correction showed the difference between the GerManC and Spiegel data (i.e. between two corpora of comparable data from the same register) to be extremely statistically significant (P = ⟨0.0001). 19 The examples in (36a) and (36b) appear in a chat-based grammar quiz in which the utterances are characterised by linguistic playfulness and the use of archaic or archaising forms.

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With various restrictions affecting each construction, the adnominal genitive competes with the von-construction, the possessive -s and the periphrastic possessive. Each instance of competition is now considered in turn. 6.4.5 The Adnominal Genitive vs. the von-Construction The von-construction is potentially a strong competitor of the adnominal genitive when a common noun is involved; this section covers the division of labour between the two constructions with such possessors. Any of the examples in (36) and (37) above could have been rendered with the von-construction rather than the genitive. (Note that the von-construction always has postnominal order.) The genitive could have been used instead of von in either of the examples in (38). On the restrictions that would force the use of von in place of the genitive, see the discussion of the Genitivregel in Chapter 3. (38) a. Meiner Meinung nach ist Bluewin einer von den teuersten my.dat opinion after is Bluewin one of the dearest Providern in der CH providers in the CH ‘In my opinion, Bluewin is one of the most expensive (internet) providers in Switzerland’ (Dortmund) b. Kreuzberg war das Zentrum von dem Ganzen und die taz das Kreuzberg was the centre of the whole and the taz the Zentralorgan. central-organ ‘Kreuzberg was the centre of it all, and the taz (= Tageszeitung) was the central organ.’ (Spiegel Online) In interchangeable contexts, i.e. those in which either the genitive or the vonconstruction could have been acceptably used, the von-construction is noticeably less frequent than the adnominal genitive, regardless of formality or medium (Figure 6.19). In line with expectations, the von-construction is weakest is formal language use, where it occurs in approximately 10 % of the situations in which it could have occurred; this indicates a conventionalisation of von-avoidance in formal language use. The use of the von-construction is strongest—as stated throughout the literature (e.g. Lockwood 1968: 20; Barbour & Stevenson 1990: 161; Durrell 2002: 39; Ronneberger-Sibold 2010: 101)—in the informal data and, in particular, in informal speech. As far as spoken language is concerned, the findings echo Brandt’s (2000: 2165) observation that, in the broadcast media, the von-construction tends to occur in colloquial dialogues,

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and the genitive in news programmes. Besides the frequency of the adnominal genitive in informal speech, another surprise from the data shown in Figure 6.19 is that the use of the von-construction is noticeably weaker in the informal written data which might have been expected to resemble informal spoken language use more closely (see, e.g., Chapter 4). 6.4.6 The Adnominal Genitive vs. the Periphrastic Possessive The periphrastic possessive is generally restricted to animate possessors (although inanimate possessors may be acceptable; see Zifonun 2003: 102). The construction appears throughout the dialects (see Russ 1990b) and is associated with spoken colloquial language (Zifonun 2003: 97). As such, the absence of the periphrastic possessive from the Spiegel corpus is unsurprising. However, it was not found at all in the Berlin corpus, nor even in the transcribed telephone conversations of Brons-Albert (1984). In fact, only seven tokens of the periphrastic possessive occurred in the sources studied; there were four tokens—always with a proper name possessor—in the Dortmund corpus (e.g. the examples in (39a,b)),20 and three in the transcribed conversations in Sperlbaum (1975). (39) a. Happy sein Gefährt braucht nur 4,5 Liter auf 100— also Happy his vehicle needs only 4.5 litres per 100 so egal :-) not-important ‘Happy’s vehicle only needs 4.5 litres per 100, so who cares :-)’ (Dortmund) b. Tetschlaff hat heute nacht von stoeps ihrem neuen Tetschlaff has today night of stoeps her.dat.neut.sg new bild bei CU geträumt picture at CU dreamed ‘Last night, Tetschlaff dreamed about Stoeps’s new picture on CU’ (Dortmund) Only one of the Sperlbaum tokens (39c) was a canonical example with a dative possessor; the other two (39d,e) involve a non-dative possessor.

20 Happy and Stoeps (the final -s on Stoeps is part of the name) are nicknames of two chat participants. The dative marking on ihrem in (39b) relates to the preceding preposition von.

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c. die Mutter ist nicht zu Haus, dem andern sein Vater und the mother is not to house the.dat other.gen his father and sein Mutter war auch nicht zu Haus. his mother was also not to house ‘the mother was not at home, the other person’s mother and his father were not at home either’ (Sperlbaum, 19 III/88) d. dann sind wir auf’s Land gekommen, wo meine then are we onto-the land came where my.nom/acc Mutter ihre Eltern wohnten. mother her parents lived ‘then we went to the countryside, where my mother’s parents lived’ (Sperlbaum, 6 I/3074) e. Dann bekamen wir eine Wohnung bei meine Mutter then got we a flat at my.nom/acc mother ihrem Bruder— in Bernburg an der Saale. her.dat brother in Bernburg-on-the-Saale ‘Then we got a flat at my mother’s brother’s (place) in Bernburg on the Saale.’ (Sperlbaum, 6 I/3074)21 6.4.7 The Prepositional Genitive A number of prepositions assign a genitive complement (Durrell 2002: 458– 464). Those that appeared exclusively with the genitive in the data are listed in (40) and not studied further here; those genitive prepositions which also appeared with a competitor—the dative or the von-construction—are listed in (41). The prepositions in (42) prototypically take a non-genitive complement, but are attested in the data with a genitive complement (as well as their expected non-genitive complement). Di Meola explains the reasons for the transition of a preposition from one case to another by the principle of maximal differentiation from the original form from which the preposition developed (Di Meola 2002: 104). The prepositions in (41) and (42) form the basis of the analysis that follows; not every preposition occurred in every corpus studied.22 21 The dative inflection of ihrem Bruder may be caused by the preceding preposition bei. 22 In the tables in this section, no direct comparisons can be made between the corpora in view of their differing sizes (i.e. statements of the type “wegen + genitive has more tokens in the Spiegel than in Dortmund”); rather, the tables show the relative occurrence of the two competitors in each corpus. These relative occurrences are comparable across the three corpora (i.e. statements of the type “wegen + genitive dominates in the Spiegel, but not in Berlin”).

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(40) abseits ‘away from’, betreffs ‘with regard to’, diesseits ‘this side of’, entlang ‘along’, exklusive ‘excluding’, hinsichtlich ‘with regard to’, infolge ‘as a result of’, inmitten ‘in the middle of’, oberhalb ‘above’, seitens ‘on the part of’, um … willen ‘for … sake’, vonseiten ‘on the part of’, vorbehaltlich ‘subject to’, zeit ‘during’, zulasten ‘at the expense of’. (41) abzüglich ‘less’, angesichts ‘in view of’, anhand ‘with the aid of’, anlässlich ‘on the occasion of’, anstelle ‘instead of’, aufgrund ‘on the strength of, because of’, außer ‘apart from’, außerhalb ‘outside’, bezüglich ‘with regard to’, binnen ‘inside’, dank ‘thanks to’, einschließlich ‘including’, fernab ‘far away’, inklusive ‘including’, innerhalb ‘inside’, jenseits ‘on the other side of’, kraft ‘in virtue of’, mithilfe ‘with the help of’, mittels ‘by means of’, nördlich ‘to the north of’, ob ‘on account of’, rechts ‘to the right of’, statt ‘instead of’, südlich ‘to the south of’, südwestlich ‘to the south-west of’, trotz ‘despite’, ungeachtet ‘notwithstanding’, unterhalb ‘below’, unweit ‘not far from’, während ‘during’, wegen ‘because of’, zugunsten ‘in favour of’, zufolge ‘according to’, zwecks ‘for the purpose of’ (42) dative: ab ‘from’, bei ‘at’, entgegen ‘towards’, laut ‘according to’, gegenüber ‘opposite’, nach ‘after, to’, nahe ‘near’, samt ‘together with’ accusative: gegen ‘against’ The use of the prepositional genitive in accordance with the norm is exemplified in (43). (43) a. da is doch sehr viel unvaständnis gewesen trotz there is yet very much incomprehension been despite der riesjen Kampanjen ja in den medien the.gen huge campaigns yes in the media ‘there has been a great lack of understanding despite the huge campaigns in the media’ (Berlin) b. hab ich mich eh außerhalb des visumsbereich bewegt und have I me eh outside the.gen visa-area moved and bin nach dresden gefahrn am to Dresden went ‘I went outside the visa-area and went to Dresden’ (Berlin)23 23 Note the s-omission in this example.

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c. Geht Dir das Leben inmitten sogenannter “Promis” nicht goes you the life surrounded-by so-called.gen celebrities not oft auf die Nerven. often on the nerves ‘Doesn’t life surrounded by so-called “celebrities” often get on your nerves?’ (Dortmund) 6.4.8 The Prepositional Genitive vs. the Dative The dative case is the prepositional genitive’s main competitor. This competition was already underway by the 17th and 18th centuries (Section 6.3.5). Only examples in which the genitive and dative are distinctive—namely those involving masculine and neuter singular nouns, and plural nouns of all genders—are considered here (see, e.g., Di Meola 2002: 111). The examples are investigated according to their structure: A. preposition + inflected word(s) [e.g. determiner, adjective] + noun B. preposition (+ uninflected word [e.g. numeral]) + noun In structure A, genitive case can be marked not only on the noun (in the case of masculine and neuter singulars), but also on any accompanying determiner and adjective(s); in structure B, genitive case can only be marked on the (masculine or neuter singular) noun. The aim now is to show whether the use of the genitive is affected by the number of opportunities to mark it within the noun phrase. 6.4.8.1

Structure A: Preposition + Inflected Word(s) [e.g. Determiner, Adjective] + Noun The presence of a determiner or adjective in this structure permits the use of the genitive, in accordance with the Genitivregel (Chapter 3). As expected, the tendency for masculine and neuter singular nouns to occur in the genitive case is strongest in the formal written data (Table 6.11; in Appendix 2). Nonetheless, in informal writing, the genitive is surprisingly robust: only trotz and zufolge appear more frequently (indeed, exclusively) with a dative complement, while both cases occur to an equal extent with wegen. The spoken data are too sparse to reveal more than a general avoidance of the dative and an apparently weak preference for the genitive with während and wegen. The much stronger use of laut with a dative complement in the formal written data reflects that preposition’s strong association with the dative (see Duden 2008: 65). In Table 6.11, as in all the tables in this section, the figure for the dominant variant is marked in boldface. Some examples of genitive prepositions taking a dative complement

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in structure A are shown in (44). Example (44c), from the Spiegel corpus, is a direct quotation of speech; thus, it is not a true attestation of wegen + dative in formal writing. A non-corpus attestation of wegen + dative in careful writing is given in (44d), in which a genitive complement and a dative complement are coordinated. (44) a. während dem spiel ist man ueberzeugt, die richtige during the.dat game is one convinced the right entscheidung getroffen zu haben. decision hit to have ‘during the game you’re convinced you’ve made the right decision’ (Dortmund) b. Statt dem gelben Hund aus der integrierten instead-of the.dat yellow dog from the integrated Windows-Suchfunktion Windows-search-function ‘Instead of the yellow dog from the integrated Windows search function’ (Spiegel Online) c. Dem Bundeskanzler wird wegen seinem Verhältnis the.dat federal-chancellor becomes because-of his.dat relationship zu Putin wirklich Unrecht getan to Putin really wrong done ‘People really do wrong by the chancellor regarding his relationship with Putin’ (Spiegel Online)24 d. Nicht nur wegen der frostigen Temperaturen und dem not only because-of the.gen frosty temperatures and the.dat Schneetreiben in der Hauptstadt […] snow in the capital ‘Not just because of the frosty temperatures and the snow in the capital […]’ (Die Presse, 13 February 2012)

24 This example is a direct quotation of speech (indeed, speech produced by a senior government politician in a formal setting); it is not a true attestation of wegen + dative in formal writing.

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The genitive case also dominates when a plural noun appears in structure A (Table 6.12; in Appendix 2); examples of the dative occurring in this structure appear in (45). The only instances of dative domination are entgegen, laut and zufolge in formal writing, the little used genitive preposition ob in informal writing, and entgegen in informal speech. This reflects the place in the standard norm of entgegen, laut and zufolge with dative complements (although some prescriptivists—such as Heinrichs [1867: 26–27]—give laut as only a genitive preposition), and the probable unfamiliarity of ob. (45) a. wir proben immer während den konzerten we rehearse always during the.dat concert.dat.plu ‘we always rehearse during the concerts’ (Dortmund) b. Bin enttäuscht ob den Leistungen in der am disappointed on-account-of the.dat achievements in the Management Etage bei der Swissair. management floor at the Swissair ‘I’m disappointed on account of the achievements in Swissair’s management floor.’ (Dortmund) c. wegen komischen rechnungen zur gunsten der because-of strange.dat calculations to-the favour the.gen firma ihres sohnes firm your.gen son.gen ‘because of strange calculations in favour of your son’s firm’ (Dortmund)25 6.4.8.2

Structure B: Preposition (+ Uninflected Word [e.g. Numeral]) + Noun In this structure the only opportunity to mark genitive case—on masculine and neuter singular nouns—is on the noun itself. This is exemplified by (46a), in which the genitive -s is present, and (46b), in which it is absent. The nongenitive variant is referred to here as s-less (rather than “dative”; on this, see also Appel [1941: 3]) because it is used frequently with genitive prepositions which, even in formal language in Structure A, rarely or never occur with the dative, while many of the native speakers I consulted during the course of this research do not feel it to be “dative” as such.

25 Note the use of the genitive elsewhere in this example alongside wegen + dative.

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(46) a. Laut US-Bildungsministeriums bekamen im according-to US-education-ministry.gen got in-the Bundesstaat Mississippi 9,8 Prozent der Schüler den federal-state Mississippi 9.8 percent the.gen pupils the Hintern versohlt. backside belted ‘According to the US ministry of education, 9.8 % of pupils in the state of Mississippi had their backside belted.’ (Spiegel Online) b. wegen fachrichtungswechsel nach dem 2. semester because-of subject-change after the 2nd semester ‘because of (my) subject change after the 2nd semester’ (Dortmund) Overall, the non-genitive variant is dominant regardless of medium or register; only in formal writing is there evidence for a preference for the genitive, particularly with außerhalb and wegen (Table 6.13; in Appendix 2). When a plural noun occurs in structure B, the non-genitive variant (unambiguously dative plural) mostly dominates, even in formal writing (Table 6.14; in Appendix 2). In (47a) the genitive occurs; in (47b) a dative complement is used. (47) a. Angesichts Vorfälle hat Verteidigungsminister Peter Struck in-view-of incidents.plu has defence-minister Peter Struck eine Überprüfung der gesamten Bundeswehr angeordnet. a review the.gen entire federal-army ordered ‘In view of (certain) incidents, defence minister Peter Struck has ordered a review of the entire federal army.’ (Spiegel Online) b. Proteste gibt es wegen Berichten über Wahlbetrug protests gives it because-of report.dat.plu over election-fraud ‘There are protests because of reports of electoral fraud’ (Spiegel Online) Structural and register-related factors affect the choice of the genitive or dative. Structurally, the absence of an inflectable lexeme in the noun phrase (structure B) strongly promotes the use of the dative/s-less alternative; one notable exception is wegen which strongly favours the genitive in formal language but the dative/s-less variant in informal language. When the noun phrase contains an inflectable lexeme (structure A) the picture is less clear, although deflection is felt even in the most formal language studied. Overall, the structure A data support the generalisation that, when either a genitive or dative comple-

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ment is possible, the dative is associated with colloquial language (e.g. Flämig 1991: 540); the strongest example is provided by wegen, which is almost exclusively genitive in the Spiegel data, but is used with the dative in over a quarter of its Dortmund and Berlin occurrences. The relevance of register is also noted by Appel (1941: 43), who suggests that an individual may well use wegen with a genitive complement in careful writing or speech, but will use a dative complement in colloquial language. 6.4.9 The Prepositional Genitive vs. the von-Construction The von-construction occurs as a complement of prepositions which retain a synchronically transparent link to the phrases from which they developed (Schanen 1998: 207); the use of a von-complement with those prepositions is thus strongly related to the adnominal use of the von-construction. Orthographically, some of these prepositions appear as a single word and as a phrase (48). (48) a. welche mir eine verlängerung aufgrund von vorbemerktsein which me an extension because-of of pre-reservation des buches verweigerte the.gen book.gen refused ‘which refused me an extension due because of the book’s having been pre-reserved’ (Dortmund) b. und nicht auf Grund von emotionalen Vorurteilen Stellung zu and not because-of of emotional prejudices position to beziehen take ‘and not to take a stand on the basis of emotional prejudices’ (Dortmund) c. die mithilfe von Sonnenlicht und Kohlendioxid Zucker und which with-help of sunlight and carbon-dioxide sugar and Sauerstoff herstellen konnten oxygen manufacture could ‘which could manufacture sugar and oxygen with the help of sunlight and carbon dioxide’ (Spiegel Online)

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d. Mit Hilfe von Mitgliedern einer im Untergrund arbeitenden with help of members a.gen in-the underground working Oppositionsgruppe opposition-group ‘With the help of members of an opposition group working in the underground’ (Spiegel Online) In Table 6.15 (in Appendix 2) the occurrence of von-complements with certain prepositions is compared to the occurrence of the same prepositions with genitive complements (only those prepositions which occurred in the data with a von-complement are included); the figures include all nouns regardless of gender and number. While the genitive is preferred in structure A, structure B supports the use of the von-construction. This pattern holds regardless of register or medium. 6.4.10 “Overuse” of the Prepositional Genitive The final aspect of the use of the prepositional genitive considered here is its “overuse”; that is, the use of genitive complements with prepositions which usually take a complement of another case. The phenomenon is not new, having been attested with the dative preposition zwischen ‘between’ in the 15th century (Reiffenstein 2003: 2925; see also Section 6.6), and having led to the entrenchment as part of the norm of the genitive case with the originally dative preposition trotz ‘despite’ (which had grammaticalised from the noun Trotz ‘defiance’ by the 17th century) since the mid-18th century (Paul 1992: 907). Despite the pervasiveness of the phenomenon in the formal written (including journalistic) data studied by Di Meola (1999, 2002, 2004), or its association with informal writing and speech (Di Meola 2002: 121), no corresponding frequency of genitive overuse was found in any of the corpora studied here although some evidence of the development did turn up in the data. For example, the dative preposition entgegen ‘against’, with a plural complement, almost as frequently governed the genitive as the dative (Table 6.12). In view of the rarity of the phenomenon in the data, no quantitative data are provided; some examples, in which a dative complement is expected, are given in (49). (49) a. dass eine Fächerkombination […] entgegen der that a subject-combination against the.gen Angaben auf der Homepage doch nicht Zustande information.plu on the homepage after-all not into-being kommt? come

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‘that, contra the information on the homepage, a (particular) combination of subjects isn’t possible?’ (Dortmund) b. und hat keine Vor- oder Nachteile gegenüber des and has no ad- or disadvantages compared-with the.gen Master of Science master of science ‘and doesn’t have any advantages or disadvantages compared with the Master of Science’ (Dortmund) c. ab des nächsten Winter gibts in Germanistik und from the.gen next winter gives-it in German-Studies and Komparatistik einen NC! Comparative-Studies a NC ‘from next winter there’s an NC [numerus clausus] in German Studies and Comparative Studies!’ (Dortmund) The prepositions entgegen and gegenüber are also attested with a genitive complement by Di Meola (2004). The preposition ab, however, which occurs once with a genitive complement in the corpora studied here (49c), is only attested by Di Meola with a dative complement (2004: 173). Given the absence of the genitive -s from the masculine noun Winter, the genitive in (49c) may actually be an error. However, given the distance between the s and m keys on a computer keyboard (the dative dem is expected), and the pervasive s-omission throughout the data, (49c) seems to be an authentic example of the genitive with ab. 6.4.11 Remnants of Other Non-Adnominal Genitive Use In Table 6.7, in which the present-day use of the four roles of the genitive case was quantified, it was clear that the adverbal and adjectival use of the genitive is a rarity in the modern language. This continues the situation observed in the early modern language (Section 6.3.6) and is evidence of the role of standardisation in preserving the assignment of the genitive case by a small number of verbs and adjectives even as the adverbal and adjectival genitive died out as productive constructions. In the entire modern German dataset there were 44 tokens of the adverbal genitive. These were found almost exclusively in written language (both formal and informal) and represent the use of a limited inventory of verbs, there being 16 types in all (50); each type occurred once, except where indicated otherwise.

