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Case - the possessive construction
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Remnants of the old Germanic genitive case system are found in nouns functioning as specifiers in Dutch noun phrases. These nouns end in the bound morpheme -s and denote the possessor of what is denoted by the head noun of the noun phrase:

1
specifier = proper name
a. Jan-s hoed
John's hat
b. Amsterdam-s rijke verleden
Amsterdam's rich history
2
specifier = form of address
a. vader-s fiets
father’s bicycle
b. dominee-s studeerkamer
reverend’s study
3
specifier = quantifier
a. ieder-s huis
everybody’s house
b. niemand-s schuld
nobody’s fault
4
specifier = complex proper name
a. koning Salomo-s reputatie
king Solomon’s reputation
b. mijn moeder-s naaidoos
my mother’s sewing box

Such nouns and noun phrases ending in -s can only be used in pre-nominal position: a sentence like *Deze hoed is Jans This hat is John’s is ungrammatical. These possessor nouns or noun phrases impose a definite interpretation on the noun phrase of which they are the specifiers. For instance, Jan-s hoed means ‘the hat of John’.

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The morphological marking of nominal specifiers of NPs is usually referred to as possessor marking. However, such specifiers may have other semantic functions than that of possessor, as in Jan-s antwoord op de vraag John’s answer to the question, where Jan is the subject of the action denoted by antwoord answer. Hence, a more general term than ‘possessor’, such as ‘specifier’, is more appropriate.

Historically, the -s is the genitive case ending of masculine and neuter singular nouns. In modern Dutch, however, the -s can also be used for feminine nouns (Scott 2014).

The Dutch nouns and noun phrases that end in -s function as definiteness markers, and can therefore not be preceded by a determiner in the noun phrase: *de Jan-s huis the John’s house is ungrammatical, as is *een Jan-s huis a house of John. The definiteness of the whole NP is also manifested by the form of a pre-nominal adjective in this construction: Peter-s {nieuw-e/*nieuw} boek Peter’s new book: the definite nature of this NP headed by the neuter noun boek book requires the definite form of the adjective with a final -e, the regular inflectional ending in definite noun phrases.

The nouns that can be used pre-nominally are proper names, mainly but not exclusively for human beings, or nouns that can be used as forms of address, like vader father and dominee reverend. Instead of a single noun we also find noun sequences with a function name or a possessive pronoun preceding a proper name. There is a trend in present-day Dutch to also use specifier noun phrases with a definite determiner and a singular noun denoting a human being, as in de auteur-s grootvader the author’s grandfather, with the noun auteur denoting a human being that is not used as a form of address. In the latter case, the presence of the determiner de is required since auteur is not a proper name and *auteur-s grootvader is an ungrammatical noun phrase (Horst 1999: 320). However, this construction is usually considered to be sub-standard.

Complex names that consist of two words can also appear in this construction:

5
a. koning Salomo-s reputatie
king Solomon’s reputation
b. Prins Bernhard-s zes dochters
Prince Bernhard’s six daughters

The -s always appears on the final noun. For instance, in the phrase prins Bernhard it is the second noun that hosts the -s. The generalization that the -s is always phrase-final is confirmed by the fact that this is also the case when the possessor phrase is a case of coordination:

6
a. Jan en Piet-s vader
John and Pete’s father
b. Pa, Ma, en de kinderen-s verjaardag
Dad, Mum, and the children’s birthday

These examples belong to more informal registers of language use; not all speakers accept them. On the other hand, some speakers of Dutch can even mark plural nouns as possessor (data from a Google search):

7
de kinderen-s {belangen / naam / toekomst}
the children’s {interests / name / future}

Compared to the bound morpheme -s in English possessor constructions, the Dutch -s in pre-nominal position has a much more restricted distribution. A phrase like *De koning van Engeland’s kroon The king of Englands crown is impossible in Dutch. Instead of the bound morpheme -s, the possessive pronoun zijn his or haar her has to be used in such cases: de koning van Engeland zijn kroon the king of England his crown, de gravin van Buren haar fiets the dutchess of Buren her bicicle. Thus, there is a difference with languages such as English and Swedish, where -s can be attached to nouns that are not the phrasal head, and to phrase-final words of other categories than nouns, such as verbs (English example from Weerman (1998:33), Swedish one from Norde (2006: 205); see also Börjars (2003: 145)):

8
English
a. the man that I saw’s friend
b. a friend of mine’s house
9
Swedish
den som jobbar-s halva lön
[the.one who works]s half salary
half the salary of the one who has a job
References
  • Börjars, Kersti2003Morphological status and (de)grammaticalisation: the Swedish possessiveNordic Journal of Linguistics26133-163
  • Horst, Joop van der & Horst, Kees van der1999Geschiedenis van het Nederlands in de twintigste eeuwDen Haag/AntwerpenSDU Uitgevers & Standaard Uitgeverij
  • Norde, Muriel2006Demarcating degrammaticalization: the Swedish s-genitive revisitedNordic Journal of Linguistics29201-238
  • Scott, Alan2014The Genitive Case in Dutch and German. A Study of Morphosyntactic Change in Codified LanguagesLeidenBrill
  • Weerman, Fred & Wit, Petra de1998De ondergang van de genitiefNederlandse Taalkunde318-46
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