Article

Name: The structure of the noun-noun phrase in German of Western Siberia

Authors: E. A. Libert

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper deals with a syntactic structure common to the High German dialect and the daughter- language of Low German noun as Plautdietsch spoken in Western Siberia and the Altai Region. The subject in question is a word-group consisting of a main and subordinate noun. Subordination is realised as a mere juxtaposition of both words (High German ən aimər vasər, плот. ən a:mə vo:ta ‘a bucket of water’, as the connection through a preposition (German gəšt aus daitšlant, Low German ja:st yt di:tšlant ‘guests from Germany’ or as the government of the depended word (the 4th means, concord, is lacking in the field materials). The attention is drawn to the dominant role of the government which is manifested in three ways: 1) the dependent noun – denoting only a human being and only in Plautdietsch – may be governed as a genitive attribute to the main word, e. g. no:baš hunt ‘nabour’s dog’; 2) in both High German dialects and Plautdietsch prepositional government is preserved due to the formal distinction between direct and oblique cases, e. g. ən broif fon / oun mi:ne zestᴧ (German der Brief von meiner Schwester (D) and der Brief an meine Schwester (A)) ‘the letter from / to my sister’; 3) mutual government of the main and the dependent noun denoting only a leaving being can be seeing in a specific possessive construction with the dative case, e. g. dəm foagəl zi:n na:st, German dem Vogel sein Nest ‘the nest of the bird’. This construction is found in other Germanic Languages, though it is not accepted by the norm in most of them. These peculiar features of German syntax might be a reason to revise the notion of government itself.

Keywords: german syntax, noun-noun phrase, subordination, government, possessive dative case

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