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(50) anklagen ‘to accuse’, bedürfen ‘to require’ (8 tokens), berauben ‘to rob’ (3 tokens), bezichten ‘to accuse’, brauchen ‘to require’, entheben ‘to relieve’, gedenken ‘to remember’ (4 tokens), harren ‘to await’ (3 tokens), leiden ‘to suffer’, sich annehmen ‘to look after’ (5 tokens), sich entledigen ‘to rid oneself of’ (5 tokens), sich erfreuen ‘to take pleasure in’, überführen ‘to convict’, verdächtigen ‘to suspect’ (3 tokens), verweisen ‘to expel’ (4 tokens), vorwerfen ‘to reproach’ (2 tokens) Most of the verbs involved are either prefixed or reflexive (in some cases, both) (see also Ágel 2000: 1871). In terms of raw numbers (types and tokens), there are noticeably fewer examples of the adverbal genitive in the modern data than in the early modern data (despite the greater size of the corpus of modern data); the verbs marked in boldface also occurred with genitive objects in the early modern data. The statement by Marillier (1998: 53; see also Marschall 1998: 37) that the adverbal genitive is “im Absterben begriffen” (‘in the process of dying out’) is supported, although in view of the entrenchment of certain verbs in the written norm as taking a genitive object, one might wish to state instead that the adverbal genitive’s death has been postponed (for the time being, at least). Wegener (1995: 121) notes that the adverbal genitive is not part of natural language acquisition, whether L1 or L2. Examples are given in (51); the verb is underlined and the genitive phrase is in boldface. (51) a. In vielen Schulen gedachten Schüler und Lehrer der in many schools remembered pupils and teachers the.gen Opfer. victims ‘In many schools, pupils and teachers remembered the victims.’ (Spiegel Online) b. Ich harre schon der Dinge, die da kommen. I await already the.gen things which there come ‘I’m already awaiting the things which are coming.’ (Brons-Albert, Text 21 p. 109) c. Er macht die Sitzungen auf Deutsch. Und nimmt sich he makes the sittings on German and looks-after refl hernach der ausländischen Spieler separat an after-that the.gen foreign.gen players separately particle ‘He holds the meetings in German. And looks after the foreign players separately afterwards.’ (Dortmund)

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The adjectival genitive is rarer still, with twenty-three tokens (of 11 types) occurring in the modern data, again, predominantly in the written language. The genitive-assigning adjectives—each of which occurred once, except where otherwise indicated—are listed in (52) (the adjectives in boldface also appeared in the early modern data) (52) bewusst ‘aware’ (4 tokens), kundig ‘knowledgable’, müde ‘tired’, östlich ‘east’ (2 tokens), prozentual ‘percentage’, schuldig ‘guilty’ (5 tokens), südlich ‘south’ (4 tokens), unwürdig ‘unworthy’ (2 tokens), verdächtig ‘suspicious’, westlich ‘west’, würdig ‘worthy’ Adjectival genitive use, exemplified in (53) (with the adjectives underlined and the genitive phrases in boldface), is stylistically marked, creating an affected impression; Thierhoff (1950: 29), for instance, notes that müde ‘tired’ + genitive is characteristic of poetic language. (53) a. wenn man des Alphabets kundig ist if one the.gen alphabet.gen knowledgable is (Dortmund) b. Kutschma sei wegen der andauernden Kutschma is.subjunctive because-of the.gen continual Massenproteste seines Amtes müde mass-protests his.gen office.gen tired ‘Kutschma is (said to be) tired of his office because of the continual mass protests.’ (Spiegel Online) c. setz die MwSt hoch, dann zahlt jeder prozentual seines set the VAT high then pays everyone percentage his.gen Lebensstandards mehr living-standard.gen more ‘set the VAT high, then everyone pays more as a percentage of their standard of living’ (Dortmund) 6.4.12 Conclusions This section has added some empirical support to the statements on genitive use found in the literature. As expected, the genitive is at its most frequent— and most secure—in formal written language; that is to say, language that follows most strongly the prescribed norm, of which the genitive is part. The extent of the dominance of the genitive over its competing constructions away

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from formal language (already noted in Scott 2011b) was more surprising. The often reported rarity of the genitive in informal language was shown to be the result not of avoidance of the genitive by language users, but of an overall rarity of situations in which the genitive could have occurred; the connection of two noun phrases in a broadly possessive relationship and the use of genitiveassigning prepositions is simply rare in informal language use. The genitive’s pragmatic valency—“het verband dat er bestaat tussen de vorm van een linguïstisch element en de werking die dit element heeft (kan hebben) op zijn gebruikers” (Mey 1989: 882) [‘the connection that exists between the form of a linguistic element and the effect that this element has (can have) on its users’]—is mentioned by several scholars as relevant to its use. This sub-section considers the relationship between pragmatics and the use of the genitive or one of its competitors. The statements in (54) show the genitive to be pragmatically marked as the variant associated with the most formal language use, with its competing constructions being neutral alternatives used in less formal situations in which language is produced more spontaneously. (54) [s]ome regard the excessive use of the genitive in conversation as an affectation lockwood 1968: 19–20

its [the genitive’s] presence in a sentence can mark that sentence out as formal and standard barbour & stevenson 1990: 161

[i]n adult German, too, genitive is perceived to be stylistically marked as well as archaic weerman & de wit 1999: 1179

Certainly, the genitive has a strong association with formal language. An unexpected finding was that even in the corpora containing less formal, less careful language use, the genitive still tended to dominate its competitors in terms of token counts. However, sheer quantity alone is not critical when assessing the pragmatic valency of the genitive case (and, indeed, that of its competitors) in modern German. Rather, the formality-based variation visible in the data is decisive. The reason for selecting corpora containing different levels of formality in language use was to reveal how speakers’ choices are affected by how aware they are of their language use. The underlying principle here is that the more formal the language is, the more aware the speaker will be of his/her language

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use and consequently of the constructions which he/she uses; in less formal language use, less attention will be paid to the constructions used. The more formal the language use, therefore, the more likely we are to find stylistically marked constructions which may be acquired through language teaching and through prescriptive grammars but which are not necessarily learned during natural acquisition. That is to say, the more planning there is, the more control the speaker has over the constructions used. The concordial genitive, in contrast to possessive -s and the von-construction, for instance, is acquired late and not necessarily as part of natural language learning (i.e. speakers may first learn to use it as part of their formal language learning at school). Thus, the genitive, despite its frequency in the data, is the marked variant; its naturally (and early) learned competitors, despite their relative rarity in the data, are unmarked. The marked status of the genitive and unmarked status of its competitors is reflected in the data. The stylistic variation shows that the genitive is selected more readily the more aware the speaker is of his/her language use (and, arguably, the more care he/she puts into it). The journalistic data represent the apex of this tendency: the data in the Spiegel Online corpus were not only produced by journalists well aware that their writing would have a wide audience, but would also have been subject to proofreading and possible correction by sub-editors. The resultant norm-accordant language use led to the the concordial genitive being strongly favoured over its competitors. In the corpora in which the language users were less aware of their language use, i.e. informal speech and the often hastily typed postings in chat data, the genitive is less readily used, and the competitors were accordingly more likely to occur in the data. The most marked variant of the adnominal genitive—prenominal constituent order—is, as expected, rare and only ever used deliberately and in the knowledge that its use will draw attention and create a particular stylistic or pragmatic effect. Thus, the pragmatic valency of the concordial genitive in modern standard German is such that it is selected more readily the more formal the situation is (and the more attention speakers pay to their language use). Nonetheless, the division of (pragmatic) labour between the genitive and its competitors is a matter of degree: the genitive is used even in the most spontaneous, least careful language use; the use of one or other construction is not categorical.

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Exapted Fragments of the Genitive Case

6.5.1 Introduction In common with other Germanic languages, German features several constructions which have their origin in the morphological genitive, but which have, through exaptation, come to perform a new function. As in the Dutch examples dealt with in Chapter 5, these German constructions all involve non-concordial use of the marker -s; it is this invariant use of the -s that marks these constructions as separate from the morphological genitive. 6.5.2 Possessive -s The German possessive -s construction is less widely studied than its English or Swedish counterparts. It is generally dealt with as a kind of prenominal genitive use (e.g. Clahsen et al. 1994, passim; Ballweg 1998, passim; Duden 2005: 834; Eisenberg 2008: 54; Ronneberger-Sibold 2010: 100), and is sometimes termed the “Saxon” genitive (e.g. Handwerker 1988: 13; Zifonun 2001: 4; Bär 2007: 317; Dürscheid 2007: 71), a term also in lay linguistic currency, where it often refers specifically to the use of an apostrophe before the final s (as observed by Hohenhaus [2001: 71]; examples of this include Petersen [2008: 25] and Zimmer [1995: 78]). In Standard German, possessive -s is particularly associated with northern usage (Wegener 1995: 145; Duden 1998: 243; Durrell 2002: 39). It appears in some Low German dialects, such as Brandenburg, Emsland, Mönsterlänsk Platt and Westphalian, but is also found in the Swiss Bernese dialect (Keller 1961: 317; Durrell 1990: 75; Burri & Imstepf 2002: 25; Schirmunski 2010: 500). Inasmuch as it denotes a possessive relationship between two noun phrases, possessive -s is semantically similar to the adnominal concordial genitive; however, in view of its gender- and number-invariance, possessive -s is here treated separately from the adnominal genitive (following Lanouette [1996: 90] and Weerman & de Wit [1999: 1179]). Beyond brief descriptive treatments of German possessive -s when dealing with the genitive, there is—as far as I am aware—no detailed work on the construction and, more particularly, on what can occur in the NPpossessor position. The construction (55) is more restricted than its Dutch counterpart (Section 5.6.3). (55) German possessive -s construction: [[[NPpossessor] s] [NPpossessum]] NPpossessor = a proper name [i.e. a noun phrase with a unique referent (Duden 2005: 149–150)] of any gender (including kinship terms used as names) NPpossessor can include postmodification of the head noun iff. the whole

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noun phrase is established as a unit NPpossessor cannot include an inflectable lexeme (a determiner or an adjective) before the head noun ‘NPpossessor possesses NPpossessum (in a broad sense)’ The sub-group of proper names which can occur in NPpossessor are referred to here as name units: this term makes reference to the pragmatic and structural properties common to all noun phrases which can appear in the NPpossessor slot. Name unit noun phrases name a unique individual or entity (i.e. they are proper names) and are entrenched and established (even if only in the mind of a single speaker or a handful of speakers) as a fixed phrase. Canonically, name units do not include an inflectable lexeme—a determiner or an adjective—to the left of the head noun (although such lexemes may appear in postmodification to the right of the head noun within the unit); this corresponds to the general characteristic of the majority of proper names as not including a determiner (Thielen 1995: 4). Name units arise through the chunking of a particular word or group of words (regardless of the morphosyntactic properties of the group) and the association, through speakers’ experience, of that chunk as the noun phrase that names a particular referent. Any chunk can potentially become entrenched as the proper name of a particular referent once a speaker has experienced a particular noun phrase as naming (not describing) that referent. However, not all proper names are compatible with the once-only possessive -s construction (and are therefore not name units). Proper name noun phrases in which the head noun is modified by (i.e. preceded by) a determiner or adjective demand inflection on those words; this is a requirement of a morphological case system such as that of modern Standard German. This knowledge is shared by all speakers of modern Standard German and prevents them from treating proper name noun phrases containing a determiner and/or adjective to the left of the head noun as units. Name units of varying complexities occurring in NPpossessor in the data are shown in (56). Examples (56a–c) involve one-word possessors. When NPpossessor consists of more than one word, the unit nature of these noun phrases—their lack of phrase-internal possession marking—becomes clear (56d–f). (56) a. Apples iPod-Werbung Apple.poss iPod-advertising ‘Apple’s iPod advertising’ (Spiegel Online)

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b. Opas Tamagotchi hat die erste Nacht nicht überstanden. granddad.poss tamagotchi has the first night not survived ‘Granddad’s tamagotchi didn’t survive the first night.’ (Berliner Zeitung, 13.06.1997) c. Europas beste Tischtennisspielerin Europe.poss best table-tennis-player.female ‘Europe’s best female table tennis player’ (Steger et al. 1971: 96) d. Thomas Gottschalks Hang zum Überziehen Thomas Gottschalk.poss tendency to-the overrun.inf ‘Thomas Gottschalk’s tendency to overrun’ (Spiegel Online) e. Bayern Münchens Manager Uli Hoeneß Bayern Munich.poss manager Uli Hoeneß ‘Bayern Munich’s manager Uli Hoeneß’ (Spiegel Online corpus) f. Ole von Beusts Sieg Ole von Beust.poss victory ‘Ole von Beust’s victory’ (Spiegel Online) The unit status of NPpossessor becomes even clearer with more complex noun phrases. A personal name preceded by a title is possible (57a), as is a combination of two coordinated possessors (57b), or a phrase established as a title (57c). Notice, for example, that in (57a) the noun Präsident remains uninflected and does not, for instance, receive genitive inflection (Präsidenten ‘president.gen’). (57) a. Präsident George W. Bushs Wiederwahl President George W. Bush.poss re-election ‘President George W. Bush’s re-election’ (Spiegel Online) b. Brad & Jens getrennte Leben Brad & Jen.poss separate lives ‘Brad & Jen’s separate lives’ (Spiegel Online) c. Wir sind Heldens Sängerin […] beim Auftakt Wir sind Helden.poss singer.female […] at-the start der Herbsttour the.gen.fem.sg autumn-tour ‘Wir sind Helden’s singer […] at the start of the autumn tour’ (Attested

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at: http://www.badische-zeitung.de/rock-pop-vorschau/wir-sindhelden-treten-bei-stimmen-auf-37376707.html [last accessed 28.2.13]) The requirement that NPpossessor must be a name unit is even more starkly illustrated when an attempt is made to place a postmodified name in the NPpossessor position. A postmodified name may occur in NPpossessor, provided that the entire combination of name + postmodification is established or treated as a name unit. Thus, a place name including postmodification is acceptable in NPpossessor (58a). Similarly, Zifonun (2001) demonstrated on the basis of informant questioning that an established personal name with the structure forename + postmodification, such as those of many Middle High German literary figures (e.g. Walther von der Vogelweide, literally ‘Walther of the bird meadow’) (58b) is acceptable to most speakers (but not to those who would prefer to place the -s on the forename), whereas a non-established combination of forename + postmodification (58c) is unacceptable to the majority of speakers. Table 6.16 presents the figures from Zifonun (2001: 4) on the acceptability of these two examples. This uncertainty is not new: Sütterlin & Waag (1910: 143–144) note that the rule of attaching the -s to the right-edge of postmodification constituting a name, but to the head noun if the postmodification does not constitute a name, is not strictly adhered to on account of the difficulty in knowing whether the postmodification is a name or not. (58) a. Rothenburg ob der Taubers Kriminalmuseum Rothenburg on the Tauber.poss criminal-museum ‘Rothenburg ob der Tauber’s [lit. Rothenburg on the (river) Tauber] museum of crime’ (Attested at http://www.xn-bchereule-q9a.de/ wbb2/thread.php?postid=102512 [last accessed 28.2.13]) b. ?Walther von der Vogelweides Sprache Walther of the bird-meadow.poss language ‘Walther von der Vogelweide’s language’ (from Zifonun 2001: 4) c. *Anna aus Mannheims Sprache Anna from Mannheim.poss language ‘Anna from Mannheim’s language’ (from Zifonun 2001: 4) The relative acceptability of these three names in NPpossessor is linked to whether or not they are entrenched as units. All speakers of German treat Rothenburg ob der Tauber as a name unit; it is therefore acceptable in NPpossessor. Walther von der Vogelweide, while established as a name by all speakers of German, is

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table 6.16

The relative acceptability—expressed as a percentage of questioned native speakers—of two postmodified names in NPpossessor ( from zifonun 2001: 4)

Walther von der Vogelweides Sprache Anna aus Mannheims Sprache

Fully acceptable

Ok

Fully Dubious unacceptable

51%

21 %

6%

22 %

8%

8%

11 %

81 %

felt to form a violable unit to some speakers as the -s could be attached to the head (Walther) instead; these speakers therefore do not accept the right-edge attachment of -s. The noun phrase Anna aus Mannheim, meanwhile, is not felt to form a name unit by any speaker of German; it is therefore unacceptable in NPpossessor. The requirement that NPpossessor be a name unit is assumed to be the starting point of constructional change affecting possessive -s, dealt with later in this section. With proper name possessors, possessive -s competes with the von-construction, which could acceptably have rendered any of the examples in (56)–(58). The relative use of the two constructions is conventionalised by genre and medium: only in informal speech do the two occur to a similar extent; possessive -s occurs in roughly two-thirds of cases in formal writing, but only roughly one-third in informal writing and formal speech (Figure 6.20). Seen in conjunction with the data on the division of labour between the adnominal genitive and the von-construction, this is further evidence of the avoidance of the vonconstruction in formal writing. Possessive -s exists almost in complementary distribution with the concordial genitive, which only rarely occurs with proper name possessors of the type that may occur with possessive -s. In such instances, the name is preceded by a genitive definite article (59). (59) a. der Fluch des Roy Black the curse the.gen.masc/neut.sg Roy Black.∅ ‘the curse of Roy Black’ (Spiegel Online) b. im Gesicht der Christiansen in-the face the.gen Christiansen ‘in [Sabine] Christiansen’s face.’ (Dortmund)

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figure 6.20 The occurrence of possessive -s and the von-construction in interchangeable contexts with proper name possessors (tokens)

In the absence of a determiner, the concordial genitive is not possible with proper name possessors (60a). In contrast, a formation such as that in (60b), seemingly involving the masculine/neuter genitive -s, is grammatical. This, however, is not the concordial genitive; (60c), with a feminine possessor, shows that these are examples of possessive -s. (60) a. *des Gesicht Christiansen-∅ the face Christiansen.fem.sg.gen *Christiansen-∅ Gesicht Christiansen.fem.sg.gen face ‘[Sabine] Christiansen’s face’ b. der Fluch Roy Blacks the curse Roy Black.poss Roy Blacks Fluch Roy Black.poss curse ‘Roy Black’s curse, the curse of Roy Black’ c. das Gesicht Christiansens the face Christiansen.poss Christiansens Gesicht Christiansen.poss face ‘[Sabine] Christiansen’s face’

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figure 6.21 The relative occurrence of prenominal and postnominal possessive -s in the data

Possessive -s accordingly has both a prenominal and a postnominal variant; the latter is formalised in (55)ʹ. The prenominal variant dominates in writing (outnumbering the postnominal variant by roughly 2.5 to 1 in formal and informal language), but not in speech (Figure 6.21); in formal speech, the two variants occur to an almost equal extent in the data, which may stem from a stronger influence of written language on formal speech than on informal speech. (55)ʹ German possessive -s construction (postnominal): [[NPpossessum] [[NPpossessor] s]] NPpossessor = a proper name of any gender (including kinship terms used as names) NPpossessor can include postmodification of the head noun iff. the whole noun phrase is established as a unit NPpossessor cannot include an inflectable lexeme (a determiner or an adjective) before the head noun ‘NPpossessor possesses NPpossessum (in a broad sense)’ A nascent extension to the type frequency of German possessive -s, involving the occurrence of an NPpossessor consisting of a possessive determiner and a common noun, is formalised in (61) by adding information about the extended type frequency to the formalisation given earlier in (55); examples are shown in (62). (61) German possessive -s construction: [[[NPpossessor] s] [NPpossessum]] NPpossessor = a proper name of any gender (including kinship terms used as names)

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NPpossessor can include postmodification of the head noun iff. the whole noun phrase is established as a unit NPpossessor can include an inflectable lexeme (a determiner or an adjective) before the head noun iff. the construction is used in informal online communication and the whole noun phrase is established as a unit ‘NPpossessor possesses NPpossessum (in a broad sense)’ (62) a. seit paar tagen spinnt mein vaters 3er kommplett since couple days go-crazy my father.poss 3-class completely ‘for a couple of days my father’s 3-class [BMW] has been going completely crazy’ (German possessive -s database) b. Ich war grad erst da, als ich meine Chefins Sohn I was just just there when I my boss.female.poss son mit gebrochenen Armen da abholen sollte. with broken arms there collect should ‘I had only just got there when I had to collect my boss’s son with broken arms.’ (German possessive -s database) c. mein Bruder hat meine Elterns SIM Karte gesperrt indem my brother has my parents.poss SIM card blocked by er den Code 3x falsch eingegeben hat. he the code three-times wrongly entered has ‘My brother has blocked my parents’ SIM-card by entering the code wrongly three times.’ (German possessive -s database) Speculative searches conducted before undertaking formal data collection had showed that only the possessive determiner mein ‘my’ occurred in large numbers; the research here is therefore based only on formations with mein. The common noun always denotes an acquaintance of the language user who produced the example. Of the 28 attested nouns, 19 were kinship terms and 9 were other personal nouns; the kinship nouns generally occurred in far greater numbers than the other personal nouns, with the exception of Freund ‘(boy)friend’ and Freundin ‘(girl)friend’ (Figure 6.22). Based on the nature of their referents, the nouns occurring in NPpossessor are referred to henceforth as acquaintance nouns. Figure 6.22 shows that, among the possessive -s tokens with a complex NPpossessor, there is strong use of certain nouns (notably those for closest family members), with non-kinship terms weakest overall. To test whether this is a quirk of the extended use of possessive -s, or whether it simply reflects the

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figure 6.22 Nouns in complex NPpossessor (tokens)26

figure 6.23 The occurrence of the nouns attested in extended possessive -s as bare nouns in the Dortmund corpus (tokens)

figure 6.24 The occurrence of the nouns attested in extended possessive -s in strings of the form mein(e) + noun on the web (tokens)

26 English translations of the German terms (respectively): mother, brother, father, sister, (girl)friend, (boy)friend, mum, daughter, dad, granddad, uncle, son, grandma, parents, cousin (female), aunt, mum, grandmother, cousin (male), grandfather, colleague (male), dad, colleague (female), boss (male), teacher (male), teacher (female), child, boss (female).

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general use of these nouns outside the construction, the occurrence of the bare nouns was quantified in the Dortmund corpus (which is pragmatically similar to the contexts of the extended possessive -s attestations on the web) (Figure 6.23) and the occurrence of the nouns preceded by the personal pronoun mein/meine was quantified on the web (Figure 6.24).27 Both searches produced curves similar to that for the extended possessive -s data in Figure 6.22 although the relative order of the nouns varies. When the relative proportions of each noun in extended possessive -s (expressed as a percentage of the entire tokens of extended possessive -s in the dataset) was plotted against the corresponding proportions of the bare nouns (Figure 6.25) and the mein(e) + noun strings (Figure 6.26), the results were weakly revealing. Had each noun’s occurrence as a proportion of the total been the same independently and as part of extended possessive -s, the plotted line would have risen at 45° from zero. This pattern is weakly discernible in Figure 6.25, which shows that few nouns occur to an equal extent as a bare noun and within extended possessive -s; one exception is Tante ‘aunt’ (circled in Figure 6.25), which accounted for 2.3% of the extended possessive -s tokens and 2.1% of the same nouns’ bare occurrences in the Dortmund corpus. When the extended possessive -s tokens are plotted against a string that also includes the pronoun mein(e) (i.e. just like the extended possessive -s tokens), the trend line is closer to 45° (Figure 6.26). The noun lying directly on the trend line, making up 9.1% of the extended possessive -s tokens and 7.1 % of the web hits for the mein(e) + noun string is Vater ‘father’; one notable anomaly is Kind ‘child’ (circled with an unbroken line), which accounts for 6.0 % of the set of nouns in the mein(e) + noun string, but only 0.1% of the extended possessive -s tokens, while Chef ‘boss’ (circled with a broken line) is a similar case. Overall, Figures 6.25 and 6.26 (alongside Figure 6.22) suggest that proper names are preferred in NPpossessor of extended possessive -s—reflecting the construction’s prototypical use—although the observed trends are weak. Case inflection relating to the syntactic context of the possessive -s phrase may be attached to the determiner in NPpossessor. There is a great deal of variation in the case morphology occurring on the determiner, which may reflect the novelty and non-established (and non-codified) nature of this construction. Sometimes the inflection relates to the head noun of NPpossessor (63a); sometimes it relates to NPpossessum (63b). In the dataset, case inflection on the determiner relates most frequently either to NPpossessor alone, or to both NPpossessor and NPpossessum, if both would take the same form of the determiner. Examples such as (63b), in contrast, are rare (Table 6.17). 27 Using google.de and searching sites in Germany only.

