Nominal Categories

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Nominal Categories
FSU Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik HS
Contrastive Linguistics Prof. Diessel WS 07/ 08
Students Christin Beyer Johanna
Blum Norman Bösel

• Nouns
• Determiners
• Adjectives
• Pronouns

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• Types of Nouns

common nouns
proper nouns Georg
mass nouns
count nouns
abstract n. honesty
concrete n. sugar
abstract n. proposal
concrete n. book

• - Engl. usually NO def. art.
• the Georg
• - Ger def. art. possible
• der Georg

• Engl. and Ger
• sg. requires an art.
• pl. does NOT require an art.
• ?absence of article
• I have read (the) books.
• Ich las (die) Bücher.

• Engl. and Ger
• usually NOT together with numerals
  or indef. art., unless you think in terms of
  units (package / bottle / glas )
• NO pl. possible

indefiniteness
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NOUN INFLECTION

• Number ? sg. / pl.
• Case ? Nom. / Gen. / Dat. / Acc.
• Gender ? maskuline, feminine, neuter

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NOUN INFLECTION

• NUMBER in English
• plural marker on the noun
• -s tree trees
• -en ox - oxen
• -ren child - children
• zero deer deer
• ablaut goose geese

• NUMBER in German
• plural marker on the noun
• zero der Lehrer die Lehrer
• - e der Teppich die Teppiche
• - (e)n die Tasche die Taschen
• - er das Kleid die Kleider
• -s der Macho die Machos
• Umlaut der Vater die Väter
• Umlaut e der Hut die Hüte
• Umlaut er das Tuch die Tücher

Foreign Plurals medium media criterion -
criteria crisis - crises
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NOUN INFLECTION

• GENDER in English
• basically disappeared, only in pronoun
• the woman she
• the man he

• GENDER in German
• 1) semantic features
• (most) female humans feminine,
• male humans maskuline
• der Junge - mask.
• die Frau - fem.
• Words from certain word fields tend to have the
  same gender
• Months ? maskuline, der Januar /
• Februar
  / März
• Flowers ? feminine, die Rose / Lilie /
• Nelke /
  Gerbera
• Colours ? neuter, das Rot / Gelb / Grün

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NOUN INFLECTION

• 2) morphological features
• Derivational suffixes

• 3) Phonological features
• tendency fricative t at the end
• of a word? feminine
• die Haft BUT der Duft
• die Rast
• die Macht

• Nominalised infinitives ? NEUTER
• das Gehen, das Hören, das Lernen
• Compounds
• head of compound is responsible for gender
• der Stundenplan
• die Tarifpartei
• das Zeitungsinterview

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NOUN INFLECTION

• CASE in English
• - English still has the genitivegramm. fct
  attributesemantic fct possession
• Marys bike is broken.
• Tomorrows performance has
• been cancelled.

• CASE in German

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Determiners
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DEFINITE ARTICLE

• ENGLISH the
• GERMAN

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DEFINITE ARTICLE

• GERMAN
• SYNCRETISM

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INDEFINITE ARTICLE

• ENGLISH a(n)
• GERMAN

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INDEFINITE AND DEFINITE ARTICLE

• GERMAN

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ADJECTIVES

• have two syntactic functions

attributive
predicative
ENG the big house The house is
big.
? ? adjective is not inflected
adjective is not inflected
GER das große Haus Das Haus ist groß.
? ? adjective is inflected adjective is
not inflected

.
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GERMAN ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE

• weak forms definite article adjective noun

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GERMAN ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE

• weak forms definite article adjective noun

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GERMAN ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE

• strong forms no article adjective noun

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GERMAN ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE

• strong forms no article adjective noun

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GERMAN ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE

• mixed forms indefinite article adjective
  noun

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GERMAN ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE

• mixed forms indefinite article adjective
  noun

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COMPARATIVE FORMS

• ENGLISH GERMAN
• -er -er
  
• luckier, sweeter schöner, kühler
• more
• more intelligent
• irregularities irregularities
• good - better gut - besser

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SUPERLATIVE FORMS

• ENGLISH GERMAN
• -est am -sten
  
• luckiest, sweetest am schönsten, am kühlsten
• most
• most intelligent

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Pronouns
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Pronouns general differences
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Pronouns German personal p.

• Nominative form idiosyncratic (unrelated forms)
• other cases
• at least in first and second persons exhibiting
  specific morphological features

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Pronouns English personal p.

• Collapse of dative and accusative case in Middle
  English lead to neutralization

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Pronouns reflexive p.
Myself, mich...

• English is more diverse than German
• (8 vs. 5 forms)

• In English sentences
• minimal distance principle
• ?I expect the companies to ruin themselves.
• ?They claimed that he ruined them.

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Pronouns demonstrative p.

• English 4 different forms
• Difference between near, far, singular, plural,
  but no gender or case distinction

• German gender, case and number are important ?
  apparently arbitrary distribution of identical
  forms (e.g. dieser)

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Pronouns indefinite p.
everyone, jeder
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Summary

• The German inflectional morphology seems to
  incorporate the English system (but not vice
  versa).

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Summary
Nouns

• English pronouns
• - subjective, possessive and objective case are
  left
• gender is (sometimes) marked
• (at least in regard to some types of pronouns)