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In:Germanic Genitives
Edited by Tanja Ackermann, Horst J. Simon and Christian Zimmer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 193] 2018
► pp. 189–230

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From genitive inflection to possessive marker?

The development of German possessive ‑s with personal names

 | FU Berlin
Published online: 26 April 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.193.08ack
Abstract
This paper deals with the status of the s-marker with personal names in German from a diachronic perspective. On the basis of corpus data it is argued that the deflexion of personal names in genitive phrases is much more advanced than it has been claimed in the literature: only the invariant marker ‑s occurs frequently, namely in constructions of the type Hildes Wohnung ‘Hilde’s flat’. Thus, it becomes obvious that such constructions, which are less widely studied than their English or Swedish counterparts, play a special role. It will be argued that an interpretation of the ‑s in these adnominal possessive constructions as a kind of prenominal genitive use fails. Given this, a comparison with the development of possessive ‑s in the history of English reveals that there are striking similarities with the developments in German.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphology: The case declension of personal names
    • 2.1Synchrony
    • 2.2Diachrony
    • 2.3Why are personal names prone to deflexion? – Animacy versus scheme constancy
  • 3.(Morpho-)Syntax: “Genitive” constructions with personal names
    • 3.1Where does the -s occur?
      • 3.1.1Grammars
      • 3.1.2Corpus data (DECOW)
    • 3.2Proposed formal analyses for German possessive -s
  • 4.The status of ‑s – genitive inflection or clitic marker?
    • 4.1English possessive ’s constructions
    • 4.2Synchronic and diachronic empirical data of German
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (80)
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Funke, Reinold
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2021. Pre- and postnominal onymic genitives in (Early) New High German. Journal of Historical Linguistics 11:3 ► pp. 499 ff. DOI logo
Gallmann, Peter
2018. The Genitive Rule and its background. In Germanic Genitives [Studies in Language Companion Series, 193], ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Hoekstra, Jarich
2018. Frisian genitives. In Germanic Genitives [Studies in Language Companion Series, 193], ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
Zimmer, Christian
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