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figure 6.25 Nouns in extended possessive -s (% of total) (x axis) against those nouns’ occurrence in Dortmund (% of total) (y axis)

figure 6.26 Nouns in extended possessive -s (% of total) (x axis) against those nouns’ occurrence in mein(e) + noun strings (% of total) (y axis)

(63) a. Bei meiner Tochters Computer steht während on my.dat/gen.fem.sg daughter.poss computer stands during der Internet-verbindung immer Router nicht gefunden the internet-connecting always router not found ‘On my daughter’s computer, it always says “Router not found” when connecting to the internet.’ (German possessive -s database) b. ich hab mich bei firstload angemeldet […] aber mit meinen I have refl on Firstload registered […] but with my.dat.plu Bruders daten brother.poss data ‘I have registered with Firstload, but using my brother’s data.’ (German possessive -s database)

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The occurrence of (non-possessive) case marking on the determiner in NPpossessor

Case marking on the determiner

Tokens

Relates to NPpossessor Relates to NPpossessor and NPpossessum Possible but absent Relates to NPpossessum

1170 1155 684 32

Despite its regularity and frequency, extended possessive -s is not wholly accepted by all native speakers. This is reflected both in comments made to the author by native speakers of German and by meta-examples which turned up in the data (64, 65), showing that the use of this construction does not always go unnoticed. In (64), the writer appears to use extended possessive -s as the most natural choice; only afterwards does he or she doubt the grammaticality of the formation. Such self-correction or, at least, critical comment on one’s own language use are characteristic of online communication (Diekmannshenke 2007: 221). In (65), the writer takes a fellow chatter to task for using the construction. The relevant examples are marked in boldface. (64) das is doch nicht die aus meinem bruders klasse oder?? is das grammatikalisch korrekt? … aus meinem bruders klasse … klingt komisch … habs aber grad nicht besser … egal ihr wisst was ich meine … (German possessive -s database) ‘that’s not her from my brother.poss class, is it?? is that grammatically correct? … from my brother.poss class … sounds strange … can’t think of anything better … who cares, you know what I mean …’ (my translation) (65) (as a reaction to an earlier post containing the phrase in mein Chefs Büro ‘in my boss.poss office’) Was genau meinst du mit “in mein Chefs Büro”? Evtl “im Büro meines Chefs”? (German possessive -s database) ‘What exactly do you mean with “in my boss.poss office”? Possibly “in the office my.gen.masc/neut.sg boss.gen.masc/neut.sg”?’ (my translation)

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The emergence of the extended possessive -s construction can be attributed to factors of usage. Exemplar representation of encountered prototypical possessive -s formations (of the kind exemplified in (56)) leads to the establishing of the prototypical possessive -s construction (55) in the mind of the speaker and the knowledge that NPpossessor must be a name; eventually, as the speaker encounters complex exemplars like (57c) and (58a), he or she learns that, structurally, NPpossessor must also be a unit and, having encountered more exemplars where NPpossessor denotes an animate (personal) referent than an inanimate referent, that semantically, NPpossessor most often denotes a person. This information is used as the basis for novel prototypical formations and for novel formations involving a [possessive determiner + acquaintance noun] phrase in NPpossessor. Through repetition, a noun phrase with the structure [possessive determiner + acquaintance noun] can become entrenched as a name for a particular referent. Once a noun phrase such as mein Vater ‘my father’ or meine Mutter ‘my mother’ (or, for that matter, mein Chef ‘my boss’ or meine Lehrerin ‘my teacher.female’) has been used sufficiently often to denote a particular individual, it is treated as a name (or, at least, as an element close in nature to a name) for that individual. Accordingly, by analogy with formations familiar from the prototypical possessive -s construction, such a phrase is then licensed to occur with possessive -s (at least for those speakers for whom the phrase names an individual of their acquaintance). Nonetheless, the objections raised by certain native speakers who have encountered the construction, as in (65), indicate that the construction is not acceptable to everyone. Inasmuch as it involves once-only case marking where case marking would be expected on every lexeme in the noun phrase, the extended possessive -s reflects the s-omission attested with the concordial genitive (Section 6.4.3). The right-edge attachment of -s is clearly sufficient to mark a noun phrase as NPpossessor in the construction. (Even for those speakers who reject this construction, the meaning of the formations is always clear; only the acceptability of the formations is questioned.) Additionally, the use of the same marker for masculine, feminine and plural nouns, even in a language with concordial case marking, appears to be unproblematic (as was also the situation in written early modern Dutch); indeed, it is wholly acceptable in the prototypical possessive -s construction. Its once-only attachment and its invariance make extended possessive -s more economical than its established competitors: only one marker has to be learned, and that marker only has to be attached once. This once-only marking of case—i.e. single encoding—is more efficient, and therefore advantageous to both speaker/writer and hearer/reader, than the concordial genitive that demands agreement markers on every element in the noun phrase (Norde 2001b: 258).

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As a construction frequently and regularly encountered, at least in one particular register, and deployed at least sometimes as a means of achieving economy, avoiding complexity or simply as a last resort when a speaker felt there was “no other way out” (as in example (64), in which a contributor to a forum considers the grammaticality of the construction), extended possessive -s can be considered a CASUAL measure in the sense of Denison et al. (2010: 551); that is to say, it is Consistenly Attested, Semi-Grammatical, Unobtrusive And Least-Worst. This conception of extended possessive -s may be reflected in the pragmatic information stored as part of the construction; namely, that it is a “get out” construction to be used in situations in which economy and the putting across of one’s message—rather than strict adherence to the prescribed norm—are most important, such as informal online communication. The CASUAL status of extended possessive -s might give an indication of the likelihood of its becoming established in German. Although there is anecdotal evidence for the existence of the construction in Low German in the 1970s (Christophersen 1979), it remains unacceptable (or, indeed, unknown) to a great many speakers. Besides its use as an economical measure or as a last resort, the construction may simply be superfluous to language users’ requirements: German already has three other possessive constructions in which a noun phrase may have the structure [possessive determiner + acquaintance noun], namely the concordial genitive, the von-construction and the (colloquial and dialectal) periphrastic possessive construction. Extended possessive -s can only be used when a speaker, treating a [possessive determiner + acquaintance noun] phrase as naming a particular individual, puts that phrase in NPpossessor. The influence of repetition might lead to increased use of the construction, as more speakers encounter the construction and then use it themselves. Nonetheless, it is still restricted to informal online communication. Having considered the reasons for the extension of possessive -s to include noun phrases with the structure [possessive determiner + acquaintance noun] as possible possessors, the nature of this constructional change is now considered. The type frequency of NPpossessor has expanded: whereas prototypical possessive -s is restricted to determiner-less proper names (including kinship nouns used as names), extended possessive -s permits common nouns denoting an acquaintance. The potential structural complexity of NPpossessor has also expanded: a possessive determiner is now possible. As such, the German possessive -s marker is, superficially at least, becoming more clitic-like in its behaviour than it was previously. However, a complex phrase occurring in NPpossessor must still be a name unit. Accordingly, the pool of potential possessor noun phrases in extended possessive -s is only a very slight expansion of the pool of potential possessors in prototypical possessive -s. Only if possessive

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-s could be attached to non-unit noun phrases would there truly be evidence that it is becoming more clitic-like. On the evidence of the data, the extended German possessive -s is no more or less clitic-like than its prototypical variant. Extended possessive -s is available even to speakers to whom the genitive is available (i.e. it does not replace the genitive): in a handful of examples (n = 6) in the data, extended possessive -s (underlined) and the concordial genitive (in boldface) co-occur in a single entry (66). (66) a. wenn ich eine netzwerkaktualisierung durchführe, findet der mein when I a network-refreshing carry-out finds it my vaters W-Lan. Ich gebe die Wpa meines father.poss W-Lan. I give the Wpa my.gen.masc/neut.sg Vaters korrekt ein, aber die PSP sagt […] father.gen.masc/neut.sg correctly in but the PSP says […] ‘When I carry out network-refreshing, it finds my father’s WLAN. I enter my father’s WPA correctly, but the PSP says […]’ (German possessive -s database) b. weil die Mutter einer Freundin (geht in mein because the mother a.gen.fam.sg friend goes in my Bruders Klasse, um die 12 Jahre alt) brother.poss class about the 12 years old ‘because the mother of a friend (in my brother’s class, about 12 years old)’ (German possessive -s database) As Fuß (2011: 38) notes, extended possessive -s fits with an analysis of the -s marker as a “Possessivmarker” (i.e. as possessive -s) rather than a genitive ending. Certainly, the evidence presented here strengthens the position taken here that possessive -s is not simply a prenominal genitive, but is entrenched as a construction in its own right. The constructionalisation of the (prototypical) possessive -s construction has led to further syntactic change (also noted by Fuß 2011: 38); namely, constructional change brought about through usage factors and influenced at least in part by considerations of economy such as the principle of single encoding (Norde 2001b: 258), allowing a wider range of noun phrases to appear in the NPpossessor position. 6.5.3 The Partitive Construction The nominal partitive genitive construction had declined in use throughout the Early New High German period (Tükör 2008; Section 6.2.3) and, in the GerManC data, it occurred in only a handful of examples, including an apparently

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entrenched expression Summe Gelds ‘sum money.gen [i.e. ‘sum of money’]’. The nominal partitive genitive is wholly absent from the modern corpora studied; should its use be forced, the result is pragmatically marked (Andresen 1923: 202). This is the situation in Kurt Tucholsky’s 1931 Schloß Gripsholm [‘Gripsholm castle’], in which, as noted by Nishiwaki (2010: 1), one of the characters uses the nominal partitive genitive and the quirkiness—that is, pragmatic markedness—of her usage is explicitly mentioned by the narrator (67). (67) “Hast du schwedischen Geldes?” fragte die Prinzessin träumerisch. Sie führte gern einen gebildeten Genitiv spazieren und war demzufolge sehr stolz darauf, immer “Rats” zu wissen. tucholsky 2000 [1931]: 27

“Do you have Swedish.gen money.gen?” asked the Princess dreamily. She liked to take an educated genitive for a walk und was accordingly very proud of always knowing “what to do.gen [literally “advice.gen”]” (my translation). Otherwise, in the modern language the -s ending as a partitive marker now occurs only non-nominally (68). (68) a. Em, wir haben noch nichts Festes vor! uhm, we have still nothing firm.part particle ‘Uhm, we still don’t have any firm plans!’ (Brons-Albert 1984: 2) b. Vielleicht is was Nettes im Fernsehen maybe is something nice.part in-the television ‘Maybe there’s something good on television’ (Brons-Albert 1984: 136) 6.5.4 The Linking -s As in Dutch (Section 5.6.5), the empty morph -s, used to connect two elements in a compound, has emerged from the genitive -s suffix. The starting point for this development was the occurrence in prenominal position of a singular masculine or neuter genitive-inflected noun phrase modifying the noun phrase to its right. Some of these phrases became lexicalised, with the -(e)s ending on the left-hand noun no longer interpreted as a genitive marker, but as a linking element between the two nouns in the compound; this is clear from the fact that the gender of the resulting formation is that of the right-hand noun (69a) and that the linking -s can also attach to feminine and weak masculine nouns (69b), i.e. nouns which would not take a genitive -s ending (Demske

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1999: 159; Erben 2003: 2528; Wegener 2003: 426; Duden 2005: 722–723; Schlücker 2012: 4–6). Thus, like possessive -s, the linking -s is another exapted inflectional marker which no longer varies for gender agreement. Demske (1999: 158–162) presents evidence that the use of the linking -s emerged during the 16th century and became entrenched during the 17th century, i.e. within the Early New High German period. The variant -es is used with monosyllabic nouns (69c) (Duden 2005: 723).28 Synchronically, one role played by the linking -s—termed its “opening” function (“Die ‘öffnende’ Funktion”) by Wegener (2003: 448)—is its attachment to the so-called “closing suffixes”, -e, -heit/-keit/-igkeit, -in, -ling, and -ung, to which a further derivational suffix may not be attached (Aronoff & Fuhrhop 2002: 452, 461). The attachment of the linking -s to such derivatives opens them up to compounding; that is to say, it permits their attachment to another lexeme at their right-edge (Wegener 2003: 448); the compounds in (69b) are examples of this. A further function analysed by Wegener (2003: 448–452) is its structure-preserving function (“Die strukturbewahrende Funktion” [Wegener 2003: 448]), in which its presence between the two constitutents preserves the syallabic structure of both constituents within the compound (69d). Austrian and German usage sometimes diverge from one another, with Austrian usage often favouring a variant with the linking -s and German usage favouring a variant without the linking -s (Duden 1998: 500–501) (70). (69) a. des Tages Licht the.gen.masc.sg day.gen.masc.sg light ‘the light of the day, the day’s light’ das Tageslicht ‘the day-es-light’ b. Gelegenheitshörer ‘occasion-s-listener, i.e. occasional listener’ Heizungsrohr ‘heating-s-pipe’ c. Landeshauptstadt ‘land-es-main-town, i.e. capital city’ Tagesablauf ‘day-es-course, i.e. the course of (events of) the day’ d. *Geburt.tag, *Gebur.tag vs. Geburts.tag ‘birth-s-day, i.e. birthday’ *Leutnan.tuniform vs. Leutnants.uniform ‘lieutenant-s-uniform’ (from Wegener [2003: 450]) (70) Austria Germany Werksvertrag ‘work-s-contract’ Werkvertrag ‘work-∅-contract’ Einnahmsquelle29 ‘income-s-source’ Einnahmequelle ‘income-∅-source’ 28 The examples presented in (69a) and (69b,c) appeared in Duden (2005: 722) and the Spiegel data, respectively. 29 In common with nouns ending in the element -nahme, the final -e of Einnahme ‘income’ is

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The Precept: Standardisation, Prescriptivism and the Genitive Case

The earliest grammarians of German included the already ailing genitive in their precept even though it was already only really used adnominally and prepositionally, its adverbal and adjectival uses having been strongly reduced during Middle High German. At some point—my earliest attestation is from the mid-19th century—the competition faced by the genitive in all its roles started to draw attention from lay linguistic observers (although a much earlier stigmatisation of genitive “overuse” was also encountered); this has continued, uninterrupted, since then. The focus of this section is the metalinguistic discourse surrounding the use of the genitive case; the aim is to consider this discourse in the light of the diachronic and synchronic analyses given in the preceding sections of this chapter. To a greater or lesser extent, all aspects of the threefold motivation behind linguistic prescriptivism identified by Elspaß (2005a: 23–25)—standardardisation, purism and segregation—are manifested in the prescriptions relating to the genitive case that have been put forward for centuries. The genitive appears as part of the case system included in the norm of the earliest standardising grammarians. For some commentators, such as Schopenhauer (1851), whose opinion on the matter is reproduced below as example (71a), the adnominal genitive was the preferred native alternative to the supposedly French-influenced von-construction. Furthermore, the use of the genitive as a segregating shibboleth is clear in works from the 19th century onwards: the use of the dative case with genitive prepositions has been stigmatised since that time, as has “overuse” of the genitive in the form of strings of adnominal genitive phrases, or in the use of genitive complements with non-genitive prepositions. As has already been noted at several points in this investigation, the genitive case has become a celebrated example of perceived language decline. This section studies the metalinguistic sources that deal with the genitive case—and the precept of how the genitive “should” be used—and to relate them to the usage studied in this investigation. The portrayals of and claims relating to genitive use presented in this section are the intuition-based perceptions of the individual grammarians and lay linguists, and are not to be regarded as (necessarily) accurate pictures of genitive use, even of the use of the grammarians and lay linguists in question; it is borne in mind that there may well be a discrepancy between what a grammarian prescribes and what he or she actually does (Ágel 2000: 1898). Towards the end of this section another

removed when occurring in a compound with a linking -s in Austrian German (Duden 1998: 501).

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strand of metalinguistic discourse regarding genitive use is discussed; namely, the uncertainty faced by speakers as to how the genitive should be used, and the questions they pose to institutions offering help with language-related questions (e.g. Russ 1993; Neubauer 2009). In English, constructionalisation of possessive -s and a prepositional construction was complete before standardisation began. In Ben Jonson’s grammar (1756 [1640]: 250, 283) the non-agreeing possessive -s is called the genitive, and various prepositions have “the force of” certain cases; of corresponding to the genitive, to to the dative, and from, of, in and by to the ablative. About a century later, Samuel Johnston (1756: 43) lists of and possessive -s as rendering the genitive. In contrast, German grammars of the time—like their Dutch equivalents—include concordial case morphology; the language retained a morphologically marked four-case system. The German morphological case system was sufficiently intact for inclusion in the early grammars and to subsequently become part of the prescribed written norm. In the course of the 17th century, German gained in importance in the school curriculum and would have a firm position by the 18th century (MoulinFankhänel 2000: 1905); accordingly, the morphological case system would have increased in familiarity even though the learners would not have been familiar with a case system in that form (and the vast majority with no knowledge at all of a genitive case) from their own dialect. Schottel (1663: 298–299)—under the influence of Latin (Barbarić 1981: 632)—posits six cases, including the morphological genitive and an ablative case rendered by the preposition von; his treatment of genitive prepositions does not include the possibility of their governing the dative (1663: 765–767). Although Schottel lists a number of verbs as taking a genitive object, in his own usage elsewhere in his grammar he uses those verbs with an accusative or prepositional object (Fischer 1992: 338; see Ágel 2000: 1898 and above). Gottsched, while including the genitive in his sixcase system (e.g. 1748: 125, 126, 191, 222) and listing 56 verbs taking a genitive object (1748: 376–380), also notes competition between the adnominal genitive and the von-construction (1748: 347–348, 372–373) and that some prepositions govern both the genitive and the dative (1748: 327). Thus, despite the competition it faces, the genitive has had a secure place in the standard German norm since the 17th century. Indeed, the usage data studied suggest that the adnominal genitive is the default means of linking two noun phrases with a possessive relationship, with the intensity of competition from other constructions varying according to register; the prepositional genitive, on the other hand, can only be regarded as the default in formal registers. Assessing the effects of the grammarians on the development of German is problematic in view of the fact that many of them based their precept on actual usage to some extent

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(Moulin-Fankhänel 2000: 1907); nonetheless, standard German’s retention— as an exception among the modern Germanic languages—of a morphological case system (albeit one strongly affected by deflection) must be put down to the influence of the grammarians and to the teaching of a norm including morphological case marking in schools since the 17th century. Nevertheless, concern for the state of the genitive—generally voiced by lay linguists rather than grammarians or linguists, and occurring in the context of a “complaint tradition” surrounding language use (e.g. Milroy & Milroy 1999: 26–44)—has been rife for at least a century and a half. This was not always so. At the start of the 19th century, Jean Paul (1804: 262) had viewed the possibility of using either the adnominal genitive or the von-construction, and the ability to vary between pre- and postnominal order, as virtues of the German language; this is echoed almost a century and a half later in Thierhoff (1950: 29) who, despite pleading for use of the genitive, also regards as a virtue the possibility of using the von-construction, at least to avoid cumbersome genitive strings. That is to say, the variation thrown up by deflection was not viewed by him as something reductive or negative; rather, he considered it to have enriched the language. Since then, however, the German genitive has been the focus of puristic attention. This was already noted by Appel (1941: 54, 59) and, as shown by its inclusion in the titles of Sick (2004) and Duden (2008), neither of which deals exclusively with the genitive, the genitive case has in the present day become a poster child of perceived language decline (see, on this, Debus [1999: 45] and Davies & Langer [2006: 158]). Lay linguistic concern for the status and future of the genitive case, and proscription of its competitors, dates back at least to the mid-19th century. Originally, purists objected to the competition facing the adnominal genitive, particularly from the von-construction (71a–c); the use of the periphrastic possessive was also frowned upon (71c–d). Even where the reduction or loss of the genitive is accepted, its use may still be encouraged when it is possible to do so (71e). (71) a. Der Genitiv wird im Deutschen durch “des” und “der” ausgedrückt, und von bezeichnet den Ablativ—merkt es euch, meine Guten, ein für alle Mal; wenn ihr nämlich deutsch, nicht aber Deutschfranzosenjargon schreiben wollt. schopenhauer 1851: 575

The genitive is expressed in German by “des” and “der”, and von denotes the ablative—note this, my dears, once and for all; namely if you want to write German and not German-French-jargon. (my translation)

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b. Die Umschreibung des possessiven Genitivs und vollends des objektiven Genitivs durch die Präposition von ist im allgemeinen nicht zu billigen. heyse 1900: 448

The paraphrasing of the possessive genitive and particularly the objective genitive by means of the preposition von is, in general, not to be approved. (my translation) c. Im Alltag sagt man manchmal: das Haus von meinem Vater (noch schlimmer: meinem Vater sein Haus). Aber das ist ein erbärmlicher Schnitzer. Es muß heißen: das Haus meines Vaters oder meines Vaters Haus. reiners 1943 [1987]: 31

In everyday life one sometimes says das Haus von meinem Vater ‘the house of my father’ (even worse: meinem Vater sein Haus ‘my.dat father his house’). But that is a pitiful blunder. It must be: das Haus meines Vaters ‘the house my.gen father.gen’ or meines Vaters Haus ‘my.gen father.gen house’. (my translation) d. Fehlerhaft ist der Gebrauch der Volkssprache in manchen Provinzen, dem vorangestellten Genitiv des Besitzers noch das mit dem regierenden Substantiv verbundene Possessivpronomen (sein, ihr &c.) beizufügen, oder auch statt jenes Genitivs den Dativ in Verbindung mit diesem Pronomen zu setzen. Man sage also nicht: das ist meines Vaters (oder meinem Vater) sein Haus, meiner Schwester ihr Buch &c. heyse 1900: 446

The vernacular usage in many provinces is faulty, adding to the prenominal genitive of the possessor the possessive pronoun (sein, ihr, etc.) bound to the ruling noun, or even instead of that genitive, to connect the dative with this pronoun. One therefore does not say: das ist meines Vaters (oder meinem Vater) sein Haus ‘that is my.gen father.gen (or my.dat father) his house’, meiner Schwester ihr Buch ‘my.gen/dat sister her book’, etc. (my translation) e. Die Abneigung gegen den Genitiv tritt heute vor allem dort auf, wo er als Objekt von einem Verbum abhängt. […] Diese Entwicklung ist vielleicht nicht aufzuhalten, wer aber um eine kraftvolle und farbige

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Sprache bemüht ist, wird sich des Genitivs überall dort bedienen, wo er noch möglich ist und nicht geziert klingt. thierhoff 1950: 29

