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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:

specifier = proper name

Jan-s hoed

John's hat

Amsterdam-s rijke verleden

Amsterdam's rich history

specifier = form of address

vader-s fiets

father’s bicycle

dominee-s studeerkamer

reverend’s study

specifier = quantifier

ieder-s huis

everybody’s house

niemand-s schuld

nobody’s fault

specifier = complex proper name

koning Salomo-s reputatie

king Solomon’s reputation

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’.

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:

koning Salomo-s reputatie

king Solomon’s reputation

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:

Jan en Piet-s vader

John and Pete’s father

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):

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)):

English

the man that I saw’s friend

a friend of mine’s house

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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About this article

Author(s): Geert Booij, Ton van der Wouden

Category: Dutch Morphology

Keywords: nouncasepossessivegenitive

Version: 1.0, December 2015

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Geert Booij, Ton van der Wouden	December 2015

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