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Case Systems in German Dialects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Martha Shrier
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Extract

1.1. The problem. This paper deals with regional variations in one aspect of German grammar—the case inflection of nominal parts of speech. In German dialects, as in Standard German, case is a category of every noun phrase, determined by its function in the sentence. Of the several constituents of a noun phrase, the noun itself is least often inflected for case. More frequently, the case of the noun phrase is exhibited by the determiners and such adjectives as may be contained in it. Noun phrase substitutes—the pronouns—are particularly sensitive indicators of the case of a phrase. Inflection for case in the determiners and adjectives is accomplished by means of suffixes; in the pronouns, by suppletion. The markers of case are almost always portmanteau morphs that are also involved in expressing other categories (number, gender, and determination) of the noun phrase.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 41 , Issue 3: July-September , September 1965 , pp. 420 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 by Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Uriel Weinreich for his encouragement and aid in preparing this article, and to Agnes M. McKeon, of the Haskins Laboratories, for her intelligence and skill in drawing the maps.

References

1 See Ingerid Dal, ‘Systemerhaltende Tendenzen in hochdeutschen Mundarten’, Wirkendes Wort Sammelband 1.133–8 (1962), for brief but penetrating remarks on this subject.

2 The form of the AD case of the pronoun is -n (Accusative) in the ‘hump’ region and in the east at points 10, 14, 16–18, and 20–26. In Bavaria and Austria and in the north at 5, 7, and 8, the form of the AD case alternates between the stressed (Dative) form -m and the enclitic (Accusative) form -n.

3 Agathe Lasch, Mittelniederdeutsche Grammatik (Halle a.S., 1914); Hermann Paul and Walther Mitzka, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik 18 (Tübingen, 1959).

4 Dal, loc.cit.