The aversion to the genitive occurs today above all where it, as the object, depends on a verb. […] This development can perhaps no longer be stopped, but anyone who takes the trouble of using language powerfully and colourfully will make use of the genitive wherever it is still possible and does not sound affected. (my translation) A rare contemporary puristic discussion of the adnominal genitive vs. the von-construction proscribes the use of the von-construction (sometimes given the tongue-in-cheek term Vonitiv, blending von and Genitiv) only in situations in which the polysemy of von leads to ambiguity (Sick 2006), such as the example given in the article of Mutter von vier Kindern erschlagen, which can mean either ‘mother of four children killed’ or ‘mother killed by four children’. Only occasionally, as in (72a), is the von-construction considered the prime competitor (and threat) to the genitive. Elsewhere (72b–c), a cursory web search for the term Vonitiv finds not only Sick’s article and references to it, but also comments from language users concerned about the use of the von-construction, or offering prescriptions on how (not) to use the vonconstruction; again, these comments mainly concentrate on the unwanted ambiguity that the von-construction can cause. (72) a. Seit Bastian Sicks Bestsellern weiß man, das der Genitiv bereits einen aussichtslosen Kampf kämpft (“das Haus von meinem Vater”). hinrichs 2012: 10430

Since Bastian Sick’s Bestsellers [i.e. Sick (2004) and later], it is known that the genitive is already fighting a hopeless battle ([against] “das Haus von meinem Vater” [‘the house of my father’]). (my translation) b. Ich musste vor Kurzem meine Zahnpasta wechseln, weil ich die Produktbeschreibung nicht mehr ertragen konnte: “Fördert die Regeneration von gereiztem Zahnfleisch”. Das verdirbt schon am frühen Morgen die Laune. Meiner Meinung nach müsste es “… gereizten Zahnfleisches” heißen. attested in the meinews.de forum [last accessed 28.2.13]

30 Note that this quotation appears in an article written by a linguist, but for a “lay” (albeit educated) readership.

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Recently I had to change my toothpaste because I couldn’t stand the product description any more: “Encourages the regeneration of irritated gums”. That does spoil one’s mood in the early morning. In my opinion it would have to be “… irritated.gen gum.gen”. (my translation) c. Die Genitiv-Bildung mit dem Wörtchen “von” ist über alle Maßen beliebt. Zwar ist sie immer stillos—aber meist nicht weiter schlimm. attested at http://kommunikationsabc.de/2011/08/04/genitiv-von-einem -von-schwer-verletzt/ [last accessed 28.2.13]

Genitive-formation with the little word von is extremely popular. It is always lacking in style—but mostly not a problem. (my translation) More recently, the nature of the lay linguistic and prescriptive handling of the genitive has taken the form of a perceived struggle between the genitive and the dative, and covering the prepositional genitive as well as the periphrastic possessive (which also involves the dative) (e.g. Duden 1997: 104; Sick 2004: 16; Duden 2008: 63–64; Duden 2011b: 372). The longstanding prescriptive stigmatisation of the use of dative complements with genitive prepositions, however, is one which has barely—if at all—influenced everyday language use, with the use of wegen in particular emphasising the gap between the precept and the reality (Elspaß 2005a: 35, 37); indeed, in Duden (2011b: 999) a dative complement with wegen is acceptable—alongside the genitive—in the spoken standard language, while in the written standard language a dative complement is colloquial (while a genitive complement is correct). Examples are given in (73); (73a,b) suggest an attack by the dative on the genitive, while (73c,d) are more specific. (73) a. [w]ie eine Seuche greift er [der Dativ] auf Kosten des Genitivs um sich. duden newsletter 30.4.04

the dative grasps around like a disease at the expense of the genitive (my translation) b. In den meisten Dialekten kommt er [der Genitiv] überhaupt nicht mehr vor, dort ist er dem Dativ seine fette Beute geworden. sick 2006

The genitive is no longer found in most dialects; there, it has become the dative’s juicy prey (my translation; note that dem Dativ seine fette Beute

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‘the.dat dative its juicy prey’ is a periphrastic possessive formation that could have been a genitive formation) c. Für Formulierungen wie deines Vaters Haus oder das Haus deines Vaters heißt es umgangssprachlich oft auch deinem Vater sein Haus. Diese Ausdrucksweise ist nicht richtig. duden 1997: 104

For formulations like deines Vaters Haus ‘your.gen father.gen house’ or das Haus deines Vaters ‘the house your.gen father.gen’ there is often also deinem Vater sein Haus ‘your.dat father his house’ in colloquial language. This manner of expression is not correct. (my translation) d. Immer seltener hört man “laut eines Berichts” und immer häufiger dafür “laut einem Bericht”. sick 2004: 16

You hear laut eines Berichts ‘according-to a.gen report.gen’ less and less frequently and laut einem Bericht ‘according-to a.dat report’ more and more frequently instead. (my translation) The quotations (74a) and (74b), one almost a century old, the other almost seventy years old, reflect the tone that remains in lay linguistic work today (see, for more detail, Davies & Langer [2006: 159–169, 200–211]). Nonetheless, alongside the combative tone of (74b), or the more recent works by Sick (e.g. 2004, 2006), a more passive (although no less disdainful towards those involved—however unwittingly—in the developments) tone is also encountered (74c). (74) a. im Munde oder unter der Feder der Deutschen ist der meistmißhandelte Beugefall der Genetiv engel 1914: 73

in the mouth or in the quill of the Germans, the most mistreated case is the genitive (my translation) b. Rettet den Genitiv! reiners 1943 [1987]: 31

Save the genitive! (my translation)

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c. Ich beklage auch nicht den drohenden Untergang des Konjunktivs oder Genitivs—ich nehme ihn mit Bedauern zur Kenntnis. stemmler 1994: 16

Nor do I mourn the impending downfall of the subjunctive or the genitive —I take note of it with regret. (my translation) Those works that highlight and lament the competition faced by the genitive nonetheless also strive to temper some aspects of its use. Constructions containing a string of genitives, described variously as a bad habit (Stemmler 1994: 45) or as dangerous (Engel 1914: 73), frequently attract criticism and parody (see Andresen 1923: 200; Schneider 1959: 32; Eroms 2007: 92), or are simply regarded as something to avoid (Heinrichs 1867: 71; Duden 2011b: 376). Duden (2011b: 376) recommends that strings of more than two genitive noun phrases should be avoided, while in Duden (1997) a string of two genitives in a sentence—written in the so-called Nominalstil ‘noun style’, in which deverbal action nouns replace their base verbs with only semantically weak verbs remaining to denote tense, number, etc. (and itself the target of criticism)—is presented as an example to avoid; an equivalent sentence containing no genitives is the recommended version: So lautet z.B. der Satz Zur Wiederholung der Aufführung dieses Stückes ist von unserer Seite keine Veranlassung gegeben einfacher und lebendiger etwa so: Wir sehen uns nicht veranlasst, das Stück noch einmal aufzuführen. duden 1997: 187

Thus, for example, the sentence Zur Wiederholung der Aufführung dieses Stückes ist von unserer Seite keine Veranlassung gegeben ‘There is, from our side, no reason for the repetition the.gen performance the.gen piece.gen’ is simpler and livelier roughly thus: Wir sehen uns nicht veranlasst, das Stück noch einmal aufzuführen ‘we do not see ourselves caused to perform the piece one more time’. (my translation) Centuries earlier, Martin Luther observed that the use of the genitive to translate a genitive phrase in the original Latin text—the practice of some of his opponents—sounded unnatural in German, and was therefore avoided by him: Als wenn Christus spricht: Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur. Wenn ich den Eseln sol folgen, die werden mir die buchstaben furlegen, und also dolmetzschen: Aus dem uberfluss des hertzen redet der mund. Sage mir, Ist

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das deutsch geredt? Welcher deutscher verstehet solchs? Was ist uberflus des hertzen fur ein ding? Das kan kein deutscher sagen, Er wolt denn sagen, es sey das einer allzu ein gros hertz habe oder zu vil hertzes habe, wiewol das auch noch nicht recht ist: denn uberflus des hertzen ist kein deutsch, so wenig, als das deutsch ist, Uberflus des hauses, uberflus des kacheloffens, uberflus der banck […] martin luther, 1530, sendbrieff von dolmetzschen [jillings & murdoch 1977: 181]; my emphasis

Like when Christ speaks: “out of an abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks”. If I were to follow the donkeys [Luther’s opponents], they would present me with the letters and therefore translate: “from the abundance the.gen heart.gen speaks the mouth”. Tell me, is that German? Which German understands something like that? What kind of thing is abundance the.gen heart.gen? No German can say that, unless he wanted to say that someone had a heart that was too big or had too much heart, although even that wouldn’t be right, for abundance the.gen heart.gen isn’t German; just as little as it is German [to say] abundance the.gen house.gen, abundance the.gen tiled stove.gen, abundance the.gen bank (my translation) Folge ich den Eseln und buchstablisten, so mus ichs also verdeutschen: Warumb ist dise verlierung der salben geschehen? Was ist aber das fur deutsch? martin luther, 1530, sendbrieff von dolmetzschen [jillings & murdoch 1977: 182]; my emphasis

If I were to follow the donkeys and those who translate too literally, I would have to translate it into German thus: why has this losing the.gen ointments happened? But what kind of German is that? (my translation) Another commonly stigmatised usage which can be traced back over many centuries is the “overuse” of the genitive case with non-genitive prepositions (Section 6.4.10). This may be the oldest genitive-related stigmatisation, having already been criticised in the 15th century, when the Bavarian writer and translator Niclas [also: Niklas, Niklaus, Niclaus] von Wyle (in 1478) objected to the incipient use—according to him, an Austrianism (although in fact it was more widespread)—of the genitive case (instead of the dative) with the preposition zwischen ‘between’ (Reiffenstein 2003: 2925). Frequently, this use of the genitive is objected to by those who otherwise decry the replacement of the genitive by

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other constructions (e.g. Sick [2004] and various Duden publications, including those cited earlier in this section). Some examples of reactions to genitive overuse are given in (75). This usage is generally attributed to hypercorrection stemming from the genitive’s association with formal language (75b–d); the linguistic (as opposed to lay linguistic) account, primarily based on work by Di Meola (1999, 2002, 2004) is discussed in Section 6.4.7. (75) a. Immer wieder tauchen Fälle auf, in denen hinter Präpositionen, die den Dativ erfordern, plötzlich ein Genitiv zu finden ist: “gemäß des Protokolls”, “entsprechend Ihrer Anweisungen”, “entgegen des guten Vorsatzes”, “nahe des Industriegebiets”. sick 2004: 16

Again and again there appear cases in which, behind prepositions that govern the dative, there is suddenly a genitive: gemäß des Protokolls ‘inaccordance-with the.gen protocol.gen’, entsprechend Ihrer Anweisungen ‘corresponding-to your.gen instructions’, nahe des Industriegebiets ‘near the.gen industrial-area.gen’. (my translation) b. Dass der so gewählt klingende Genitiv in Verbindung mit bestimmten Präpositionen trotzdem oftmals fehl am Platze ist, zeigen wir Ihnen im ersten Teil dieser Ausgabe duden newsletter 30.4.04

We will show you in the first part of this issue that the so elegant sounding genitive in connection with certain prepositions is nevertheless often out of place (my translation) c. Einige wenige Präpositionen beharren nämlich starrköpfig auf dem Dativ und Formulierungen wie entgegen ihrer Wünsche, samt allen Inventars oder gemäß internationalen Rechts klingen zwar elegant, sind aber falsch. duden 2008: 64

A few prepositions, you see, insist pigheadedly on the dative and formulations like entgegen ihrer Wünsche ‘against her.gen wishes’, samt allen Inventars ‘including all.gen inventory.gen’ or gemäß internationalen Rechts ‘in-accordance-with international.gen law.gen’ do sound elegant, but are wrong. (my translation)

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d. Warum neigen wir dazu, den Genitiv zu verwenden, wenn der Dativ richtig ist? Michael Skasa hat es treffend formuliert: “Der (falsch gebrauchte) Genitiv ist der abgespreizte kleine Finger beim Mokkatässchenhalten.” Der Genitiv klingt wertvoller. sedlaczek 2009 [a column in the austrian newspaper wiener zeitung]

Why do we tend towards using the genitive when the dative is correct? Michael Skasa [a German commentator on current affairs] formulated it appositely: “The (wrongly used) genitive is the extended pinkie when holding a mocha cup”. The genitive sounds more valuable. (my translation) e. Es ist genauso absurd, “trotz” mit dem zweiten Fall zu verwenden wie “wegen” mit dem dritten. Man trotzt ja auch nicht des Dudens, sondern dem Duden, und es heißt nicht “trotzdessen”, sondern “trotzdem”. kramar 2009 [a column in the austrian newspaper die presse]

It is just as absurd to use trotz with the second case [i.e. the genitive] as it is to use wegen with the third [i.e. the dative]. After all, one doesn’t trotzen [‘to defy’] the.gen Duden.gen, rather the.dat Duden, and it’s not trozdessen ‘despite-that.gen’, but trotzdem ‘despite-that.dat’. (my translation) While the voices of concern for the fate of the genitive seem to have ensured a place in the popular consciousness for the notion that the genitive is in danger—and the expression der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod is likewise well known—a backlash has emerged, in which this perception is disputed. In a short opinion piece, Eisenberg (2008: 54) begins by observing “ein nostalgisches Bedauern” (‘a nostalgic regret’) when the death of the genitive is mentioned but he concludes that: Der Genitiv wird dem Deutschen noch lange erhalten bleiben. Zumindest im geschriebenen Standard ist er wichtig und stabil, von seinem Ableben kann keine Rede sein. eisenberg 2008: 54

The genitive will remain preserved for German for a long time. At least in the written standard, it is important and stable, its demise is out of the question. (my translation)

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There is undeniably a great deal of variation in the use of the genitive. A writer may use both the prepositional genitive and a competitor in a single text (Di Meola 2002: 120; Section 6.4.7). Research into the questions posed by language users to language helpdesks has shown that the genitive features prominently among the problematic aspects of German grammar. This variation may stem from language users’ uncertainty: Es gibt eine beträchtliche Zahl an Zweifelsfällen, wo wir zwischen Dativ und Genitiv schwanken. Darunter sind auch solche, wo nur der Dativ richtig ist! Wer im Zweifel immer den Genitiv verwendet, macht Fehler— wie ein Blick in die Tageszeitungen zeigt. sedlaczek 2009

There is a considerable number of cases of doubt where we waver between dative and genitive. Among those are some where only the dative is correct! Anyone who, when in doubt, always uses the genitive, makes mistakes—as a look at the daily newspapers shows. (my translation) The uncertainty surrounding the use of the genitive is a typical example of linguistic uncertainty as described by Neubauer (2009: 35): Sprachliche Probleme resultieren zum einen aus einer Mischung von standardsprachlichen und umgangssprachlichen Regularitäten oder sprachkritischen articles, einen bestimmten Sprachgebrauch zu verändern. Linguistic problems result for one thing from a mixture of standard and colloquial regularities or language-critical articles, to change a particular usage. (my translation) The most frequently asked syntax-related question received by the language advice office run by the Duden publishing house was found by Russ (1993: 511) to be whether wegen governed the genitive or dative. This is part of a wider uncertainty regarding the case governed by a number of prepositions; in the questions sent to the language advice office of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, there was an equal amount of uncertainty regarding the use of the dative with genitive prepositions and regarding the use of the genitive with dative prepositions (Neubauer 2009: 165–167). A further source of uncertainty is s-omission, with language users often uncertain as to whether or not an -s should be attached to the noun (Neubauer 2009: 168–169).

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Conclusion

On the surface, the findings of this chapter have generally echoed and supported statements found throughout the research literature dealing with the use of the genitive case and its competing constructions. In contrast to much existing work, particularly that dealing with the modern language, one particular virtue of this chapter has been its use of a broad empirical basis for its portrayals of the use of the genitive and its competitors. At a number of points, the quantified data studied here have led to findings which contrast with claims made elsewhere. The generally posited weakness of the genitive in informal language seems to have been too strongly stated in the literature. Even though the competing von-construction is at its strongest in informal registers, it is still outnumbered by the adnominal genitive there. The relative rarity of the genitive case in informal language—when calculated as a proportion of the total sample—is not a matter of its being suppressed by a competing construction (the competitors are also rare in informal use); there are simply far fewer situations in which the genitive (or one of its competitors) can occur in informal registers. Among the suprising findings discovered during the course of the present research are the rarity of the periphrastic possessive construction in the data (even the most informal language use), and the incipient productivity of an extension to the possessive -s construction. Register-based conventionalisation is characteristic of linguistic features (Biber 1994: 35) and the variety of registers and media used as data sources for the investigation presented here has given insights into the register-based conventionalisations of the genitive and its competitors in everyday language use. Accordingly, the level of use of these constructions could be used as indicators of particular registers in a multidimensional register analysis like Biber (1994). While no conventionalisations or tendencies appeared to be strong enough to be used as indicators of informal writing or speech (with the possible exception of the adnominal von-construction in more than a handful of tokens in a sample of informal speech). The indicators listed in (76) have been identified on the basis of the data studied here. (76) a. journalistic language: adnominal genitive instead of the von-construction b. journalistic language: possessive -s instead of the von-construction c. journalistic language: (cf. also 76 a & b) avoidance of the von-construction d. journalistic language: prepositional genitive does not receive competition from the dative case e. informal computer-mediated communication: extended possessive -s

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The German genitive case has undergone a transition from being originally a primarily adverbal case to being a primarily adnominal case. The usage data studied from Early New High German, through the early modern period and up to the present day have illustrated the nature of the diachronic development of the adnominal use of the genitive; the consolidation of postnominal constituent order as the unmarked, default order was seen, as was the decline of prenominal order and its eventual entrenchment as a stylistic device. The level of occurrence of s-omission, a trend that can be traced back to Early New High German, appears to have been stable since the early modern period. Only in the informal writing of the Dortmund corpus did s-omission occur to a noticeably greater extent than in other registers. Another diachronic development highlighted in this chapter has been the path taken by the German possessive -s construction, which diverges from its counterparts elsewhere in the Germanic languages—even the superficially similar Dutch construction—and supports Allen’s (2008: 210) caution that “we cannot assume that similar-looking constructions in fairly closely related languages necessarily developed in the same way”. While the inclusion of a nonpossession-marked determiner in the possessor noun phrase has been a possibility with the possessive -s construction ever since its emergence in English, Dutch and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, this has not been a characteristic of German possessive -s. In informal German computer-mediated communication, however, the analysis by some speakers of complex noun phrases with the structure [possessive determiner + acquaintance noun] as proper names has licensed the occurrence of a determiner in the possessor noun phrase. Thus, to a limited degree, the German possessive -s construction has come to resemble its counterparts elsewhere, although it has taken a different route to get there. The discourse of language criticism and prescriptivism from the 16th century to the present day (in particular, the relationship between the precept and actual usage) has formed part of the present chapter. This chapter has shown that, in contrast to many lay linguistic perceptions, the decline of the genitive case is not a new development. Nor, for that matter, is concern for the health of the genitive, which can be traced back to works published in the 19th century. Indeed, the precept regarding the genitive has been much the same since the 19th century, while criticism of “overuse” of the prepositional genitive was attested as early as the 15th century. Perceptions of the current state of the genitive were found not always to correspond to the situation in the data. There was, in the data studied, no evidence of the “hopeless fight” of the adnominal genitive against the von-construction observed by Hinrichs (2012: 104); rather, the two constructions appear to be entrenched alongside one another, with the

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von-construction increasing in use in informal language, but never outmumbering the genitive there. There was, similarly, no evidence of the sometimes hypercorrect use of the genitive as a prestige stylistic tool, as claimed by the writers of the quotations in (75); the only clear evidence of the use of the genitive case to achieve a particular stylistic effct (in the Dortmund data) was clearly ironic. One matter that falls outside the scope of the present investigation is that of how the deflection affecting German was so much slower to take effect than elsewhere among the Germanic languages, with the morphological case system remaining at the time of the earliest beginnings of standardisation. This inertia, which was also characteristic of Dutch, meant that the earliest grammarians were in a position to include morphological case marking in their precept, and ultimately in the standard German norm. Standardisation cannot, however, be the only reason for the preservation of the German morphological case system. Even the dialects, which have been more strongly affect by deflection and which have not been standardised, retain morphological case systems (varying from dialect to dialect), albeit much reduced in comparison to that of the modern standard language.

6.8

Summary of Chapter 6

In this chapter it was shown that the adverbal and adjectival uses of the German genitive have been most strongly affected by deflection; the adnominal and prepositional uses, in contrast, remain productive in the modern standard language. Although standardisation played a role in ensuring the continued survival of the genitive, a novel investigation of a sample of Martin Luther’s writings showed that the adnominal genitive was very strong against the vonconstruction even before the appearance of the first grammars (i.e. before the onset of explicit standardisation). Postnominal constituent order in the adnominal genitive strengthened during the early modern period and is the dominant order in the modern language, in which prenominal genitives are only used in order to achieve a particular pragmatic effect. In the modern language, adverbal and adjectival genitives are all but absent. In line with expectations, the adnominal genitive was shown by the data to be strong against its competitors in formal language; more surprising is its strength against its competitors in informal registers. The division of labour between the prepositional genitive and its competitors depends on structural and register factors: the absence of an inflectable lexeme in the noun phrase promotes the use of a non-genitive variant; overall, there is a general association of the genitive with

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formal language use and the dative with informal language use. Exapted fragments of formerly genitive morphology were also examined in this chapter; one novel finding was the nature of the extension to the type frequency of the possessive -s construction, which now allows a determiner—uninflected for possession marking—in the possessor noun phrase, at least in informal use. Finally, the role of the precept in the preservation and continued use of the genitive was considered, and it was noted that concern for the genitive case (including its “overuse”), while very much associated with contemporary lay linguistics, has been ongoing since the early modern period, and has been particularly prominent since the mid-19th century.

chapter 7

Codification and Morphosyntactic Change 7.1

Introduction

The emergence and entrenchment of analytic alternatives to synthetic genitive case marking appears to be influenced by the level of contact that a language has had with other languages: the more contact—and consequent influx of new lexical items—there is, the greater is the loss of case morphology (Barðdal 2009: 125, 155; see Section 2.4.2 above). This explanation is consistent with the status of the relatively isolated Icelandic as the Germanic language whose modern incarnation’s case marking system most strongly resembles its original form; it also accounts for the relative advancement of the loss of case morphology in English and Swedish—with a strong influx of loans from the 11th and 13th centuries, respectively—compared to German and Dutch. When moves towards standardisation began in the early modern period, case morphology had already been lost from English and Swedish, while it remained—albeit weakened—in German and Dutch. Thus, case morphology was unavailable to the English and Swedish grammarians, but was available to the grammarians of German and Dutch. It was noted by Vezzosi (2000) that standardisation can have a disruptive effect on morphosyntactic change. As far as competition between the Dutch genitive and the van-construction is concerned, there is a clear break between the 15th and 16th centuries, with the 16th century seeing a resurgence of the synthetic construction (Chapter 5; Vezzosi 2000; Weerman et al. 2012). Furthermore, the survival of a relatively conservative case system in modern standard German (and, temporarily, in early modern Dutch) also suggests the influence of standardisation in arresting morphosyntactic change. In this section, the notion that the codification of a language disturbs the otherwise “natural” course of morphosyntactic change—i.e. the course it would take (or would have taken) in the absence of codification—is examined further.

