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Datapoint for feature 86 and language wals_code_ger

Discuss WALS Datapoint for feature 86 and language wals_code_ger.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 9:55 pm by wals and is filed under German, Order of Genitive and Noun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Datapoint for feature 86 and language wals_code_ger”

  1. Matthias Meyer-Schwarzenberger Says:
    March 8th, 2010 at 10:38 pm

    In German, “Jeans Vater” (Jean’s father) and “der Vater Jeans”, as well as “der Vater von Jean” which would be the literal translation from French, are all correct and may be employed according to stylistic preference, regardless of the context. Even though habitual tendencies do exist, “no dominant order” would be the correct value for German. Only in certain regional dialects (such as the Swiss gpz, gbe, gos, gtg, gzu) NGen prevails.

  2. Matthias Meyer-Schwarzenberger Says:
    March 9th, 2010 at 11:17 am

    I need to amend my first comment, I was being misled by example (3) in the text. What I said is true for names (e.g., Jeans Vater) and other words referring to people (Vaters Auto), and it also applies to certain expressions (des Pudels Kern). In general, however, the dominant tendency is NGen indeed. Sorry for the confusion.

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