Morphological case marking

In the literature, it is commonly assumed that German nouns vary according to case and number. Furthermore, the values of their person, gender and declension class features are considered as inherent.⁵⁶ According to that, it is not possible to

55For instance in GB, the direct object in a passive sentence must move from the VP internal position to the specifier of the IP in order to get case and be thus able to be theta-marked (cf. Chomsky 1981: 170–183 and Haegeman 1994: 188–192).

56See for instance, Schäfer (2016: 265).

vary the values of a noun’s person⁵⁷, gender, or declension class attributes. For instance, if a noun has the gend value masc, it is not possible to inflect it to a feminine noun (cf. example (38a)).

(37) der

the.m Tisch table

vs. * die

the.fTisch table

However, it is indeed possible to change the gender value of a noun from masculine to feminine (cf. example (38a)) or the other way around (cf. example (38b)), though this is not achieved by means ofinflection, but ofderivation (cf. Krifka, 2009: 157).

(38) a. der

the.m Lehrer teacher

vs. die

the.f Lehrer-in teacher-f b. die

the.fEnte duck

vs. der

the.m Ente-rich duck-m

Though nouns cannot be inflected for person (cf. Footnote 57), gender, and declension class, at least gender and declension class are attributes which play a role in the way nouns are inflected. The inflectional paradigm of nouns is dependent on their gender and declension class values as shown in Table 4.3 forArzt ‘doctor’, Patient ‘patient’, Staat ‘state’, Kind ‘child’, Ohr ‘ear’, and Frau ‘woman’.

masculine neuter feminine

strong weak mixed strong mixed sg

nom Arzt Patient Staat Kind Ohr Frau

acc Arzt Patient-en Staat Kind Ohr Frau

dat Arzt Patient-en Staat Kind Ohr Frau

gen Arzt-es Patient-en Staat-es Kind-es Ohr-(e)s Frau pl

nom Ärzt-e Patient-en Staat-en Kind-er Ohr-en Frau-en acc Ärzt-e Patient-en Staat-en Kind-er Ohr-en Frau-en dat Ärzt-en Patient-en Staat-en Kind-ern Ohr-en Frau-en gen Ärzt-e Patient-en Staat-en Kind-er Ohr-en Frau-en

Table 4.3: Nominal inflection in German

German has three possible gender values: masc, neut, and fem,⁵⁸ and three

57In Section 4.6, I am going to give evidence for the fact that the per value of nouns is underspecified.

58I will not go into the details of the German gender system. For further remarks, see Fries (2008) and especially with respect to case syncretism in German feminines, see Krifka (2009).

possible values for declension class: strong, weak, and mixed.⁵⁹ Masculine nouns can have thedeclvaluestrong asArzt‘doctor’,weak asPatient‘patient’, ormixed asStaat ‘state’. The singular paradigm of strong nouns varies only in the genitive form which is built with the affix-es. The plural paradigm ofstrong nouns is built with a plural affix, e.g. -e, and the word-form in dative is built with -en. On the contrary, the singular paradigm ofweak nouns has the affix-en for all cases except for the nominative. Furthermore, the plural paradigm for the weak class is built with the affix -en as is the singular paradigm. Masculine nouns which belong to the mixed class behave in the singular paradigm like the strong class and in the plural paradigm like theweak class. Neuter nouns belong either to the strong class (e.g. Kind ‘child’) or to the mixed class (e.g. Ohr ‘ear’). For the feminine nouns normally the declension classes are not relevant.⁶⁰

Table 4.3 makes clear that in order to capture generalisations with respect to the inflection paradigm of nouns in German, it is necessary to account for the interaction of number, case, gender, and declension class. First of all, since the declension class is an inherent feature of nouns, it must be encoded in the AVM of a noun stem to which class it belongs. decl is a head feature and has a value of type decl. The type decl has different subtypes for every parts of speech. For instance, verbs are classified as well according to the declension classes strong, weak, and mixed (cf. Figure 4.2).

The nominal declension class (n decl) has several noun specific subtypes which are sometimes a combination of number and declension class, e.g. n sg strong, n pl strong,n sg weak, andn pl weak.⁶¹ These four combinations of number and declension class yield three subtypes by multiple inheritance: n strong, n mixed, and n weak, with the particular characteristic (cf. Table 4.3) that the mixed class for nouns behaves in the singular paradigm like the strong class, and in the plural paradigm like the singular one. Therefore, a noun stem such as Staat ‘state’ will

59The traditional classification of declension classes into strong,weak, andmixed dates back to the work of Jacob Grimm. Netter (1994: 305) accounts for the paradigm of nouns in German only with two values for the attribute declension-class(decl): strong andweak. I am not working out the details here, since I only want to show how morphological case is assigned. See Pollard and Sag (1994: 371–374).

60For a more detailed description of inflection in German, see Schäfer (2016: 265–276). For the sake of clarity, I am giving only a sketch here.

61Due to lack of space, I am going to disregard the feminine inflection (fem-infl) and further declension classes as the s-inflection (s-infl) like inAuto–Autos.

decl n_decl n_pl_strong n_strong

n_sg_strong n_mixed

n_pl_weak n_weak

n_sg_weakfem-infls-infl...

v_decl ...

Figure 4.2: Type hierarchy for declension class

have the lexical entry given in AVM (39).

decl n mixed noun

Since (39) represents a stem, it has no case and number information, only the inherent information is specified. By virtue of the constraints on nominal stems in Figure (34) information about the inivalue and the arg-st is inherited. Since Staat is a noun without arguments it would be of type nonarg-nonprd-n-stem – in case it is used non-predicatively. Now, in order to get an object of typeword speci-fied for case and number out of the stem (39) a lexical rule must be used (cf. (40)).

The lexical rule es-noun-infl-lr in (40) takes a nominal stem as lex-dtrwhich is specified as n sg strong, since Staat has the decl value n mixed which is a subtype of n sg strong, the stem in (39) and the lexical rule in (40) are unifiable.

Furthermore, the lexical rule constraints that the stem must be either masculine or neuter. The actual value of the stem will be structure-shared with the result of the rule (cf. 4 ). The case and number values are contributed by the affix -es, more specifically by the lexical rule. The case gen as shown in Figure 4.1 is a supertype for structural as well as for lexical genitive, thus this rule licenses objects which are underspecified with respect tostr gen orlx gen. With this one lexical rule the word-formsArztes‘(of the) doctor’, Staates ‘(of the) state’,Kindes ‘(of the) child’, and Ohrs ‘(of the) ear’ can be licensed, since it is applicable to masculine strong and mixed, and neuter strong and mixed noun stems.

(40) Lexical Rule: -es-Inflection