7.2

Morphosyntactic Change Affecting the Genitive in the Data

7.2.1 Introduction The effects of the general development from synthetic to analytic marking of case relations were manifested to different extents in the two languages stud-

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ied. In Standard German, the move towards analytic marking was not found in its culmination; that is to say, the competition faced by the synthetic genitive from the analytic von-construction was clear, but there was no sign of an ultimate suppression of the synthetic construction (even in less formal registers). The analytic periphrastic possessive construction, another potential competitor of the synthetic genitive, occurred to only a small extent in the data. Meanwhile, the loss of the prepositional genitive in favour of the dative case or the von-construction showed no sign of reaching its culmination in the language as a whole: in formal writing the genitive remains the default variant regardless of structural factors; in informal language use, both variants occur, with their use dependent on factors such as the preposition involved and the structure of the noun phrase. Even in the German dialects, morphological case marking remains. The open-endedness of the German situation seems to be perpetuated through the inclusion of the genitive and (some of) its competitors in the norm. In contrast, the modern Dutch situation shows a clear culmination of the same kinds of developments which are ongoing in the German data. While the formal early modern Dutch data show, over four centuries, a fairly stable situation similar to that of modern German, albeit with an adnominal genitive that is relatively weaker against its main competitor than its modern German counterpart, the egodocuments from the same period show clear evidence of case loss and movement towards the analytic marking of relationships between noun phrases. Nonetheless, the productive (if limited) use of concordial genitive morphology in even the most colloquial 18th century egodocuments is striking. In the modern Dutch data the culmination of deflection, the synthetic to analytic trend, and general case loss were clear: apart from a handful of isolated fragments, the genitive case has been wholly lost to analytic and non-case constructions. The relative chronology of the loss of the various roles of the genitive case is shared not only by German and Dutch, but is common throughout the Germanic languages. Just as adverbal and adjectival genitive use were lost first in English (Allen 1995: 218), they were also the first to weaken in German and Dutch, the data showing them to occur to only a weak extent and to have a limited type frequency, being restricted to only a small inventory of verbs and adjectives. While both remain in modern German, their type frequency remains low and they often face competition from an alternative, such as accusative case (adverbal) or a prepositional phrase (adverbal and adjectival). The adnominal genitive, on the other hand, proved to have the greatest longevity of all the genitive’s roles; this is clear not only in its continued dominance in modern German as the most numerous means of connecting two noun phrases in a possessive relationship, but also from the sur-

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vival of a fragment of the Dutch adnominal genitive into the modern language. As far as case marking in general is concerned, early modern Dutch and modern German, which are otherwise comparable in many respects regarding their morphosyntax, are divergent. While German continues to mark case systematically (with relatively rare exceptions such as genitive s-omission and the omission of the accusative, dative and genitive -en from weak nouns, and the structural restrictions in the use of the genitive), early modern Dutch showed clear evidence of a breakdown in case marking. In the egodocuments, case marking was not applied systematically and there was variation in the use of case markers; even in the formal, norm-accordant texts there was variation and omission of markers. In sum, there is no evidence of a breakdown of case marking in Standard German comparable to that which took place in Dutch; rather, in modern Standard German it is the use of case constructions—rather than the marking of case as such—that is subject to reductive changes. In the sub-sections that follow, the effects of morphosyntactic change on the genitive case in German and Dutch are compared; these findings serve as a basis to Section 7.3, in which the relationship between the observed changes and the standardisation of both languages is considered. 7.2.2 Fixed Expressions Which Include Genitive Morphology The survival of case morphology in fixed expressions is found throughout the Germanic languages. In English, Allen (1995: 213) notes the presence of dative morphology in frozen phrases beyond the loss of the dative case in the 13th century. Similarly, as shown in Section 5.1.1, the main manifestation of case morphology in modern Dutch is in fixed expressions. While the presence of case morphology in fixed expressions draws less attention to itself in a case language such as modern standard German, examples such as the name Weil der Stadt, which contains a case-marked determiner regardless of the syntactic role played by the name, shows that it is also found in case languages (likewise Section 5.1.1). 7.2.3 Structural Characteristics of the Genitive The effects of morphosyntactic change on the structural characteristics of the genitive case in early modern Dutch and modern German were found to be broadly similar in both languages. S-omission, pervasive in modern German, also occurred in Dutch as far back as the Middle Dutch period. The generalisation of masculine/neuter marking to feminine nouns, however, which was found throughout the early modern Dutch period (although progressively less frequent over time), was not found in the German data although it is known

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to occur in some dialects. This fits with the observation made in Section 7.2.1 that case marking itself is generally stable in modern German (with s-omission being an exception to this) and that it is the use of the individual case constructions that is weakened. Structural restrictions limit the kinds of noun phrases that can appear with the modern German and early modern Dutch genitive. In German, the presence of an inflectable lexeme (e.g. a determiner or an adjective) in the noun phrase is a prerequisite for use of the genitive; if this condition is not met, a competing construction must be used. In early modern Dutch, the structural restriction was even stronger: in the data, only noun phrases starting with a determiner occurred in the genitive. The fluctuating genitive inflection on adjectives within the noun phrase may have contributed to this restriction; that is to say, if adjectives could not be consistently inflected, speakers would not be confident in using them as the marker of the case of a noun phrase. 7.2.4 The Adnominal Genitive In both German and Dutch, a prepositional competitor to the adnominal genitive emerged early on. From the Middle period of both languages, the prepositional construction (the von-construction and van-construction, respectively) was the main competitor of the adnominal genitive. While the German adnominal genitive remains the most numerous construction regardless of register or medium in the data, its Dutch counterpart—even after its 16th century resurgence in formal written language—was used to a lesser extent than the van-construction from the 13th century onwards. The relative weakness of the adnominal genitive in less formal registers is a shared characteristic of modern German and early modern German. A further common characteristic is the diachronic move away from prenominal constituent order towards postnominal order. Away from possession marking, the adnominal partitive genitive construction underwent the same developments in both languages. The genitivemarked adnominal construction gave way to a construction involving no inflection on the noun, while a variant emerged in which genitive marking appears on an adjective rather than a noun. 7.2.5 Non-Adnominal Genitive Use While the occurrence of the adverbal and adjectival genitive is minimal in modern German and early modern Dutch, a further non-adnominal use of the genitive that gained in importance from the early modern period, at least in German, is the prepositional genitive. Having emerged through the use of the genitive nouns and noun phrases that became grammaticalised as prepositions—

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i.e. uses of the genitive that originally would have been adnominal—the prepositional genitive entered the prescribed German norm and continues to be used today although it is subjected to strong competition from the dative and the von-construction in lower register usage. Even in high register early modern Dutch, in contrast, there is little evidence of a prepositional genitive. 7.2.6 Other Remnants of Genitive Morphology The exaptation of the possessive -s and linking -s from the genitive -s marker is common to German and Dutch. The possessive -s construction of modern German and modern Dutch is superficially similar in both languages, attaching to proper names and common nouns used as names. The recent extension in German to allow possessor noun phrases consisting of a determiner and a common noun further increases the similarity of the two languages’ possessive -s construction although the route by which this stage was reached appears to have been different in both languages, as noted in Sections 5.4.4, 5.6.3 and 6.3.4 and 6.5.2. In both languages the relatively restricted type frequency of the possessor noun phrase seems to be due to the continued existence of the concordial genitive (cf. the contrast between the possessive -s construction in English and Swedish on the one hand, and in Dutch and German, on the other). 7.2.7 Conclusion The effects of morphosyntactic change on the genitive case are similar in German and Dutch in many respects, with only the relative timing of the developments differing in the two languages. Across the Germanic languages, German and Dutch pattern together with regard to the development of the genitive case, having developed differently from English and Swedish. The steady loss of the genitive case observed in English and Swedish is also found—with some delay—in German and Dutch, at least until the 15th century. After this point, the adnominal genitive undergoes a resurgence; in Dutch, this situation persisted until the early 20th century while in standard German the situation continues to the present day. The timing of this development suggests that the resurgence of the genitive case was affected by the codification of German and Dutch. The loss of case morphology in formal written Dutch following its removal from the norm as part of a spelling reform, as well as the continued strength of the genitive in norm-conformant written German but stronger competition from the von-construction in the less norm-conscious informal speech and writing, suggests that explicit prescription is an important factor in the preservation of case morphology in a language undergoing deflection. However, the promotion of case morphology in the norm in grammars and language teaching cannot be solely responsible for the genitive’s resurgence: the genitive

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was in wide use already in the writings of Martin Luther and Hugo de Groot, which predate the earliest German and Dutch grammars, thus explicit codification and moves towards standardisation cannot have been the only reasons for the preservation of case morphology. The precise role of codification in the course taken by morphosyntactic change is considered now in Section 7.3.

7.3

The Relationship between Codification and Morphosyntactic Change

7.3.1 Introduction It has been suggested at various points throughout this investigation that the codification of a language has a decisive influence on the development of morphological case marking in that language. This notion is addressed in more depth in this section. As far as assessing the influence of codification on morphosyntactic change—and, in particular, on change affecting the genitive case—is concerned, English and Swedish are suitable control languages; that is to say, they are languages in which there was no influence of codification on genitive marking, indeed, this was impossible because morphological case marking had already been lost before standardisation began. Thus, they exhibit the unaltered progression of case loss in an unstandardised language. Dutch and German, in contrast, show the same progression as English and Swedish, i.e. the replacement of the synthetic genitive by a prepositional construction (albeit some centuries later, as discussed in Section 7.1), until the 15th century, but a strong divergence after this point, with the genitive resurging against the prepositional alternative. This resurgence is concurrent with the beginning standardisation of those languages, although not necessarily with the appearance of the first prescriptive grammars. A comparison is now made between the parallel developments and timescales of morphological change affecting the genitive in English and Swedish on the one hand, and Dutch and German on the other. This will highlight the role played by codification in those developments. 7.3.2 English and Swedish Nominal inflection was lost steadily throughout the Middle English period (c. 1100–1500) (Fischer et al. 2000: 69; Lass 2006: 69). While the Old English case distinctions remained into the 13th century in the south, in the north case agreement was already depleted by the 12th century (Allen 2005: 232, 234). By Middle English the genitive case was more restricted than it had been in Old English (Mustanoja 1960: 70) and arguments can be made for describing

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the marker -s either as possessive -s—after all, it now denoted only possessive and subjective relations (Fischer 1992: 225) and had generalised from attaching only to singular masculines and neuters to attach also to feminines and plurals (Seppänen 1997: 194; Rosenbach & Vezzosi 1999: 38)—or as a genitive suffix, albeit an atypical “edge-located inflection” that did not have to attach to the possessor (Allen 2003: 20). Adverbal genitive use was lost by the early Middle English period (Nielsen 2005: 78). Fischer (1992: 231) maintains that “the genitive case in Middle English was still a morphological case”; this conclusion is also ultimately reached by Allen (2003: 13), who lists arguments in favour of both positions but finds that “there is good reason to believe that they require a different analysis from PDE [present-day English] genitives [i.e. possessive -s]”; for instance, the absence of right-edge attachment to postmodification until the late 14th century, and the continued co-existence of case agreement (Allen 2003: 5–6). The of-construction (parallel to the German von- and Dutch van-construction) had been present as a competitor of the adnominal genitive since at least the 10th century but only started to appear in large quantities from the mid-14th century, accounting for over 80% of all possessive examples by the start of the 15th century (Fries 1940: 206; also Mustanoja 1960: 76; Nielsen 2005: 78). While the genitive came to be associated with animate possessors, the of-construction was associated with inanimate possessors (Nevalainen 2006: 76). This reflects the Old English genitive constituent orders, in which animate possessors tended to precede their possessum, and inanimate possessors tended to follow their possessum (Mustanoja 1960: 76–77). The spread of the of-construction, a native construction, may have been supported by the influence of the parallel French construction with the preposition de ‘of’ (Altenberg 1982: 14; Fischer 1992: 226; Nielsen 2005: 79). If the Middle English element -s had exhibited characteristics both of a genitive ending and of a non-concordial, specialised marker of possession, by Early Modern English (1500–1700) it was unequivocally possessive -s; it only marked possession and only the head noun of the possessor noun phrase is marked. By the start of the 17th century, following a dip in use during Middle English, the use of possessive -s rose slightly to account for approximately 20 % of all possessive formations, compared to 80% formed with the of-construction (Rosenbach et al. 2000: 185). Possessive -s was most frequent in informal registers dealing with “non-specialized (everyday, conversational) topics” (Altenberg 1982: 294); it occurred almost exclusively with animate possessors (Rosenbach et al. 2000: 186). The of-construction was favoured in formal, specialised texts and was particularly associated with impersonal possessors (Altenberg 1982: 294; Nevalainen 2006: 76).

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The developments reported for English are much the same in the Mainland Scandinavian languages; the case system in all three languages declined to the extent that the present-day languages have no case system (Haugen 1982: 112; Torp 2002: 20) beyond a distinction made between nominative and oblique in some pronouns (Heltoft 2001: 174). The process by which the case system was lost is broadly the same in all three languages. Old Swedish, for example, retained the nominative, genitive, dative and accusative cases of Old Norse (Norde 2001b: 249). Case distinctions were lost during Old and Middle Swedish (Norde 2001b: 250), with the system breaking down during the 15th century (Platzack 2002: 170). In Danish, the case system remained active but depleted in the 14th and 15th centuries (Skafte Jensen 2003: 222). Adverbal, adjectival and prepositional use of the genitive was lost (Haugen 1976: 294; Platzack 2002: 170), with the exception of some fossilised expressions with till ‘to’ (Askedal 2002: 176; see Section 5.1.1 above, which includes examples involving the cognate Danish til); adnominal use remained, with the concordial masculine and neuter genitive singular ending -s developing into the possessive -s construction (Haugen 1982: 88; Askedal 2003: 23). From the 15th century, the -s marker was also attached to feminine nouns, such use having been very rare in all three Mainland Scandinavian languages before this time, and by the 16th century the -s was also attached to plural nouns (Knudsen 1967: 45; Haugen 1976: 294). Norde (2006: 206–208) identifies three distinguishable stages—although there would have necessarily been overlap during the transition from one stage to the next—in this development in Swedish: 1. “word-marking genitive”, i.e. concordial genitive: all elements within the noun phrase are genitive-marked (lost by Middle Swedish) 2. “phrase-marking genitive”: one element within the noun phrase is marked 3. “s-genitive”, i.e. possessive -s: -s is invariant and attaches to the right-edge of the noun phrase. The stage 3 right-edge attachment is a tendency rather than an absolute rule (Börjars 2003: 145). In contrast to English, Dutch and German, none of the Mainland Scandinavian languages has grammaticalised a single preposition for use in possessive constructions (compare English of, Dutch van and German von). In Swedish, for instance, the prepositions used are av ‘of’, för ‘for’, i ‘in’, på ‘on’, till ‘to’ and över ‘over’; with the exception of those using på ‘on’, they tend to be less colloquial than corresponding possessive -s constructions (Holmes & Hinchcliffe 1994: 448–453).

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7.3.3 Dutch and German While, as reported in Section 7.3.2, English and Swedish had lost their concordial case system by the 14th and 15th century, case marking remained in Dutch and German beyond this time, albeit undergoing the same reductive changes that English and Swedish had also undergone. The generalisation of masculine and neuter genitive markers to feminine and plural nouns is encountered in all four languages, as is the relative resilience of the adnominal genitive while the adverbal and adjectival genitive uses were the first to go; the competition between the adnominal genitive and a prepositional paraphrase is common to all four languages, as is the exaptation of the concordial genitive -s suffix to give the invariant possessive -s. From the 16th century, Dutch and German took a divergent path in the development of their case morphology. One effect of codification is the preservation of the original, obsolescent construction alongside the newer competitors; this leads to situations that contravene the principle of no synonymy (Section 4.2.2). A clear example of this is the arresting of the decline of an obsolescent synthetic construction and its preservation alongside its ascendant analytic competitor. Until the 15th century in Dutch, the concordial genitive was in steady decline against a prepositional alternative; English was approximately a century ahead in this respect (Section 7.3.2). In formal writing, the genitive made a huge leap against the van-construction in the 16th century, and the two constructions were used to a roughly equal extent until the 19th century. In the egodocuments studied, the genitive declined further in the 16th and 17th centuries, but then experienced a resurgence (albeit a weaker one than in formal writing). Similarly, in modern German the adnominal genitive and the von-construction continue to compete; in terms of synonymy, they are semantically equal, but they are only sometimes pragmatically equal. A further example of this concerns the emergence of possessive -s from the concordial genitive, which took place over three identifiable stages in Swedish (7.3.2; Norde 2006). In Dutch and German, on the other hand, where the transition was underway as standardisation began, the three stages occur simultaneously over a prolonged period: this was the situation in the early modern Dutch data (both formal and informal) and the modern German data. In modern German, for instance, stages one and three are part of the norm, while stage two, involving genitive marking somewhere in the noun phrase but not necessarily on the right edge, is widespread but non-standard in the form of s-omitted formations, which include a genitive determiner but no final nominal -s. The lateness of the breakdown of genitive case morphology in German and Dutch meant that the genitive morphology (like case morphology as a whole)

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remained in the languages at a crucial point in their development; namely, at the time when the languages started to become standardised. The chronology of the data indicates clearly that standardisation is not to be wholly equated with the publication of grammars or the introduction of widespread schooling in the vernacular (as opposed to Latin). The earliest formal Dutch texts studied, as well as the letters of Hugo de Groot, are roughly contemporary with the appearance of the first Dutch grammar (Twe-spraack 1584) although it is unknown whether de Groot or the other authors whose works were studied were familiar with this grammar. In German, Martin Luther produced his polemical writings, which show an almost complete avoidance of the vonconstruction in favour of the adnominal genitive, well over a century before the publication of Schottel (1663) and during a period in which German was characterised by the downfall of the genitive case (Section 6.2.3). That is to say, the resurgence of the genitive case precedes the explicit standardisation of both German and Dutch. The moves towards a standard German language had begun in the mid-14th century, with the emergence of a common written language (emerging from the various super-regional written languages that preceded it) based predominantly on East Central German (Stedje 2007: 141). Thus, the incipient standardisation of German began at a time when the case system was still relatively intact. Unlike the ambitions of the first grammarians, the motivation behind the emergence of this early standard was more pragmatic in nature: trade interests were best served by a language comprehensible throughout the German-speaking area. In about 1450 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400– 1468) had pioneered printing with movable type (von Polenz 1991: 130). Coupled with increasing literacy among the population, it was now possible for books and pamphlets to be reproduced and distributed cheaply (Wolff 2009: 104, 108) and for these to be understood by a larger audience than ever before. The early printers recognised that levelling out the strongest regional features— and making alterations to the syntax (Stedje 2007: 148)—in the works they published would increase the comprehensibility of those works throughout the German-speaking area and, accordingly, would increase the potential readership of those works. Despite the absence of normative grammars, the influence of the printers in the incipient emergence of a unified form of German was great (Stedje 2007: 148). Thus, when considering the role that the early grammarians played in influencing the use of obsolescent case morphology, it must be borne in mind that they were not responsible for the rebirth of the decaying system or for revitalising a system that was on its last legs; rather, they assisted in promoting a system which was already recovering from its nadir in the 15th century, and

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whose revival appears to have gone hand in hand with increasing literacy without, at first, explicit involvement of a third party. In Dutch, the strong increase in accuracy of use of genitive case morphology from the 16th to the 19th century is clearly concurrent with the increasing number of grammars available and increasing teaching of Dutch in schools. In modern German, the nearcategorical use of the prepositional genitive in formal writing alongside the much stronger use of the competing constructions in less formal writing and speech testifies to the explicit prescription of the genitive as part of the norm, as does the near-absence of the von-construction in formal writing alongside its stronger use away from formal writing.

