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German cases | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7183 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes  7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 10 05 September 2007 at 4:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would like to discuss something which I have thought about for a while namely, are cases in German really necessary? In other languages cases seem to have a function which replaces another function not present in the language. For instance in Finnish, cases (if I understand correctly) are used instead of prepositions, and in Russian the cases allow for a very free word order and are also in some cases used instead of prepositions. But in German there are both prepositions as well as cases. Furhtermore word order is not very free in German (or is it?. Please provide counterexamples if you do not agree).
This leads me to believe that cases could be done away with in German without having a very large impact on the rest of the language. After all they have been removed in many other Germanic languages (Swedish for instance). At least I feel that the case changes after prepositions could be removed. I know I am probably going to upset a few German native speakers with this post, but sometimes the best the way to start a discussion is with a bit of provocation :-) Here is an example: English: The book is on the table. German: Der Buch ist auf dem Tisch. Swedish: Boken ligger på bordet. In my view the dative case in the above sentence is redundant, since you need both the preposition AND the case to express that it is the book that is on the table and not the table that is on the book. Of course you can (I think) rearrange the German sentence like this "Auf dem Tisch ist der Buch". But you can do the same with the (caseless) Swedish sentence (På bordet ligger boken). Edited by maxb on 05 September 2007 at 4:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| breckes Triglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6799 days ago 84 posts - 89 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian Studies: Italian, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 10 05 September 2007 at 4:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Isn't Dutch grammatically almost like German-without-cases? And it works!
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| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6584 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 3 of 10 05 September 2007 at 4:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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And Afrikaans is simplified Dutch and it works too, but that's not the point :-)
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 4 of 10 05 September 2007 at 7:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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maxb, I more or less agree with you. Cases aren't as important in German as in other inflected languages. Word order in German is a little more flexible than in English or French, but much much less than in languages like Latin, Greek or Russian.
Personally, I think that it's very likely that cases will disappear from spoken German in the next 100-200 years. The genitive is almost dead and replaced by a construction with the dative (there's a book on this: "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod.") Anyway, as you said, the case endings are not crucial for understanding. I'd advise any learner of German not to waste time on memorizing declination charts, you can just read German texts and pick them up gradually (whereas in languages as Latin you won't understand anything at all if you don't know the case endings). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6316 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 5 of 10 07 September 2007 at 1:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Cases can be pretty important in some cases. For example: "Ich fahre in die Stadt" which implies motion into the town as opposed to "ich fahre in der Stadt" which implies you are already in the town and are driving around. Generally, it can be understood from context (beginners often get cases wrong, but it doesn't usually hinder the meaning).
As to word order, I'd say it's fairly flexible\: Ich habe den Mann gesehen, Den Mann habe ich gesehen. Gesehen habe ich den Mann. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7183 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 10 07 September 2007 at 3:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes in this case I agree that it helps to distuingish meaning. In Swedish this has been solved by using different prepositions instead: Jag åker till staden. vs Jag åker (omkring) i staden. But I am curious do other prepoisitions have this dual behaviour (i.e. meaning different things depending on the case) or is it just "in"? As far as I know only "in" has this property.
Then I would agree that cases have some function in German. Although I think that you can actually get away with only nominative and accusative and still have the above flexible word order. In Swedish (which essentially only has nominative and accusative) the above is also possible: Jag har sett mannnen. Mannen har jag sett. Sett har jag mannen. The only requirement for the above to be possible seems to be that the first person pronoun changes when it becomes an object. Another thing that struck me is that the word order is only flexible sometimes in German. For instance if you change "ich" above to "die Frau" and "der Mann" to "das Mädchen" then you get this: Die Frau hat das Mädchen gesehen, Das Mädchen hat die Frau gesehen. (meaning changes) Gesehen hat das Mädchen die Frau. (is this word order possible?) I would like to ask the russian speakers on the forum if the above always is possible in Russian? I.e. can you always let the subject and object switch places without changing the meaning? Edited by maxb on 07 September 2007 at 3:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6316 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 7 of 10 07 September 2007 at 9:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Vor, hinter, auf can work in the same way. You can say (some rather bizarre examples here): Er läuft vor die Mauer Again, motion is implied. Er läuft vor/hinter der Mauer (herum). He's already in front (or behind) of the wall here and is running, though I'd be tempted to place the bracketed word at the end, so it works only if you're speaking generally, I guess; he happens to run while being in front of the wall. Auf is probably better. You could say, "ich fahre auf der/die Insel" with similar meaning implied as in my very first example. With a verb like gehen, it doesn't really work. You can say "Ich gehe auf die Uni", but it doesn't really work in a general sense like "Ich gehe auf der Uni". So cases become important with respect to the verb. Otherwise context is, or should be there to help you out.
It is. :) What sounds weird and awkward to me is something like "Versteht Bill Bob?". It seems like the only way to ask that question, anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 10 07 September 2007 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are at least nine two-way prepositions but I only think that there is a (tiny) risk of confusion where there is an actual motion, such as the aforementioned "ich fahre in die Stadt/in der Stadt" and similar (where only the case is changed).
Sentences like "die Bücher liegen auf dem Tisch" and "es steht in der Zeitung" can't really be misunderstood if you should happen to choose the wrong case. They are more "straightforward" so to speak. The books lie there, pretty passively, and that goes for the information in the newspaper as well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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