7.4

A Theoretical Account

The aim of this sub-section is to investigate how the findings of this investigation regarding the deflection of a language together with the disruptive factor of standardisation can be accounted for within the usage-based framework described in Section 4.2.1. It is contended that taught knowledge about language use is part of experience; that is to say, it is an input to the grammar of a speaker acquiring language in a culture with a standardised language. Additionally, the relative virtues of a traditional approach in accounting for non-canonical, peripheral morphosyntactic structures—such as the concordial genitive in a deflecting or deflected language—which were also noted in Section 4.2.1, are considered here. To recap what was stated in Section 4.2.1, the basic tenet of a usage-based approach is that knowledge of language is shaped by experience of language, and that grammar follows general cognitive principles. Constructions are identified by speakers through repeated occurrences; that is to say, once a speaker has encountered sufficient concrete manifestations of a particular abstract pattern (i.e. a construction), he or she is able to identify the abstract pattern common to the encountered examples. The construction can then be used to produce new, not previously encountered formations, taking into account structural and pragmatic restrictions identified by the speaker when encountering the concrete manifestations of the construction. In this investigation it has also been claimed that usage factors are also responsible for changes affecting morphosynactic constructions. In dealing with the diachronic changes affecting the genitive case and its competitors in Dutch and German, and in the synchronic status of the affecting constructions in both languages, it became clear that the emergence of constructions in the mind of a speaker—and the diachronic emergence of and subsequent changes affecting a construction—

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are based not merely on language in everyday, unconsidered use, but also explicit learning and deliberate changes made to a language. That is to say, the standardisation of a language—and the subsequent propagation of the norm through teaching and normative works—must be factored in as an agent in the usage-based analysis of a speaker’s acquisition of a language and in the changes affecting a language. As noted in Section 7.3.2, the effects of deflection on the genitive case in English and Swedish were completed before the standardisation of those languages had begun. Concordial genitive marking gave way to two constructions: one, the possessive -s construction, emerged from the recognition by speakers that once-only marking within the noun phrase was sufficient to mark possession, together with the generalisation of the masculine and neuter singular s-marker to all genders and numbers; the other, in which a preposition marks the relationship between two noun phrases, emerged as part of the deflectional trend for replacing synthetic case-marking constructions with synonymous, analytic constructions involving a preposition, and which may also have its roots in usage requirements, with increased transparency afforded by a separate lexeme (a preposition) as opposed to one of a limited group of phonologically similar affixes (following the weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables) marking a syntactic relationship (see Tschirch 1969: 185). These two constructions are now the only possibilities for marking a “genitive”-type relationship in English and Swedish (although the Swedish prepositional construction has several sub-schemata involving different prepositions); in both languages, deflection was able to run its course through to completion. In Dutch and German we find the same developments as in English and Swedish until the 15th century; even the order in which the functions of the genitive were lost are the same as in English and Swedish and, by the 15th century, only the adnominal and prepositional genitive remained in general use, with the adverbal and adjectival genitive restricted to occurring with a handful of verbs and adjectives, respectively. The factor that coincides with the watershed of the 15th/16th century as the point of drastic change affecting the genitive case is the incipient standardisation of Dutch and German. After this point, the order of deflection attested in English and Swedish is disrupted: the obsolescent constructions are preserved alongside their novel competitors and the effects are felt not only in formal, careful language use, but also—albeit to a lesser extent—in less careful, more intimate language use. The same usage factors that led to the weakening of the genitive and the rise of the competing constructions in English and Swedish were also at play in Dutch and German, but from the 16th century a further factor entered the picture; namely, the moves towards producing a standard variety. Thus, from this point onwards, speakers

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The usage inputs and outputs of a speaker living in a culture with a standardised language

(and, of course, learners) encounter two types of input in their language experience: “natural” experience arising from everyday use, and experience from language teaching and exposure to norm-conformant language use. From the 16th century onwards in Dutch and German, a speaker’s input relating to the use of the genitive case and its competing constructions comprises on the one hand deflection-related variables experienced in everyday usage such as the coherence (and acceptability) of once-only marking at some point in the noun phrase, the generalisation of -s-marking to feminine nouns, the use of the van-/von-construction instead of the adnominal genitive, and the use of the dative instead of the prepositional genitive and, on the other hand, information related to the standard norm learned in school and from normative works. Furthermore, input related to the standard norm would also be learned via the “everyday” route. With increasing literacy—and the attendant increasing accessibility of publications produced in the standard language (and featuring prestige constructions such as case morphology)—the input of the standard written language also became an important part of experience. This is particularly clear in view of the occurrence of standard features in the language of speakers—in earlier periods—who may not have had formal schooling, or in the language of speakers who lived before the explicit establishing of a standard norm. The pragmatic characteristics relating to the usage of the various constructions would also be learned; for example, that the adnominal genitive was preferred in formal, public usage, and the van-/von-construction in private, informal usage. And, in turn, the language produced by the speaker serves as input for other speakers. This is formalised in Figure 7.1. The separation of

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non-standard and norm-conformant output in Figure 7.1 reflects the evidence from modern German that language users appear to be able to switch fluently between equivalent constructions, depending on register; thus, as already noted by Appel (1941: 43), a language user might use the preposition wegen with a genitive noun phrase in careful writing, but with a dative noun phrase in speech or online chats, or would avoid the von-construction—in favour of the adnominal genitive—in careful writing but not in speech (see Sections 6.4.5 and 6.4.8). In periods in which the norm was less established and familiar, the assumption of a single output, with tendencies towards non-standard and norm-conformant usage, might be more appropriate. In sum, part of becoming an experienced language use involves not only acquiring knowledge through everyday use, but also through formal teaching; and in acquiring knowledge of when to use certain constructions, and in which situation another construction is preferable. Taught linguistic knowledge is an important input to a speaker’s experience of language. Through standardisation, obsolescent (or, perhaps better, once-obsolescent) constructions become part of language users’ input and, therefore, become preserved in the standard language (including informal use of the standard language). Modern German shows that the preserved constructions can be complex and flexible (like the genitive case), while modern Dutch exhibits the preservation in productive use of small, limited fragments (like the adnominal genitive construction). Regardless of their size or complexity, these constructions which are not learned during child language acquisition are learned and stored by language users later on, inside or outside the language classroom. The constructions are learned as discontinuous chunks as described in Section 5.5.5 for Dutch. With explicit reference to the modern Dutch adnominal genitive fragment, and less explicit reference to the modern German genitive, Weerman & de Wit (1999: 1186) liken the late (i.e. post-childhood) acquisition of a construction to the acquisition of a second language. With this in mind, it is pertinent to consider where the genitive (along with other late-learned “prestige” constructions) is stored in the brain of a speaker of modern Dutch or German. Grammatical knowledge of a first language acquired in childhood is stored in implicit memory, while that of a later-learned second language is stored in explicit memory (Urgesi & Fabbro 2009: 364). Thus, a point of interest (but beyond the scope of the present study) would be to establish whether the German genitive case and the Dutch genitive fragment are stored in implicit or explicit memory. Impairment to explicit memory—and therefore loss or impairment of a sufferer’s second language—is caused by, among other diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, alcoholic Korsakoff’s syndrome and anterograde

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amnesia (Paradis 2004: 12–15). Should the genitive be stored in explicit memory, it would be impaired (along with any second language spoken) by such conditions but, should such brain damage occur, impairing the second language but leaving the speaker’s genitive unaffected, this would suggest that the genitive is in fact acquired early enough to be stored in implicit memory (although, as the studies cited in Chapter 6 made clear, it does not turn up in the utterances of young children; nevertheless, those studies do not mention whether the children have acquired a passive understanding of the genitive). Certainly, the data studied here show that, regardless of when it is learned of where it is stored, the genitive fragment is fluently and accurately used (albeit to a limited extent) in Dutch, while the genitive case is very frequent—and fluently and accurately used—in modern German (although subject to pragmatic variation). However, as Paradis (2004: 40) states, “fluency and accuracy are not necessarily indicators of implicit linguistic competence”; a late-learned second language can also be spoken fluently and accurately. In the context of the possibility that a late-learned construction such as the genitive might be stored separately from constructions learned in childhood, the generative treatments of such constructions as “patches” or “viruses” overlaid on the early learned constructions seem potentially convincing (see Section 4.2.1). However, ignoring its location in the brain, the notion of regarding as exceptional such a complex, sprawling construction, with numerous sub-schemata, as the German genitive, is not particularly desirable. The constructional approach adopted here simply makes reference to the fact that, regardless of when it was learned or where it is stored, the most important characteristics of constructions—beyond their structural information—are whether they are used productively and in which pragmatic situations they occur.

7.5

Summary of Chapter 7

In sum, as suggested at various points throughout this investigation, the nature of the interaction between deflection and codification is that the latter has a disruptive effect on the former. In the absence of a normative code, deflection takes place in an identifiable sequence of stages while, if codification begins while deflection is in progress, the progress of deflection becomes less orderly, with old and new constructions preserved alongside one another. Before the advent of standardisation, the genitive case followed the same path in Dutch and German as it had in English and Swedish: a prepositional alternative developed, the once-only possessive -s construction emerged, and the adjectival and adverbal roles of the genitive were the first to weaken. Deflection affected case

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morphology in English and Swedish prior to standardisation and, in those languages, the developments could continue to their culmination, namely, the loss of agreement morphology and the entrenchment of replacements in the form of prepositional constructions, non-agreeing constructions, and the loss of morphological markers. The introduction of standardisation in Dutch and German arrested the deflection that was already in progress, and led to the entrenchment of the obsolescent cases as well as the non-constructions which would have replaced them in the absence of standardisation. Standardisation only preserved those parts of the cases that were there to preserve; thus, for instance, there was no resurrection of the adjectival and adverbal genitives (only the entrenchment of those remnants that remained at the time of standardisation). The surviving genitive case—in both German and early modern Dutch—is subject to a number of structural and pragmatic restrictions that did not affect the case up to the medieval period. While considering the role of standardisation, it was also found that the conventionalisation of certain “prestige” constructions can precede the explicit standardisation via widespread teaching and normative works. Finally, the necessity of regarding input through learning (in an account of acquisition) and standardisation (in a diachronic account) as usage factors was noted.

chapter 8

Conclusions and Closing Remarks 8.1

Introduction

The purpose of this final chapter is to tie up loose ends, to set out the main conclusions stemming from the research described here and to evaluate the contribution they make to our knowledge of the development of the genitive case— in Dutch and German, and typologically within the Germanic languages— and to our knowledge of the relationship between deflection and codification. Additionally, possible directions for future research are suggested: some relate to the findings and the methodology of the present investigation; others represent desiderata for further study of topics which could only be addressed cursorily here without taking the investigation too far off topic, or which follow on from the outcomes of the work reported here.

8.2

The Findings of the Investigation

In both Dutch and German, the genitive case and the nature of the competition it faces have been studied closely for well over a century. Some of the findings of the present investigation simply confirm existing findings and conclusions; nevertheless, the conclusions here have been reached for the first time on the basis of a large and diverse empirical basis. Furthermore, several of the findings stemming from the dataset studied here actually contradict earlier assessments or offer a new slant on previous assumptions. It has been possible to go beyond existing work to shed new light on developments that had been insufficiently studied previously, and to identify usages which had previously gone unnoticed by linguistic research. First, in Section 8.2.1, empirical matters are dealt with; then, in Section 8.2.2, some suggestions are made as to further applications of the findings beyond the field in which the research was carried out. In Section 8.2.3 the findings are viewed in light of their contribution to diachronic construction grammar and to diachronic sociolinguistics. 8.2.1 Empirical Matters Given the breadth and depth of empirically founded diachronic and synchronic research into the genitive case in English and Mainland Scandinavian, a research desideratum was to provide something similar for Dutch and German

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in order to allow a typological comparison of the development of the genitive across the Germanic languages. The present work has filled some gaps in the research into the genitive in Dutch and German, both with regard to diachronic developments and to the synchronic situation in both languages. It was possible to add to knowledge—seemingly for the first time on the basis of quantified data—of the German possessive -s construction and a nascent change currently affecting that construction, and of the modern Dutch construction preserving a fragment of the old genitive case. The latter construction had been mentioned in grammars and research literature since the early 20th century without a detailed analysis of its characteristics and without recognition of the agreement relationship still holding within the genitive noun phrase. To fulfil its aim of investigating the nature of the relationship between deflection and codification—the stage of standardisation in which the characteristics of the standard language are set out—this investigation focused on two languages in which codification began before deflection had fully eradicated morphological case marking, namely Dutch and German. The case focused on was the genitive because, throughout the history of both Dutch and German, that was the case that had most strongly felt the effects of deflection in the shape of competition from synonymous constructions, and pragmatic and structural restrictions on its use. A typological comparison among the Germanic languages indicates a correlation between standardisation and the survival of case morphology. Furthermore, the genitive case is not present in the speech of young children, being learned later; it is not part of the core grammar of German (Weerman & de Wit 1999: 1187). Such factors make the German case system—and, in particular, the genitive case—unsuited to the study of Universal Grammar principles (Weiß 2004: 663–664). The same can be said of the early modern Dutch case system and, especially so, of the adnominal genitive fragment that survives in modern Dutch. However, given this investigation’s aim of assessing the interaction between codification and deflection, the standardised languages were a legitimate object of study. The path taken by the genitive and its competitors in the pre-codification periods was studied mainly on the basis of existing research (with some primary research conducted into written German from about a century before the appearance of the first German grammar). These sources showed that the genitive case in Dutch and German had developed in a very similar way to its counterparts in English and Mainland Scandinavian; for instance, the roles of the genitive weakened in a similar order in all the languages, and the competing constructions were similar (if not wholly identical) in nature in all the languages. The principal difference between Dutch and German on the one hand, and English and Mainland Scandinavian on the other, is that

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deflection affected the genitive case in the former pair a century or more later than it did in English and Mainland Scandinavian. In combination with extralinguistic, cultural developments affecting the speech communities of all these languages—namely, increasing literacy and a concurrent increasing interest in the languages themselves and a recognition of the need for a standard variety of each language—this delay proved crucial to the development of Dutch and German. Whereas the English and Mainland Scandinavian morphological case systems had been lost before standardisation began, with the result that even the earliest grammarians could not include morphological case marking in their norm, morphological case marking remained in Dutch and German as standardisation began and could therefore become codified as part of the norm. While the early grammarians clearly wished to emulate Latin by positing an elaborate case system for their own languages, it was also found on the basis of primary research into pre-standardisation formal written German and informal Dutch egodocuments roughly contemporary with the earliest Dutch grammarians (and therefore not necessarily informed by their prescriptions) that the case morphology which had been in decline throughout the Middle Ages began a resurgence even without prescriptive assistance. That is to say, explicit codification was not the only factor that promoted a revival of case morphology; Luther’s writings—which otherwise exhibit numerous prestandardisation characteristics, like inconsistent orthography and morphology (Wolf 1980: 31, 33)—show a strikingly strong use of the genitive, which almost wholly crowds out its competitors. Thus, the genitive case was part of the convention for formal written language long before it was part of the linguistic code. The studies of early modern Dutch and modern German undertaken in the course of this investigation have shed light on the synchronic manifestation of the effect that codification has on deflection in progress: the obsolescent construction (which would eventually have disappeared in the absence of codification, as happened to the concordial genitive in English and Mainland Scandinavian) is preserved alongside its synonymous competitors. An important insight from the present research is the identification of the resurgence of case morphology before codification began; it is, however, unclear why the genitive case, which would later become a prestige construction, was chosen over its competitors long before it had been specifically chosen as the prestige variant. In sum, the evidence presented in this study suggests that standardisation and prescription are usage factors that should be accounted for in a usage-based portrayal of language change in a language that is either standardised or is undergoing standardisation.

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The pragmatic variation in the division of labour between the genitive and its competitors was similar in early modern Dutch and early modern and modern German. The genitive occurred in all registers and media studied, regardless of their formality; the readiness of language users to use the genitive rather than competing constructions increased in more formal language. The only one of the non-genitive constructions to show a similar association with formal language was the German possessive -s construction, which was strikingly frequent in the Spiegel data. This may be a consequence of its perception as a kind of genitive; it may also suggest that, in formal written language, there is a conventionalised avoidance of the von-construction, which competes with the adnominal genitive and possessive -s and is associated with less formal registers. The pragmatic variation observed in the data confirms the principle of no synonymy—a tenet of construction grammar—which states that a language will not have two or more constructions that are fully equivalent and interchangeable. This principle was found to hold almost all the time, there usually being pragmatic and structural differences between the semantically equal constructions investigated; rarely, however, two competing constructions are used completely interchangeably with regard to semantics, structure and pragmatics. A by-product of this investigation, with the genitive and its competitors as constants, has been an insight into the nature of the linguistic characteristics of the various registers and media used as data sources. In German, as expected, journalistic language—the most formal register studied—favoured the genitive to the almost complete exclusion of the other constructions. Registers such as chats and spontaneous speech, both of which had been expected to show an almost complete avoidance of the genitive, surprisingly showed a strong amount of genitive use; this suggests that division of registers by formality can only ever be approximate and that the boundaries between registers—if placed, for instance, on a cline of formality—are always blurry. 8.2.2 Practical Applications of the Findings The aim of this investigation has been to portray the development of the genitive and synonymous constructions from the early modern period of Dutch and German through to the present day and the relative use of the genitive and synonymous competitors at different points throughout this period, and to assess the nature of the relationship between the deflection affecting a language and the codification and standardisation of that language. As such, the findings of the preceding chapters relate primarily to the fields of morphology, syntax and language change, as well as the interface between morphosyntax and pragmatics. In this sub-section, however, the potential application of (some of) the

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findings beyond these fields is considered, to address their relevance to language teaching and how they can feed into the German public discourse on perceived language decline, in which—as noted in Section 6.6—the genitive case features prominently. The nature of the popular and prescriptive reception to the synchronic manifestations of morphosyntactic change was outlined in Section 2.5. The complaint tradition of the discourse surrounding the perceived use of the genitive case in German was investigated in Section 6.6 on the basis of a study of prescriptive attitudes and publications dating back as far as the 15th century. It was noted that the concern for the health of the genitive case—and stigmatisation of its competing constructions—is not a recent phenomenon, but dates back at least to the 19th century. The focus of the discourse has shifted over time, from the competition between the adnominal genitive and the von-construction, to the competition between the genitive and the dative (both as the case governed by prepositions, and adnominally with the periphrastic possessive construction). Nonetheless, the perception of the genitive as endangered—also taking account of its disappearance from the dialects—has remained constant. Additionally, some recent prescriptive work revives the earliest encountered stigmatisation involving the genitive (from the 15th century), concerning the use of the genitive with prepositions which traditionally govern the dative. The primary relevance of the findings of this investigation to the discourse on the decline of the genitive is as a source of empirically obtained information showing the division of labour between the genitive and its competitors in modern German to differ somewhat from lay linguistic portrayals. Admittedly, as those portrayals suggest, the rival constructions are at their strongest in less formal usage; however, the token counts of the various constructions indicate that, even in informal chats and conversations, the genitive outnumbers its competitors. Only the prepositional genitive was found to sometimes occur less frequently than a competitor in informal language (but only with certain prepositions), but this was always also related to the structure of the noun phrase. Indeed, the structural restrictions on the use of the genitive must be borne in mind when considering its status: on the one hand, they do indicate that genitive is weaker than it once was but, on the other hand, these restrictions have been in place for centuries (also holding in the GerManC data) and they do not show any sign of increasing (i.e. there are no new structural restrictions), even in the least formal language use studied. When viewed by register, the balance between the genitive and its competitors has remained broadly stable since the emergence of a standard German language. Overall, it appears that the perception that the genitive is under threat is self-perpetuating rather than

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based on the actual situation. It is reasonable to assume that a large proportion of proficient users of standard German are aware of the discourse surrounding the genitive to some extent. This knowledge may sensitise those language users to the use of the genitive’s competitors and, accordingly, might make them feel that they encounter the competitors more frequently than they actually do, while the genitives they encounter go unnoticed. It was not possible to confirm this on the basis of the present investigation; careful informant questioning would be able to shed light on this matter. Anyone making the claim that the genitive is under threat, or that it appears only in formal writing, must be able to account for its higher token frequency than its rival constructions even in informal language use. As such, a study such as this can add empirical weight to existing non-data-driven attempts by linguists (e.g. Meinunger 2006; Klein 2009) to provide an objective counterpoint to lay linguistic work such as that by Sick (2004, etc.). Indeed, a desideratum for future data-driven research might be to investigate stigmatised constructions in detail, with data from a variety of registers and media, in order to show exactly how the lay linguistic perception matches the situation in actual usage. The insights offered by this investigation into the use of the genitive case and its competitors could be usefully applied in language teaching. The findings on the use of the modern Dutch adnominal genitive construction are, given the marginality of the construction, of little relevance to the teaching of Dutch beyond, perhaps, introducing learners—at secondary school, or to advanced learners of Dutch as a second language who might wish to use the construction as an alternative to the van-construction in high-register writing—to the agreement relationship that holds within the construction. The findings might, in contrast, be profitably applied to the teaching of German. After all, the pragmatic variation observed within the data suggests that knowledge of when to use the genitive and when to use an alternative construction is a vital part of being a competent user of German. Above all, second language learners— who are unlikely to have the same usage input as learners of German as a first language—could benefit from the detailed information on the pragmatic distribution of the German genitive and its competitors, and on the structural restrictions controlling the use of the genitive and its competitors. This study has indicated that the genitive case is widespread throughout German; in particular, a competency in comprehending and producing formal German requires proficient use of the genitive case, which has a high token frequency in the most formal written language (but is, admittedly, a great deal less frequent in informal language, albeit not through suppression by other constructions). Fluency in the German language as a whole requires knowledge of the structural and pragmatic factors governing the use the genitive case and

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the use of one of its competitors instead. Basic information on the pragmatic variation that holds for the use of the genitive is given in several of the textbooks consulted. McNab et al. (1969: 141), which is aimed at adult beginners who need to learn German quickly (1969: ix), observes the tendency to avoid the genitive in speech in favour of compounds and the von-construction; Hohenadl & Will (1994: 40), noting the association of the von-construction with colloquial language, explicitly recommend its avoidance (in favour of the adnominal genitive) in formal language use. Only rarely are structural characteristics of the genitive—beyond those necessary for its use, such as determiner, adjectival and (where applicable) nominal inflection—mentioned in textbooks. It is noted in Radcliffe (1961: 15) that postnominal order is more frequent than prenominal order in the adnominal genitive. The use of the von-construction rather than the genitive in the absence of an inflectable lexeme in the noun phrase is noted by Meinel (1972: 43), while s-omission on loan words is observed by Hohenadl & Will (1994: 124). The guidance given by Trim et al. (1985: 295) on the case governed by wegen is unusual among normative and pedagogical works: in the grammar section of the book, wegen is first listed among the group of prepositions with which “the dative is always used” and, below that list, it is noted that wegen “is sometimes used with the genitive”; no information is given regarding pragmatic or structural variation. In keeping with its late acquisition by native speakers, and the likelihood of its absence from the situations dealt with in the early stages of learning German as a second language, the genitive is introduced late in courses for foreign learners (e.g. Dieling et al. 1967 [1964]; McNab et al. 1969; Trim et al. 1985), and may not even be formally introduced (beyond a cursory mention) in the first volume of multiple-volume courses (e.g. Collett & Spencer 1998: 3, 181). In contrast, textbooks intended specifically for science students and scientists who need to be able to read scientific German reflect the high frequency of the genitive in formal writing and the consequent likelihood that students will encounter genitives already in their earliest contacts with German: the genitive case is introduced early on in such works (e.g. Radcliffe 1961: 14–17; Meinel 1972: 33, 39). The findings of this investigation do partially support the late introduction of the genitive in textbooks and courses aimed at beginners; on the level of passive language experience, however, an ignorance of the genitive could prove disadvantageous to learners encountering German in everyday life. For more experienced learners, such as university students of German, the information on pragmatic variation—going beyond the familiar dichotomy in which the genitive is ascribed to formal language and said to be absent from colloquial language (e.g. Hentschel & Weydt 2003: 171; see also 6.4.1)—and adding more

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detail; for instance, in emphasising that knowledge of the genitive is necessary when reading an everyday text such as a newspaper (as indicated by the high token frequency of the genitive in the Spiegel data) and that the genitive is relatively frequent in informal communication, but also giving the students an awareness of when it is acceptable not to use the genitive, such as in informal speech and when participating in online communication. In sum, the synchronic findings on variation could be applied to boost students’ confidence regarding when to use the various semantically equivalent but pragmatically non-synonymous constructions. 8.2.3 Theoretical Implications of the Findings Having considered empirical matters related to the findings of this investigation (Section 8.2.1) and potential practical applications of the findings (Section 8.2.2), this sub-section sets out some of the theoretical implications of the findings with particular reference to the diachronic application of construction grammar and to diachronic sociolinguistics. Given its focus on deflection and standardisation, and the relationship between the two, this investigation has shed light on the interface between grammar and sociolinguistics, viewed within a diachronic context. Thus, in addition to providing insights into carrying out research within a diachronic construction grammar framework, this investigation can add to our knowledge of how sociolinguistic factors can be accounted for within construction grammar. The fact that language users are aware of a construction’s pragmatic valency—such as its association with a particular register or medium, or any particular connotations it carries—is clear from the data studied here. While there were few instances in which a construction was exclusively used in one pragmatic context (the extended German possessive -s being one of these few examples), clear pragmatic conventionalisations of constructions were encountered, such as the association of the modern Dutch adnominal genitive construction with formal, careful writing and speech, or the general avoidance of the vonconstruction in formal, careful writing in modern German. The existence of such conventionalisations supports the assumption of unity of structure and function within a construction. A basic assumption in the diachronic application of construction grammar is that an entire morphosyntactic structure can change, and that pragmatic factors may be linked to this change (Bergs & Diewald 2008: 3–4; quotations given in full in Section 4.2.3 above). The wisdom of including functional information alongside structural information in a diachronic study was borne out in the present investigation. In this way, for instance, it was possible to illustrate the changing structural characteristics of the German adnominal genitive

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since the early modern period, and to shed light on when and how the particular variant of the construction became associated with particular registers and connotations (such as the restriction in use and pragmatic specialisation of the prenominal genitive). In Section 4.2.1, an assumption was put forward which formed the philosophy behind the methodology adopted in the investigation. The assumption is repeated here verbatim: When the synchronic usage of a particular construction—or group of competing constructions—by a particular cohort of language users is compared to the use of the same construction(s) by an earlier cohort, the nature of the diachronic change in use of the construction(s) becomes apparent, as does the way in which usage factors have contributed to this change. Accordingly, the methodology adopted in this investigation to study language change in a construction grammar framework involved the carrying out of individual synchronic investigations focusing on the use of the relevant constructions at a particular point in time and a particular register; these synchronic investigations were then viewed in chronological order. This provided a diachronic overview of the transition from the early modern period to the present day. This information, established in the detailed synchronic analyses of language use in the various sources studied (and coded in a database for ease of access during the actual investigation), could then be viewed in a diachronic context by following particular constants chronologically across the individual synchronic analyses. A particular factor, structural or functional, could be isolated and studied at a particular point in time or followed across the entire period studied here. By applying this methodology it was, for example, possible to focus on the structural characteristics of the Dutch adnominal construction from the 16th century to the present day and to establish how (and when) it changed from a flexible construction with a broad type frequency to become the rather restricted fragment that remains in the modern language; through coding for pragmatic information in the database, the level of use of the construction in various registers could be established in each individual period studied and then traced across the entire period of the investigation. It was also possible to compare the state of the adnominal genitive construction at a particular point in time to the prescriptions of contemporary grammars, to compare the similarities between the data and the prescriptions and, accordingly, to estimate the influence of the grammars in the use of the construction.

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The investigation was concerned with the division of labour between genitive constructions and semantically equivalent non-genitive constructions. By studying the non-genitive constructions in exactly the same way as the genitive constructions, the pragmatic characteristics of each could be compared at particular points in time and could be followed over the entire time period. As well as providing an empirical confirmation of existing knowledge, such as the association of the Dutch adnominal genitive with formal writing throughout the early modern period, this approach also permitted a number of novel insights, such as the surprising strength of the adnominal genitive (although it never outnumbered the van-construction) even in the most informal egodocuments studied, and the steadily increasing accuracy of use of concordial genitive morphology across the early modern period, concurrent with increasing literacy and, presumably, increasing familiarity with the grammarians’ prescriptions. The steady narrowing of the type frequency of the emergent possessive -s construction across the early modern period could be viewed in the context of the resurgence of the concordial genitive and the increasing accuracy of its use; it was then possible to propose the thesis that the resurgence of the concordial genitive led to the restriction of possessive -s, meaning that the Dutch possessive -s is, to this day, more restricted than its English and Mainland Scandinavian counterparts which did not exist alongside a resurgent concordial genitive construction. In sum, the metholodology adopted here, in which the division of labour within a group of competing—i.e. semantically, but not necessarily pragmatically, equivalent—constructions is studied first synchronically and then viewed in a diachronic context, with the semantic content of each group as a constant, could be usefully applied to other situations of variation between a number of semantically equivalent constructions, particularly when the aim is to find out how the nature of the variation has changed over time. The centrality of usage factors to a construction grammar approach, the ability to pinpoint a functional characteristic to a construction at a particular point in time, and the ability to account for diachronic change in the variation between particular constructions, makes the approach particularly suitable for work in diachronic sociolinguistics. As constructions contain information not just on structure and semantics, but also on pragmatics, it is straightforward to account for the association of a construction with a particular register or medium, and whether or not a construction is pre- or proscribed in particular pragmatic contexts. Presumably, other sociolinguistically relevant factors—e.g. gender, social background, level of education, geographical origin—could be coded for in the same way as the factors coded for in the present investigation, and followed over time with regard to their relevance to the use of particular con-

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structions. By applying this methodology, the tension between deflection and standardisation (cf. also Vezzosi 2000) was made clear, and the nature of the relationship between the two processes could be exposed diachronically. The diachronic construction grammar approach adopted in this investigation fits neatly alongside the observation that, “since language is always embedded in some social context, language change necessarily takes place in a given social setting” (Joseph 2012: 67); that is to say, construction grammar forms an appropriate basis for research into diachronic sociolinguistics, given that the social context in which a construction is conventionalised is part of language users’ stored knowledge about the construction.

8.3

Methodological Considerations

The aim pursued here of testing the relationship between deflection and standardisation in German and Dutch—and to contrast parallel developments in the two languages—meant that it was necessary to find data sources which would contain standard language use and would indicate the extent of the manifestation of deflection; at the same time, the data sources had to be as comparable as possible between the two languages. Throughout the early modern period, the morphological case system followed in standard (written) Dutch shared many characteristics with that of early modern and modern standard German: there were four identifiable cases (albeit more reduced in early modern Dutch than in modern German) used alongside synonymous competing constructions which had emerged in the course of deflection. Accordingly, the comparisons between 16th–19th century Dutch, and 16th–21st century German with regard to the division of labour between the genitive case and competing constructions were valid. The pragmatic variation in the use of the constructions known to hold for German was investigated on the basis of data of varying formality and from various registers. Formal published writings were studied for both languages and all periods; the nature of the informal language use studied varied according to the period in question: while, for the modern period, chats and transcribed speech could be used, it was necessary to use personal egodocuments from the early modern period. The findings obtained in the course of this investigation indicate the desirability of accounting for usage factors as well as purely structural factors when analysing the development of morphosyntactic constructions. The changes that have affected the genitive case and its competitors from the early modern period onwards in German and Dutch were found to stem not just from structural factors, such as the restriction of the morphological genitive to certain

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noun phrase types (e.g. the Genitivregel in German), but also from pragmatic factors, such as the conventionalised favouring of the genitive—and avoidance of the von-construction—in careful language use in German. The pragmatic factors were found to have a direct link to the standardisation of the languages, and illustrated the influence of conscious, external decisions—such as prescriptivists’ promotion of case constructions over non-case constructions, and the stigmatisation of certain constructions—on language use and language change. A desideratum for future research is therefore to carry out more work on integrating language users’ knowledge of prescription and stigmatisations into usage-based analyses of languages. By explicitly including information on a construction’s status in the prescriptive grammars and teaching of the language in question, it is possible to learn more about the precise nature of the influence of prescription on language use, and about the role that language users’ knowledge of prescription and stigamtisation plays when choosing between two or more semantically equivalent constructions in a given situation. The diachronic overview presented in this investigation was based on unevenly spaced synchronic analyses dating from the early modern period to the present day. While this would be an insufficient basis for an investigation focusing purely on the diachronic paths followed by the genitive and its competitors (which would demand regularly spaced samples), in the context of this investigation it permitted detailed focus on the manifestations of deflection in standard language use at particular points in time. A fundamental methodological consideration was the enrichment of usage data through coding for structural and pragmatic information within a database; the richness of the data was aided by the variety of registers and media represented in the sources. This allowed insights into the precise usage of the constructions concerned at a given point in time, and it was possible to weigh these findings up against the stage of the standardisation process and the nature of prescription at that time. Had this labour-intensive methodology been adopted for data collected at regular intervals—for instance, every 50 or 100 years—from the end of the medieval period up to the present day, the effort involved would have gone beyond what was possible within the bounds of the project. Overall, the methodology followed resulted in an appropriate body of data with which to study the relationship between deflection and codification, with particular focus on the genitive case and its competing constructions, in Dutch and German from the early modern period to the present day. With regard to the data used as the basis for this investigation, the aim was to study a broad spread of data from a variety of registers and media. With the exception of the Dutch corpora INL 27 Mil. and Corpus Gesproken Neder-

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lands, the sources used here were all relatively small. This smallness was balanced out by the fine detail made possible by manually coding the data in the databases; the sheer volume of data extracted from larger corpora would have prohibited detailed coding within the databases, at least within the confines of the project in which this research was undertaken. Certainly, for the purposes of this investigation, which made reference to features—and, indeed, to constructions—that were not tagged in the sources used, the principle of finely coding data from smaller sources appears to have been effective and successful; future research using larger corpora could confirm or deny this. Despite the richness of the German dataset used here, the lack of a large source of spontaneous, truly informal spoken language (going beyond the conversations in Brons-Albert [1984] and the reasonably casual interviews of the Berlin corpus) was an important gap in the data. The evidence of the spoken data and the Dortmund chat data suggested that the genitive case—particularly its adnominal use—was far from rare in informal registers; a larger body of informal spoken data would have allowed firmer conclusions to be drawn regarding the division of labour between the genitive and its competitors in informal speech. A desideratum for future research is therefore the investigation of the research questions addressed here on the basis of a spoken corpus of German comparable to the spoken components of the British National Corpus or the International Corpus of English, or the Corpus Gesproken Nederlands. Geographical and dialectal variation have been noted by various scholars as relevant to the use of the genitive and its competitors. The focus of the present investigation on Standard German necessarily involved the exclusion of a detailed study of dialectal usage. Nonetheless, the research questions addressed here could profitably also be addressed in a large-scale study of the German dialects, to establish how the competing constructions are used and to show the extent to which the genitive case still crops up in the dialects (if at all) and, where it does, to ascertain whether it is a feature of the dialect in question or whether it is the result of interference from the standard language. This, too, must be left to future research.

Appendix 1: Primary Sources This appendix lists all the primary sources used during the research presented in this book. Secondary works from which examples were drawn are not included here, but are cited in the References section. The addresses of individual websites on which examples were attested are given as footnotes at the relevant points of the text and are not listed here. Information on the size and content of the corpora studied here is given in Chapter 4. The texts that comprise the Early Modern Dutch Corpus, which was compiled for the purposes of the present research, are listed at the end of this section.

Dutch Corpora Corpus Gesproken Nederlands (http://www.inl.nl/tst-centrale/nl/producten/corpora/ corpus-gesproken-nederlands/6-17) Early Modern Dutch Corpus Eindhoven Corpus (http://www.inl.nl/tst-centrale/nl/producten/corpora/ eindhoven-corpus/6-27) INL 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus (http://www.inl.nl/tst-centrale/nl/producten/ corpora/27-miljoen-woorden-krantencorpus-1995/6-45)

Books Barend-van Haeften, Marijke L. (ed.). 2002. Op reis met de VOC: De openhartige dagboeken van de zusters Lammens en Swellengrebel. (Met medewerking van E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga.). Zutphen: Walburg Pers. Mathijsen, Marita (ed.). 1993. Waarde van Lennep: Brieven van De Schoolmeester toegelicht door Marita Mathijsen. Amsterdam: Em. Querido’s Uitgeverij B.V. Moree, Perry (ed.). 2003. Kikkertje lief. Brieven van Aagje Luijtsen geschreven tussen 1776 en 1780 aan Harmanus Kikkert, stuurman in dienst van de VOC. Ingeleid en bezorgd door Perry Moree. Met medewerking van Ingrid Dillo, Vibeke Roeper en Theo Timmer. Texel: Het open boek. Rogge, H.C. (ed.). 1902. Brieven van en aan Maria van Reigersberch. Leiden: E.J. Brill. van Leeuwenhoek, Antoni. 1688. Den Waaragtigen Omloop des Bloeds, Als mede dat DE ARTERIEN EN VENÆ Gecontinueerde BLOED-VATEN zijn, Klaar voor de oogen gestelt. Verhandelt in een BRIEF, geschreven aan de Koninglijke Societeit tot Londen. door ANTONI VAN LEEUWENHOEK, Lid van deselve SOCIETEYT.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_010

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German Corpora Berliner Wendekorpus (http://www.dwds.de/?qu=&view=523; http://www.dwds.de/ resource/spezialkorpora/#part_3) Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache Kerncorpus (http://www.dwds.de/) Dortmunder Chat-Korpus (http://www.chatkorpus.tu-dortmund.de/) GerManC (http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/germanc/files/) Spiegel Online (http://www.spiegel.de/)

Books Brons-Albert, Ruth. 1984. Gesprochenes Standarddeutsch. Telefondialoge. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Fontane, Theodor. 1994 [1888]. Irrungen, Wirrungen. Stuttgart: Reclam. Fontane, Theodor. 1965 [1889–1890]. Stine. In Theodor Fontane (ed.). Schach von Wuthenow. Stine, 119–194. München: Goldmann. Fontane, Theodor. 1969 [1894–1895]. Effi Briest. Stuttgart: Reclam. Fuchs, Harald P. and Gerd Schank (eds). 1975. Texte gesprochener deutscher Standardsprache III: Alltagsgespräche. München: Hueber. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1999 [1774]. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Studienausgabe. Paralleldruck der Fassungen von 1774 und 1787. Herausgegeben von Matthias Luserke. Stuttgart: Reclam. Jäger, Karl-Heinz (ed.). 1979. Texte gesprochener deutscher Standardsprache IV: Beratungen und Dienstleistungsdialoge. München: Hueber. Jillings, Lewis and Brian Murdoch. 1977. Martin Luther: Selections. Hull: Hull University German Department. Kaiserchronik. 1849 [c. 1150]. Die Kaiserchronik. Nach der ältesten Handschrift des Stiftes Vorau. Aufgefunden mit einer Einleitung, Anmerkungen und den Lesearten der zunächst stehenden Hss. Herausgegeben von Joseph Diemer. Theil I.—Urtext. Wien: Wilhelm Braunmüller k. k. Hofbuchhändler. Nibelungenlied. 1970. Das Nibelungenlied. Mittelhochdeutscher Text und Übertragung. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Anhang versehen von Helmut Brackert (2 vols.). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Otfried von Weißburg. 1987 [c. 870]. Evangelienbuch. Auswahl. Althochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Gisela Vollmann-Profe. Stuttgart: Reclam. Redder, Angelika and Konrad Ehlich (eds). 1994. Gesprochene Sprache: Transkripte und Tondokumente. Phonai 41. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Reinmar. 1986. Lieder. Nach der Weingartner Liederhandschrift (B). Mittelhochdeutsch/ Neuhochdeutsch. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Günther Schweikle. Stuttgart: Reclam.

primary sources

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Sachsenspiegel. 1956 [c. 1221–1224]. Sachsenspiegel: Lehnrecht. Herausgegeben von Karl August Eckhardt. Göttingen: Musterschmidt Verlag. Schiller, Friedrich. 1964. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 35. Briefwechsel. Briefe an Schiller 25.5.1794–31.10.1795. In Verbindung mit Lieselotte Blumenthal herausgegeben von Günter Schulz. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Schiller, Friedrich. 1972. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 36I. Briefwechsel. Briefe an Schiller 1.11.1795–31.3.1797. Herausgegeben von Norbert Oellers. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Schiller, Friedrich. 1975. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 38I. Briefwechsel. Briefe an Schiller 1.11.1798–31.12.1800. Herausgegeben von Lieselotte Blumenthal. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Schiller, Friedrich. 1981. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 37I. Briefwechsel. Briefe an Schiller 1.4.1797–31.10.1798. Herausgegeben von Norbert Oellers und Frithjof Stock. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Schiller, Friedrich. 1988. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 39I. Briefwechsel. Briefe an Schiller 1.1.1801–31.12.1802. Herausgegeben von Stefan Ormanns. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Schiller, Friedrich. 1991. Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Vol. 34I. Briefwechsel. Briefe an Schiller 1.3.1790–24.5.1794. Herausgegeben von Ursula Naumann. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger. Sperlbaum, Margret (ed.). 1975. Proben deutscher Umgangssprache. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Steger, Hugo, Ulrich Engel and Hugo Moser (eds). 1971. Texte gesprochener Standardsprache I. München: Hueber. Tucholsky, Kurt. 2000 [1931]. Schloss Gripsholm. Eine Sommergeschichte. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. van Os., Charles (ed.). 1974. Texte gesprochener deutscher Standardsprache II. “Meinung gegen Meinung”. Diskussionen über aktuelle Themen. München/Düsseldorf: Max Hueber Verlag/Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann. Walshe, M. O’C. 1974. A Middle High German Reader. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zangemeister, Karl and Theodor Wilhelm Braune. 1894. Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung aus der Bibliotheca Palatina. Heidelberg: Koester.

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The Texts of the Early Modern Dutch Corpus Unless otherwise noted, a 5,000 word sample was taken from each work listed, giving 20,000 words for each genre in each sub-period; each sub-period contains 100,000 words. All were obtained via the Digitale Bibliotheek der Nederlandse Letteren (http://www.dbnl.org/). 16th and 17th Centuries

Genre

Year

Diaries

1566–1568 Marcus van Vaernewyck Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt 1566–1568 1572–1581 Willem Janszoon Verwer Memoriaelbouck 1643–1654 Willem Frederik Gloria Parendi. Dagboeken van Willem Frederik, stadhouder van Friesland, Groningen en Drenthe 1652–1662 Jan van Riebeeck Dagverhaal

Drama

1550 1602 1613 1686

D.V. Coornhert P.C. Hooft G.A. Bredero Michiel de Swaen

Comedie vande rijckeman Bruiloftspel, De gewonde Venus De klucht van de koe De menschwording

Fictional prose

1644

D.V. Coornhert

1646 1691 1695

anon. Johannes Duijkerius Nicolaas Heinsius

Vijftigh lustighe historien oft nieuwigheden Joannis Boccatij Het net der wellustigheyt Het leven van Philopater Den vermakelyken avanturier

1557 1610

Ambrosius Zeebout Willem Baudartius

1670 1681

Cornelis Speelman anon.

Factual nonacademic prose

Author

Title

Tvoyage van Mher Joos van Ghistele Morghen-wecker der vrye Nederlantsche Provintien Notitie ’t Amsterdamsch hoerdom

345

primary sources

Genre

Year

Author

Title

Academic prose

1574 Marcus van Vaernewyck De historie van Belgis 1576–1579 Andries Vierlingh Tractaet van dyckagie 1631 Salomon de Bray Architectura moderna ofte bouwinge van onsen tyt 1654 Jan Adriaansz Een kleine chronyke ende voorbereidinge Leeghwater van de afkomste ende ’t vergroten van de dorpen van Graft en de Ryp

18th Century

Genre

Year

Diaries

1732–1772 Jacob Bicker-Raye

Dagboek1

Drama

1715 1737 1743 1754

Pieter Langendijk Albertus Frese & Christiaan Schaaf anon. Simon Stijl

De wiskunstenaars of ’t gevluchte juffertje De belachchelyke minnaer; of de devote serenade De bruiloft van Kloris en Roosje Krispyn filozoof

1708

Hendrik Smeeks

1783 1784

Rhijnvis Feith Aagje Deken en Betje Wolff Elisabeth Maria Post

Beschryvinge van het magtig Koningryk Krinke Kesmes Julia Historie van den heer Willem Leevend (deel 1) Reinhart, of natuur en godsdienst

Fictional prose

1791 Factual nonacademic prose

1754 1780

1786 1792

Author

Title

anon. De volmaakte Hollandsche keuken-meid Willem van Hogendorp Kraspoekol, of de droevige gevolgen van eene te verre gaande strengheid, jegens de slaaven Marten Corver Toneel-aantekeningen Gerrit Paape Mijne vrolijke wijsgeerte in mijne ballingschap

1 This is the sole text in the DBNL in this genre and century; all 5,000 tokens in this genre are taken from this text.

346

appendix 1 18th Century, Continued

Genre

Year

Author

Title

Academic prose

1741 1749 1769 1781

Herman Boerhaave Jan Wagenaar J. le Francq van Berkhey Martinus van Marum

Kortbondige spreuken wegens de ziektens Vaderlandsche historie. Deel 1 Natuurlyke historie van Holland. Eerste deel Schets der elektriciteit-kunde

Title

19th Century

Genre

Year

Author

Diaries2

1876 1882

Gerard Bilders A.W. Engelen

1889

Brieven en dagboek Uit de gedenkschriften van een voornaam Nederlandsch beambte Marie Agathe Boddaert Sturmfels

Drama

1808 1877 1878 1890

Willem Bilderdijk Multatuli J.J. Cremer Frederik van Eeden

Fictional prose

1840 c. 1845

Factual nonacademic prose

1861 1871 1877

Floris de Vijfde Vorstenschool Emma Berthold Don Torribio

Jacon van Lennep De lotgevallen van Ferdinand Huyck Gijsbertus van Sandwijk Lettergeschenk voor de lieve jeugd, in poëzij en proza 1862 P.J. Andriessen De schildknaap van Gijsbrecht van Aemstel 1880–1890 anon. Geschiedenis van een Muis

1893

François HaverSchmidt Reis door België en langs den Rijn Jan ter Gouw De volksvermaken B.H. Lulofs De kunst der mondelijke voordracht of uiterlijke welsprekendheid Pim Mulier Wintersport

2 In this genre and period in the DBNL, only these three eligible texts appeared: circa 6,700 tokens were taken from each text (3 × 6,700 = 20,100).

347

primary sources

Genre

Year

Author

Academic prose

1857–1864 Christiaan Kramm

1859 1878

W.A. Holterman D. Bierens de Haan

1885

Willem Einthoven

Title De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd De lucht Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis der wisen natuurkundige wetenschappen in de Nederlanden Stereoscopie door kleurverschil

Appendix 2: Large Data Tables and Charts This appendix contains a number of tables and charts which, on account of their large size, have been removed from the main body of text in order to improve the readability of the text. They are referred to within the text and their numbering is consistent with the point at which they are referred to in the text. table 4.2

The sources used in this investigation

Language Name of source

Period

No. of words Formality Medium

Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch

Early Modern Dutch Corpus Maria van Reigersberch Nicolaes van Reigersberch Hugo de Groot Lammens Swellengrebel Luijtsen van de Linde Eindhoven

16th–19th century 17th century 17th century 17th century 18th century 18th century 18th century 19th century 20th century

300,000 45,408 7,430 3,509 25,116 17,532 28,631 40,512 720,000

Dutch Dutch

20th century 27 million 20th–21st century 9 million

German German German German

INL 27 Mil. Corpus Gesproken Nederlands Luther GerManC E.D. Schiller Freiburger Korpus

16th century 17th–19th century 18th–19th century 20th century

34,893 100,000 33,501 67,908

German

Sperlbaum (1975)

20th century

8,198

German German

Brons-Albert (1984) Redder & Ehlich (1994)

20th century 20th century

44,025 435,495

German German German

Berliner Wendecorpus Spiegel Online Dortmunder Chat-Korpus

20th century 21st century 21st century

282,000 700,000 1.09 million

Total words

39,984,158

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_010

formal informal informal informal informal informal informal informal formal formal formal, informal formal formal informal formal, informal formal, informal informal formal, informal informal formal informal

written written written written written written written written written, spoken written spoken written written written spoken spoken spoken spoken spoken written written

figure 6.5 The possessor animacy and adnominal genitive order (including, for comparison, figures for the von-construction) in GerManC and the E.D. Schiller letters (in tokens)

350 appendix 2

351

large data tables and charts table 6.11

The relative use (tokens) of the genitive and dative cases in structure A with masculine and neuter singular nouns Formal writing genitive dative

bezüglich dank einschließlich inklusive laut mittels statt trotz während wegen zugunsten zufolge zwecks

table 6.12

1 17 3 1 1 2 8 32 47 89 6 – –

– 1 1 3 37 1 3 4 – 2 1 67 –

Formal speech genitive dative 2 – – – – 1 – – 2 7 – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

Informal writing genitive dative 9 – – – – 1 4 – 29 27 2 – 1

– – – – – – 1 4 5 27 – 1 1

Informal speech genitive dative – – – – – – 1 – 4 2 – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

The relative use (tokens) of the genitive and dative cases in structure A with plural nouns of all genders Formal writing genitive dative

bezüglich dank einschließlich entgegen inklusive laut mittels ob statt trotz während wegen zugunsten zufolge

1 10 3 3 3 2 3 – 4 44 10 75 6 3

– – – 4 – 3 – – 1 – – 2 – 57

Formal speech genitive dative 1 1 2 – – – – – – – – 5 – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Informal writing genitive dative 5 – – – – – – – 2 5 13 27 1 –

– – – – – – – 1 – 2 2 10 – –

Informal speech genitive dative 3 – – – – 1 – – – 2 – 5 1 –

– – – 1 – – – – – – – 1 – –

352 table 6.13

appendix 2 The relative use (in tokens) of the genitive and the s-less construction with masculine and neuter singular nouns in structure B (The figure in parentheses is the number of tokens involving a proper name.) Formal writing genitive s-less

abzüglich aufgrund außer außerhalb bezüglich dank einschließlich inklusive innerhalb kraft laut mithilfe samt statt trotz während wegen zufolge zugunsten zwecks

table 6.14

– – – – 1 (0) – 10 (10) – – – – 7 (1) – 2 (0) 1 (0) 6 (0) – – – – 1 (0) 91 (88) 1 (0) – – – – 19 (5) 3 (0) 3 (0) – 2 (1) 37 (0) 6 (1) – 14 (8) 3 (3) – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – 2 (0) – – 2 (0) – – –

– – – – – 2 (0) – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Informal writing genitive s-less – – – – 1 (1) – – – – – – – – – – – 3 (0) – – –

1 (0) 1 (0) – – 6 (3) – – – – 1 (0) 9 (4) – – – – 2 (0) 25 (9) 1 (0) – 1 (0)

Informal speech genitive s-less – – – – – – – – 2 (2) – – – – – – – – – 2 (2) –

– – – – – – – – – – 2 (0) – 1 (0) 1 (0) 2 (0) – 1 (0) – – –

The relative use (tokens) of the genitive and dative cases with plural nouns in structure B (The figure in parentheses is the number of tokens involving a proper name.) Formal writing genitive dative

angesichts inklusive laut statt trotz wegen

Formal speech genitive s-less

1 (0) – – 1 (0) – –

– 2 (0) 11 (0) 2 (0) 4 (0) 3 (0)

Formal speech genitive dative – – – – – –

– – – – – –

Informal writing genitive dative – – – – – –

– – – – – 2 (0)

Informal speech genitive dative – – – – – –

– – – – – 2 (0)

353

large data tables and charts table 6.15

The relative occurrence with prepositions of a von-complement and (in parentheses) a genitive complement in Structure A and Structure B (tokens) Formal writing A B

angesichts anhand anlässlich anstelle aufgrund außerhalb binnen fernab gegenüber innerhalb jenseits mithilfe nördlich rechts südlich südöstlich südwestlich ungeachtet unterhalb unweit zugunsten

– (73) – (9) – (9) – (6) 1 (60) – (33) – (18) 1 (3) 1 (46) 3 (62) – (18) 1 (28) – (–) 1 (2) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (6) – (9) 1 (5) – (20)

3 (1) 3 (–) 1 (–) 1 (–) 6 (–) 1 (10) – (8) 1 (–) – (58) 23 (1) 2 (–) 7 (1) 1 (–) – (–) 1 (–) – (–) 1 (–) 1 (–) 1 (–) – (–) – (3)

Formal speech A B – (2) – (6) – (–) 1 (1) – (8) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (1) – (9) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–)

– (–) 1 (–) – (–) 1 (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) 2 (–) 1 (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) 1 (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–)

Informal writing A B – (9) – (11) – (4) 1 (3) 1 (30) – (16) – (1) – (–) – (6) – (44) – (–) – (2) – (–) 2 (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (3) – (1) – (–) – (3)

– (–) 1 (–) – (–) 4 (–) 1 (3) 4 (1) – (–) – (–) – (–) 17 (–) 1 (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–)

Informal speech A B – (–) – (2) – (1) – (–) 1 (13) – (4) – (–) – (–) – (2) 5 (14) – (1) 1 (1) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (1)

– (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) 1 (–) – (–) 1 (–) – (–) – (3) 5 (2) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (–) – (2)

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Index Afrikaans 70–71, 136 Aghul 32 agreement 7–8, 20–21, 42, 54, 63, 101–102, 147, 158–159, 207–208, 290, 294, 296, 316–317, 326, 328, 332. See also genitive, concordial Altaic 30 analogy 123n, 173, 175, 189, 191, 290 analytic construction 1–2, 17–19, 26, 35–36, 42–43, 57, 59, 128, 130, 209–211, 216, 311–312, 319, 322 automatisation. See chunking borrowing 186, 212n, 231–232, 256, 259. See also loan word case. See also genitive accusative 6–7, 16, 32, 36, 38, 41, 43–44, 47–49, 96, 101, 113, 115–116, 124, 154, 156, 210–211, 214, 216, 217, 219, 221, 237, 239, 240, 243–246, 250, 266, 296, 312–313, 318 case form, case marker 6–7, 9–10, 16, 20, 62, 95, 115–116, 140, 159, 313 case hierarchy 36 case language 8–9, 13, 209, 313 dative 6–9, 18–19, 22–25, 35n, 36, 38, 41–47, 58, 61, 64, 79, 90, 96–97, 101, 104, 109, 110, 113–118, 149, 210–211, 214, 216n, 217–218, 221, 235, 237n, 239–254, 264–273, 295–298, 300–307, 309, 312–315, 318, 323–324, 331–333, 351–352 instrumental 19, 26, 36, 211, 214 nominative 6–7, 36, 97, 101, 104, 110, 113, 116, 124, 210–211, 214, 250, 318 chat communication 64–65, 78–83, 87, 252–257, 259–265, 267–271, 273–275, 277, 282, 286–289, 308–309, 324, 330–331, 337, 339, 349. See also web (internet) chunking 53–55, 97, 109, 159, 172–175, 194, 207, 223, 279 discontinuous chunking 172, 174, 181–183

codification 26–27, 37, 61–63, 65, 101, 124, 141, 147, 175, 224, 287, 311–326, 327, 338 competition 2–3, 5, 19, 24, 33, 36–37, 41–46, 52, 58–62, 69, 79, 90, 113, 119, 130, 141, 154, 155–158, 194–195, 206, 210, 216–220, 226, 241–249, 253–254, 263–273, 276–277, 290, 295–339 competitor, competing construction. See competition complaint tradition 22–25, 295–306, 331 composition. See chunking concord. See agreement construction grammar 56–59, 330 diachronic application of construction grammar 59–64, 334–337 constructional change 62–63, 140, 200–201, 204, 282, 291–292 constructionalisation 62–63, 107, 139, 141, 159, 200, 217, 292, 296 construction-dependent morphology 63, 181 de Groot, Hugo 69–70, 119–120, 130–132, 141, 144n, 149–150, 156, 206, 316, 320, 349 deflection 1–3, 16–21, 23, 26–27, 36–37, 44, 62, 67, 71, 95, 103–108, 114–119, 124, 128–129, 132, 136, 141, 147, 150, 157, 173, 198, 206, 209, 212, 214, 216, 220, 250, 270, 297, 309, 312, 315, 321–326, 327–330, 334, 337–338 determiners 7, 9, 10, 13–16, 21, 38, 43, 46, 47, 56, 75, 89, 95–97, 101, 109, 112–116, 121, 122, 124–126, 130, 133, 137, 142–147, 158, 160, 162, 172, 174, 175, 177, 180, 187, 188, 191, 194, 201, 202, 206, 207, 217, 228, 235, 237, 251, 267, 279, 283–285, 287, 289–291, 308, 310, 313–315, 319, 333 drift. See deflection English 1–3, 6, 8–12, 14, 17–22, 24, 26, 31–32, 37, 46, 52–53, 55–57, 88, 97–100, 110–111, 116, 118, 140, 155–158, 172, 206–207, 209, 256, 296, 308, 311–313, 315–318, 322, 326, 329, 336

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004183285_012

380 exaptation 19–21, 42, 62–63, 115, 139–148, 198–205, 278–294, 309–310, 315, 319 extension 63 Faroese 2, 36 Finnish 35 gender 13–16 feminine 7, 9, 13–16, 38, 43, 99, 101, 103, 105, 108, 111, 112, 114, 116, 117, 121, 122, 124–127, 141, 142, 151, 157, 161, 165, 166, 169, 172–186, 195, 198, 206, 208, 211–218, 236, 239, 245, 251, 283, 290, 293, 313, 317–319, 323 in Dutch 14–16, 43, 99, 101–108, 111–118, 121–127, 139, 141, 142, 151, 157, 161, 165, 166, 169, 172–186, 198, 206, 208, 323 in German 13, 14, 38, 90, 211–214, 217, 218, 236, 239, 240, 245, 251, 267, 269, 273, 283, 290, 293, 313, 323, 351, 352 masculine 7, 9, 13–16, 37, 38, 43, 46, 47, 52, 90, 99, 100–102, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 114–118, 121, 122, 124–126, 139, 141, 142, 151, 157, 161, 169, 172, 174, 176–179, 181, 186, 198, 206, 212, 214, 217, 218, 236, 238–240, 251, 267, 269, 273, 283, 290, 293, 313, 317–319, 322, 351, 352 mismatch 124, 125, 133, 142, 206 neuter 7, 9, 13–16, 37, 38, 43, 46, 47, 52, 90, 98–102, 106, 108, 112, 114, 116, 121, 122, 124, 126, 139, 141, 142, 151, 157, 161, 169, 172, 173, 178–180, 186, 198, 206, 212, 251, 267, 269, 283, 293, 313, 317–319, 322, 351, 352 genitive accuracy of use in early modern Dutch 111, 119, 123–127, 173–174, 208, 336 acquisition in German 47, 210, 274, 277, 324–325 adjectival (Dutch) 37, 50, 104, 106, 114, 155, 156, 248, 249, 312, 319, 322 adjectival (German) 37, 39, 49, 220, 224, 225, 227, 247, 251, 252, 273, 275, 295, 312, 319, 322 adnominal (Dutch) 21, 42, 45, 46, 54, 56,

index 58, 61, 62, 65, 76, 77, 100–118, 120–140, 159–196, 200, 206–208, 312–315, 323, 328, 332, 334–336 adnominal (German) 19, 29, 30–33, 39–42, 45, 46, 57–59, 61, 62, 79, 100, 210–236, 251–253, 259–265, 277, 295–299, 307, 308, 312, 314, 315, 319, 320, 323, 324, 330, 331, 333, 339, 350 adverbal (Dutch) 37, 49, 104, 106, 115, 156, 157, 312, 322 adverbal (German) 29, 37, 48, 210, 213, 215, 216, 219, 220, 224, 225, 226, 227, 247–248, 251, 252, 273, 274, 295, 296, 298–299, 308, 312, 322 authorial 40 concordial (general) 1, 2, 7, 8, 46, 47, 140 concordial (Dutch) 37, 43, 64, 102, 103, 109, 110, 130n, 141, 143, 147–149, 151, 157, 158, 200, 206–208, 312, 319, 336 concordial (German) 20, 37, 57, 63, 217, 239, 250, 277, 282, 283, 290–292, 319 definitions 29–36, 36–44 definitive 40 des y-s construction in modern Dutch 169, 198–200, 208 elective (Dutch) 187–190 elective (German) 41, 259–260 explicative (Dutch) 170–171 explicative (German) 40, 41, 259–260 genitive of product 40 Genitivregel in German 38–39, 337–338 similar rule in early modern Dutch 43 in German dialects 250–251 objective (Dutch) 170, 171 objective (German) 31, 32, 40, 41, 298 “overuse” 272–273, 295, 303–305, 308, 310 partially-filled structures in modern Dutch 123n, 183, 190–194 partitive (Dutch) 102, 104, 105, 115n, 150–153, 170, 171, 181, 187, 204, 205 partitive (German) 25, 40, 41, 213–215, 220–223, 231–233, 259, 292, 293, 314 postnominal (Dutch) 105, 120–122, 164, 172, 187, 192–194, 207, 208, 314

381

index postnominal (German) 212, 214, 218, 219, 222, 223, 227–230, 240, 260–262, 297, 308, 314, 333 pragmatic characteristics (Dutch) 113, 115, 119, 129, 148, 162, 181, 190, 323–327, 330, 332, 334 pragmatic characteristics (German) 40, 41, 218, 225, 227, 249, 251–254, 261, 262, 270–272, 276, 277, 293, 296, 307–309, 312, 314, 315, 323–327, 330–334, 338 prenominal (Dutch) 105, 114, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 137, 141, 162, 163, 172, 187, 191, 207, 314 prenominal (German) 47, 100, 212, 214, 218, 219, 222, 223, 227–230, 260–262, 277, 297, 308, 314, 333, 335 prepositional (Dutch) 48, 154–155, 196–197, 323 prepositional (German) 41, 47, 214–217, 220, 223–228, 240, 241–246, 251–254, 265–273, 276, 295, 296, 300, 301, 303–308, 314, 315, 321, 323, 324, 331, 333, 353 qualitative 40, 41, 259, 260 register variation. See pragmatic characteristics s-omission (Dutch) 106, 107, 153, 204, 313 s-omission (German) 9, 20, 38n, 220–222, 229–232, 253–259, 266n, 273, 290, 306, 308, 313, 314, 319, 333 structural characteristics (Dutch) 42–44, 119–127, 164–166, 168, 169, 172–175, 178, 181–194, 313, 314 structural characteristics (German) 38, 39, 47, 252–259, 267–275, 313, 314 subjective (Dutch) 170, 171 subjective (German) 31, 32, 40, 41 typology 29–36 grammarians 2, 14, 16, 22–23, 26–27, 37, 110–116, 124, 147, 154, 295–306, 309, 311, 320, 329, 336 grammatical virus 56 Icelandic

2, 13, 17–19, 21, 36, 311

Lammens, Maria Wilhelmina & Johanna Susanna 70–71, 120, 126, 132–134, 136–137, 139, 141–143, 146–147, 152, 158, 349 language teaching 297, 315, 321–324, 332–334 Latin 2, 7, 8, 17, 23, 29, 31–33, 111–113, 212n, 214, 259, 296, 302, 320, 329 lay linguists 22–25, 40, 210, 278, 295, 297–316, 331, 332 linking -s (Dutch) 205 linking -s (German) 293–294 loan word 24, 43, 311, 333. See also borrowing Luijtsen, Aagje 71–72, 119–120, 126, 132, 134–137, 141–144, 146, 149–158, 187, 349 Luther, Martin 22, 26, 72–73, 212n, 219–224, 238, 302–303, 309, 316, 320, 329 Mainland Scandinavian 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 26, 37, 97, 98, 101, 110, 114, 116, 140, 209, 211, 308, 318, 327–329, 336 Danish 21, 98–100, 318 Norwegian 37 Swedish 1–3, 21, 37, 124, 140, 157–158, 206–207, 209, 311, 315–316, 318–319, 322 Minimise Forms 20 norm 2, 11, 13, 22, 26, 27, 58, 62, 79, 82, 111, 114, 118, 124, 128, 129, 141, 154, 157–159, 173, 206, 218, 230, 253–256, 260, 266, 269, 272, 274, 275, 277, 291, 295–306, 309, 312, 313, 315, 319–324, 329, 333 number 7–13 obsolete case morphology (preservation of) 52–53, 67, 95–101, 118–119 Old Norse 21, 37, 318 patch. See grammatical virus periphrastic possessive in Dutch 46, 102–103, 105, 109, 148–150, 158–159, 197–198 in German 24, 44–46, 234–236, 250, 253, 264–265, 291, 297–298, 300–301, 307, 312, 341 Polish 34–35

382 possessive -s definition 8, 46, 47 extension of type frequency in modern German 89, 90, 92, 281–292, 307, 334 in English 1, 20, 31, 37, 52, 100, 296, 316, 317 in Dutch 20, 43, 44, 46, 63, 102, 103, 105, 108, 109, 111, 114, 116, 126, 130, 139–148, 158, 159, 197, 200–203, 206, 207, 208, 315, 319, 336 in German 20, 21, 44, 45, 58, 63, 88, 210, 217, 218, 236–241, 250, 253, 277, 278–292, 307, 315, 319, 328, 330 in Swedish 1, 20, 37, 318 prescriptivism, prescriptivists general 22, 98–99, 111 in Dutch 23, 110–116, 124, 141, 147, 154, 157, 159, 173, 208, 329, 335–336 in German 23–25, 223, 295–306, 269, 277, 291, 308, 315, 321, 329, 331, 338 principle of no synonymy 58–59, 319, 330 principle of single encoding 20, 142–143, 290, 292 productivity 21, 37, 42, 53, 54, 58, 59, 63, 71, 77, 99, 100, 111, 119, 120, 128, 134, 140, 141, 158, 162, 169, 177, 183, 187, 188, 190, 191, 195, 196, 199, 204, 207, 223, 250, 259, 273, 307, 312, 324, 325 pronouns 14–16, 20, 21, 56, 100, 102, 109, 114, 115, 144–146, 165, 177, 180, 201, 203, 204, 214, 287, 298, 318 reanalysis 16, 109, 151, 152, 159, 194, 207 recycling. See exaptation regularity, regular performance 58, 59, 65, 89, 115, 119, 120, 133, 140, 157, 169, 209, 233, 250, 289 Russian 30 Schiller, Elisabetha Dorothea 73–74, 219, 225–231, 233–238, 240, 243–249, 252, 255, 262, 349, 350 standardisation Dutch 1, 2, 26, 110–116, 128, 129, 157,

index 158, 206, 207, 319–322, 324, 326, 328 German 1, 2, 26, 224, 273, 295–306, 309, 319–322, 324, 326, 328 other languages 316–318, 329 stages of 26–27 Swellengrebel, Helena Johanna & Johanna Engela 70–71, 120, 127, 132, 136–137, 140, 142, 150, 158, 349 synthetic construction 2, 7, 16–19, 35–36, 42–43, 57, 59, 128, 130, 209, 210–211, 311–312, 316, 319, 322 token frequency definition 52–53 involving the Dutch genitive and competitors 121–122, 138, 172–173, 176 involving the German genitive and competitors 223, 230, 332, 334 type frequency definition 52–53 involving the Dutch genitive and competitors 63, 122, 140, 143, 158, 172, 173, 176, 200, 207–208, 335–336 involving the German genitive and competitors 33n, 284, 291, 310, 312 usage-based approach 51–56, 60–61, 162, 172–177, 182–183, 321–325, 329, 338 van de Linde, Gerrit 72, 119, 120, 137–138, 141–142, 150, 349 van Leeuwenhoek, Antoni 117–118 van Reigersberch, Maria 69–71, 117, 120, 127, 130, 140–144, 146, 150–154, 173, 349 van Reigersberch, Nicolaes 69–70, 120, 127, 130, 140, 142–143, 150, 349 van-construction Old and Middle Dutch 42, 105, 107, 108, 208, 311, 314 early modern Dutch 112, 113, 115, 118, 122, 127–140, 141, 157, 158, 311, 314, 319 modern Dutch 36, 45, 46, 48, 61, 62, 67, 76, 101, 159, 173, 179, 180, 187, 194–196, 197, 206, 207, 259n, 332, 336

index von-construction Old High and Low German 213 Middle High and Low German 216, 314 Early New High German 220, 224 17th–19th century German 225, 229, 230, 233–234, 235, 243, 295–299, 350 modern German 4, 35n, 44, 45, 47, 57–59, 61, 62, 67, 79, 90, 210, 250, 253, 254, 259,

383 262, 263–264, 265, 271–272, 277, 282, 283, 298, 299, 307, 308, 312, 315, 319, 321, 323, 324, 330, 331, 333, 338, 353 referred to as the Vonitiv 299 web (internet) 41, 66, 78, 87–91, 180, 188, 190, 286, 287, 299. See also chat communication